The Perfect Turn

and other tales of skiing and skiers

by Dick Dorworth, 240 pages, $15.95 softbound, plus shipping

 

Currently available through amazon.com,  also as a Kindle eBook

The Perfect Turn offers us tales of skiing and skiers—but what gripping tales these are: ski history meets ski adventure. The story of great ski races and great ski racers, the pursuit of the World Speed Record on skis, memoirs of colorful, important, and flat-out remarkable skiers, winter backcountry expeditions through the remotest of remote snowy ranges…

 

Dick Dorworth weaves together an engaging blend of action and reflection in the most thoughtful and literary ski writing to come along in ages. This is a book by a skier who has lived it all, skied it all, and then thought about his sport in fresh, surprising and often challenging terms. The Perfect Turn brings together 19 essays that probe and explore the very soul of skiing, and ends with a poetic piece of short fiction that gives this collection its title. In fact, regular readers of BreakthroughOnSkis.com had the opportunity to read this moving short story a couple of years ago when Dick graciously allowed me to reprint it on this site.

 

About Dick Dorworth...

 

Dick Dorworth has skied and climbed in Europe, Asia, Alaska and South America; but he's spent most of his life in the mountains of the West. He ski raced extensively from 1950 through 1965 and set the world record for speed on skis in Portillo, Chile in 1963. Dick taught and coached skiing for years, served as coach of the U.S. Ski Men's Team. and later Director of the Aspen Mountain Ski School.

 

Dorworth's writing has appeared in Ski, Skiing, Powder, Snow Country, Mountain Gazette, Men's Journal, Climbing, New West, Mariah, Wild Duck Review, Summit, and Backpacker.

 

And a little more...

 

Of course there's always more. Why am I so pleased to share Dick Dorworth's books here on BreakthroughOnSkis.com? Easy. Because Dick is a great friend of mine. Because I love his tales of skiing and skiers. And because I had a hand in publishing this book. Dick and I go way back. In 1968, with our friends Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins we drove from California to Patagonia, and made the third ascent of an incredible peak, Fitz Roy. Dick is one of the best possible guys to be trapped with in an ice cave in a big Patagonian storm. Or to share a big adventure with. We've shared a lot of days on skis too, never enough. In recent years I've learned a lot about modern on-demand book publishing. It's an exciting and liberating time for publishing and I jumped at the chance to publish The Perfect Turn under my own Western Eye Press imprint. It is a deep, true and moving celebration of what's best in skiing. You are going to love this book.

 

                   Good reading! And good skiing!    Lito