Frost Valley Stories: Gail Piche

Frost Valley Stories: Gail Piche

08/27/2026

I’ve done a lot of talking and writing about how my first summer at Frost Valley, in 1972, changed my life. For some reason, I haven’t talked much about how the Staff Reunion, December 26th-28th of that year, significantly affected my life as well.

I had desperately wanted to try cross-country skiing, but had no way of affording it. To my surprise, when we got to the reunion on the 26th, we were told that the next day would be the first day of Frost Valley’s cross-country ski program, and we were going to be the first to try out the equipment. I was so excited I could hardly sleep.

The next morning after breakfast, a crowd of us trooped down the hill from the Dining Hall to the old Arts & Crafts building (now Margetts), where the industry reps from Bonna skis, Swix wax, and Tempo bindings were waiting to greet us. I soaked it all up, learning-by-watching how to size skis and poles, how to apply wax, and how to fit the incredibly adaptable (and equally annoying) Tempo rental cable bindings; I later learned that they could accommodate everything from a size 2 Sorel (Patty Devlin) to a size 13 mountaineering boot (Jim “Fuzz” Foster, Physical Director of the Madison Y).

I skied all morning, learning as much as I could from the lesson we got from the reps. I went back after lunch and skied all afternoon, up and down the Valley. I never wanted the day, a perfect blue-sky mid-20°’s day, to end. Predictably, I was long the last one in, popping out of my skis just as it was getting dark.

Carrying my equipment inside, I saw that although the skis and poles had been hanging in new overhead racks in the morning, they’d all been left leaning helter-skelter against the walls, the big red rubber bands for holding the tails together scattered everywhere. I set about pairing everything up and hanging them in the racks, and was about halfway through when Bill Devlin quietly came up behind me and said, “Want a job?” I mean, how fast can you say “YES!”

I spent my weekends that winter at Frost Valley, teaching lessons, leading ski hikes, waxing and prepping skis, and fitting and endlessly repairing the bindings. That was my beginning as a working skier. Over the next thirty years, I taught cross-country track/skate, telemark, alpine, and snowboard. I ran ski touring centers, worked at downhill areas that had Nordic programs summer and winter, cleared and maintained trails, laid snowmaking pipe, worked in ski shops, and patrolled cross-country, downhill, and at a mountain bike park. I was one of the first ski patrollers on a snowboard, and did backcountry rescue as well. One day in 1986, after nearly fifteen seasons full-time in the ski industry I asked the woman running the ski school desk at an alpine area where I was teaching if she wanted to come over for dinner, and she told me she was starting an EMT course that evening. I asked if there were any openings, and she suggested I come along. I did, began working in Emergency Medicine, and two years later I was in Nursing School. After getting my RN, I kept working at ski areas, running First Aid rooms at a couple of ski areas along with teaching and patrolling.

Way back in 1972, I’d been advised that when I got to Frost Valley that first summer, I should volunteer for everything. I’d revise that slightly: don’t wait- if you see something that needs doing, jump in. You have no idea where it might lead.