BRECKENRIDGE • Trygve Berge doesn’t dwell on limitations, but he’s aware of them. He’s aware that today is a not-so-good day for skiing.

It’s a good day for everyone else at the ski area he co-founded 60 winters ago — the snow keeps piling up out there — and that’s part of why it’s a not-so-good-day for him. Like the frigid air on his bones, the crowds aren’t ideal. No need to risk mingling with poor techniques and lack of etiquette; Breckenridge’s first ski school director is all too aware of those.

“I don’t like to get banged up,” says Berge, who turns 90 next month.

So it’s a good day to take it easy with a friend. Gene Dayton has been friends with Berge since their 1960s beginnings in town. Dayton is pouring tea.

“One or two?” he asks, motioning to sugar packets.

Flashing that white, gleaming grin seen in Warren Miller movies and billboards and magazines nationwide over a lifetime, Berge winks. “Better go two.”

7 ‘endangered places’ saved in Colorado by program celebrating milestone

In his twilight, Berge keeps living it up. He keeps the gregarious persona that has made him Breckenridge’s poster child/beloved grandfather, a persona complete with his hand-knit, Norwegian sweater.

“If you’re going out with him, anywhere you go you’re gonna have a good time, because all the people that will come up and talk to him,” says another longtime friend, Greg Gutski. “Wherever you go, you make a new friend. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

Berge is a common presence at local happy hours (he’ll have a short whiskey, please). A common presence on sidewalks (strolling to get the blood flowing). A common presence at celebrations, including Ullr Fest, the 50-year tradition he helped establish in honor of the snow god of his native Norway.

And, of course, Berge is a common presence on the slopes. He’s been hard to miss in colorful, retro jumpsuits. Hard to miss with that signature form: legs and skis tight together, arms splayed wide, as if ready for takeoff. It’s a style that made him a champion racer in the ‘50s, a style modeled from his idol, the late Stein Eriksen, regarded as the sport’s first superstar.

“You have to make sure it’s elegant,” Berge has advised a fellow local legend, CJ Mueller, who has occasionally tried to emulate the form.

From Breckenridge, Mueller went on to fame for his record speed. He is among Berge’s daily admirers.

“It’s amazing to watch him still,” Mueller says. “He’s just zipping around, making little, quick turns, and then making real elegant turns, and just doing Trygve.”

To Mueller, the man’s longevity is no wonder. “I think when you learn to ski as effortlessly as Trygve, it doesn’t take nearly as big a toll on your body.”

The powder helps, too, Berge says.

“But there isn’t powder anymore,” he says. “About 10 minutes after opening, somebody has skied it out.”

Always on the move

Friends pronounce it trig-vee. It’s a name Berge (bur-gee) has said to mean “trust.” And “Berge,” he has said, derives from “mountain” or “cliff.” As The Summit Daily once poignantly put it: “In a way, beginning in 1961, Breckenridge trusted its mountain to Berge.”

That winter, Peak 8 as we know it opened for business. That was after Berge and Olympic teammate Sigurd Rockne drove a mining road up to where the SuperChair is now, plotting out the first runs of what would later be Breckenridge Ski Resort.

“We didn’t know how big it was going to get,” Berge is quoted as saying in his Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame bio.

It would’ve been hard to imagine in those days, before real estate and corporate interests took quick hold in Colorado’s high country. While Berge got busy in post-mining Breckenridge, Pete Seibert was eyeing a sheep valley that would be called Vail.

Dayton’s recollection of 1960s Breckenridge: “The streets were dirt. Dogs slept in the middle of main street. There were no stop lights. There were junk cars everywhere, turned-over trailers, houses that were falling in.”

Dayton helped pioneer the Nordic ski scene locally. He always admired the man who came before. He admires Berge even more now.

“I’ve been enamored with his ability to stay healthy and keep skiing,” Dayton says. “Yeah, he picks and chooses his days, but that’s great. … He’s an inspiration for a lot of people.”

From Berge’s downtown apartment, his blue eyes gaze out to Peak 8, a constant reminder of his legacy and constant call to his deep passion. He shrugs off the praise.

“I’m old enough that I can sleep in. I never do, though,” he says. “I get going, because there’s always something to do.”

There’s painting. There’s writing. There’s another interview or photo shoot. A social get-together, or maybe another job; in the heat of last summer, there was 89-year-old Berge, stone mason by trade, working on a building with his contractor son.

There’s clarinet-playing — though not much lately. Berge has been favoring his index finger and, in true Trygve Berge fashion, avoiding the doctor.

He can live without the clarinet. But without skiing?

“If he could not ski tomorrow, that would not be a good day. That would not be good,” says daughter Rondi Berge. “That’s his lifeblood. He was born on skis.”

From ashes to stardom

Almost. Berge recalls starting at age 3, getting around in the winter as Norwegians did. He was raised on a farm in Voss, where he jokes the hills were steep enough for potatoes to grow on either side.

In April 1940, an idyllic childhood turned into a nightmare. That month, the Nazi invasion in Voss began with firebombs. Berge was 8.

“We were sitting 29 people in the potato cellar, peeking through the cracks to see where the next bomb fell down,” he remembers.

Friends and family emerged to a much different life under the occupation. Berge remembers five years of rationing, of laying low and keeping secrets of the resistance secret, staying quiet, or else risk being gunned down. Social gatherings were avoided, as they could be seen as suspicious.

“The Germans came and confiscated everything from the farm,” Berge says. “They got potatoes that were good size, and then left the little potatoes. They taste just as good, so at least we got to eat some.”

It was a time that shaped Berge in more ways than one, his daughter thinks.

“I think that kind of lent itself to perspective,” Rondi says. “Just trying to live each day the best way you can.”

So Berge did when freedom returned. He skied more. On his hickory skis he skied somewhere beyond his farm to find a downhill race underway. He had never raced, but a woman invited him to join. He won.

“That was it,” Berge says — the beginning of a dream.

It was a dedication no better defined than in 1949, when he broke his femur not once but twice. In 1953, he moved to Oslo, where the best and brightest practiced. That included the idol who would become a friend, Olympic gold medalist Stein Eriksen. While competing, Eriksen was also busy at some of America’s budding ski areas.

Berge got Eriksen’s attention by becoming the Norwegian downhill champion in 1954. Berge raced his way to the 1956 Olympics in Cortina, Italy, where he lost a ski on a notorious course. He redeemed himself by winning a World Cup race in 1958 in his native land.

That year, Eriksen asked Berge and the also-accomplished Sigurd Rockne to work for him at a ski school in Aspen. One fortuitous day, Berge and Rockne met a customer named Bill Rounds, a Kansan whose family was buying property around Breckenridge with the creation of Dillon Reservoir on the horizon.

The three struck a friendship. The handy Berge and Rockne took a summer job at Rounds’ lumberyard beneath the Tenmile Range. A now-famous exchange followed:

“What do you plan to do here in the winter?” Berge recalls asking.

Rounds replied: “Do you think we can ski here?”

Rolling through changes

That set in motion a series of events leading to the ski area’s opening in December of 1961. Berge grew a reputation at the ski school — but perhaps even more so at a nearby jump.

CJ Mueller took the name “Crazy John” for his speed. But what he saw Berge do on that jump seemed even crazier: The skier would flip midair.

“It was pretty unheard of back then,” Mueller says. “It was amazing.”

It was great promotion, a scene for tourists, publications and postcards. Berge had another promotional gig with Colorado Ski Country USA; in the the early days of the trade association, he traveled to praise the sport at functions around the nation.

Through that promotion, Berge didn’t realize the kind of forces he was inadvertently inviting to the industry. More skiers and bigger profits meant the likes of Twentieth Century Fox entering the fold. The company went on to control Aspen Skiing Co., which bought Breckenridge Ski Area in 1970.

Berge wasn’t involved in that next decade. “Aspen never gave me a damn thing,” he says.

A divorce at the time was also changing his trajectory, sending him from his Breckenridge ski shops to jobs back in Norway. He guided climbs on glaciers. Scandinavian Airlines picked him to lead ski tours in Europe with his ad-ready smile. He continued as a stone mason.

While there was hurt back in Breckenridge, Berge always found it to be home. He found appreciation.

“I get recognized everywhere I go,” he says now, blushing. “They say, ‘That’s the guy who started it!’ It makes me feel good.”

Through hard times, Rondi Berge recalls her father’s high spirits never failing. To her, he has always seemed to be the life-loving man that everyone else sees — “unless you were skiing out of control,” she says.

Berge remains critical on the slopes, always analyzing people around him. Maybe it’s the teacher in him, and maybe it’s something else. Stein Eriksen was said to be changed by a collision with a young skier in 2007 that left him with several broken bones. Eriksen died in 2016 at 88.

Berge doesn’t dwell on the end.

“There was another Norwegian, Herman Smith-Johannsen,” says Dayton, the old friend. “He lived to be 113. And when asked the same question (about longevity), he said something about always wondering what’s over the next hill, and always wondering what’s around the next bend in the river.”

That’s Berge approaching 90. There’s a birthday party in the works for next month. A party on the slopes, of course. As for the day, it’ll be one with smaller crowds.

With the crowds, it’s not just about the hazards. Not just about the powder that Berge hates to see eaten up.

It’s the lift lines. That wasted time.

“I don’t do well standing still,” he says.

BRECKENRIDGE • Trygve Berge doesn’t dwell on limitations, but he’s aware of them. He’s aware that today is a not-so-good day for skiing.

It’s a good day for everyone else at the ski area he co-founded 60 winters ago — the snow keeps piling up out there — and that’s part of why it’s a not-so-good-day for him. Like the frigid air on his bones, the crowds aren’t ideal. No need to risk mingling with poor techniques and lack of etiquette; Breckenridge’s first ski school director is all too aware of those.

“I don’t like to get banged up,” says Berge, who turns 90 next month.

So it’s a good day to take it easy with a friend. Gene Dayton has been friends with Berge since their 1960s beginnings in town. Dayton is pouring tea.

“One or two?” he asks, motioning to sugar packets.

Flashing that white, gleaming grin seen in Warren Miller movies and billboards and magazines nationwide over a lifetime, Berge winks. “Better go two.”

7 ‘endangered places’ saved in Colorado by program celebrating milestone

In his twilight, Berge keeps living it up. He keeps the gregarious persona that has made him Breckenridge’s poster child/beloved grandfather, a persona complete with his hand-knit, Norwegian sweater.

“If you’re going out with him, anywhere you go you’re gonna have a good time, because all the people that will come up and talk to him,” says another longtime friend, Greg Gutski. “Wherever you go, you make a new friend. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

Berge is a common presence at local happy hours (he’ll have a short whiskey, please). A common presence on sidewalks (strolling to get the blood flowing). A common presence at celebrations, including Ullr Fest, the 50-year tradition he helped establish in honor of the snow god of his native Norway.

And, of course, Berge is a common presence on the slopes. He’s been hard to miss in colorful, retro jumpsuits. Hard to miss with that signature form: legs and skis tight together, arms splayed wide, as if ready for takeoff. It’s a style that made him a champion racer in the ‘50s, a style modeled from his idol, the late Stein Eriksen, regarded as the sport’s first superstar.

“You have to make sure it’s elegant,” Berge has advised a fellow local legend, CJ Mueller, who has occasionally tried to emulate the form.

From Breckenridge, Mueller went on to fame for his record speed. He is among Berge’s daily admirers.

“It’s amazing to watch him still,” Mueller says. “He’s just zipping around, making little, quick turns, and then making real elegant turns, and just doing Trygve.”

To Mueller, the man’s longevity is no wonder. “I think when you learn to ski as effortlessly as Trygve, it doesn’t take nearly as big a toll on your body.”

The powder helps, too, Berge says.

“But there isn’t powder anymore,” he says. “About 10 minutes after opening, somebody has skied it out.”

Always on the move

Friends pronounce it trig-vee. It’s a name Berge (bur-gee) has said to mean “trust.” And “Berge,” he has said, derives from “mountain” or “cliff.” As The Summit Daily once poignantly put it: “In a way, beginning in 1961, Breckenridge trusted its mountain to Berge.”

That winter, Peak 8 as we know it opened for business. That was after Berge and Olympic teammate Sigurd Rockne drove a mining road up to where the SuperChair is now, plotting out the first runs of what would later be Breckenridge Ski Resort.

“We didn’t know how big it was going to get,” Berge is quoted as saying in his Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame bio.

It would’ve been hard to imagine in those days, before real estate and corporate interests took quick hold in Colorado’s high country. While Berge got busy in post-mining Breckenridge, Pete Seibert was eyeing a sheep valley that would be called Vail.

Dayton’s recollection of 1960s Breckenridge: “The streets were dirt. Dogs slept in the middle of main street. There were no stop lights. There were junk cars everywhere, turned-over trailers, houses that were falling in.”

Dayton helped pioneer the Nordic ski scene locally. He always admired the man who came before. He admires Berge even more now.

“I’ve been enamored with his ability to stay healthy and keep skiing,” Dayton says. “Yeah, he picks and chooses his days, but that’s great. … He’s an inspiration for a lot of people.”

From Berge’s downtown apartment, his blue eyes gaze out to Peak 8, a constant reminder of his legacy and constant call to his deep passion. He shrugs off the praise.

“I’m old enough that I can sleep in. I never do, though,” he says. “I get going, because there’s always something to do.”

There’s painting. There’s writing. There’s another interview or photo shoot. A social get-together, or maybe another job; in the heat of last summer, there was 89-year-old Berge, stone mason by trade, working on a building with his contractor son.

There’s clarinet-playing — though not much lately. Berge has been favoring his index finger and, in true Trygve Berge fashion, avoiding the doctor.

He can live without the clarinet. But without skiing?

“If he could not ski tomorrow, that would not be a good day. That would not be good,” says daughter Rondi Berge. “That’s his lifeblood. He was born on skis.”

From ashes to stardom

Almost. Berge recalls starting at age 3, getting around in the winter as Norwegians did. He was raised on a farm in Voss, where he jokes the hills were steep enough for potatoes to grow on either side.

In April 1940, an idyllic childhood turned into a nightmare. That month, the Nazi invasion in Voss began with firebombs. Berge was 8.

“We were sitting 29 people in the potato cellar, peeking through the cracks to see where the next bomb fell down,” he remembers.

Friends and family emerged to a much different life under the occupation. Berge remembers five years of rationing, of laying low and keeping secrets of the resistance secret, staying quiet, or else risk being gunned down. Social gatherings were avoided, as they could be seen as suspicious.

“The Germans came and confiscated everything from the farm,” Berge says. “They got potatoes that were good size, and then left the little potatoes. They taste just as good, so at least we got to eat some.”

It was a time that shaped Berge in more ways than one, his daughter thinks.

“I think that kind of lent itself to perspective,” Rondi says. “Just trying to live each day the best way you can.”

So Berge did when freedom returned. He skied more. On his hickory skis he skied somewhere beyond his farm to find a downhill race underway. He had never raced, but a woman invited him to join. He won.

“That was it,” Berge says — the beginning of a dream.

It was a dedication no better defined than in 1949, when he broke his femur not once but twice. In 1953, he moved to Oslo, where the best and brightest practiced. That included the idol who would become a friend, Olympic gold medalist Stein Eriksen. While competing, Eriksen was also busy at some of America’s budding ski areas.

Berge got Eriksen’s attention by becoming the Norwegian downhill champion in 1954. Berge raced his way to the 1956 Olympics in Cortina, Italy, where he lost a ski on a notorious course. He redeemed himself by winning a World Cup race in 1958 in his native land.

That year, Eriksen asked Berge and the also-accomplished Sigurd Rockne to work for him at a ski school in Aspen. One fortuitous day, Berge and Rockne met a customer named Bill Rounds, a Kansan whose family was buying property around Breckenridge with the creation of Dillon Reservoir on the horizon.

The three struck a friendship. The handy Berge and Rockne took a summer job at Rounds’ lumberyard beneath the Tenmile Range. A now-famous exchange followed:

“What do you plan to do here in the winter?” Berge recalls asking.

Rounds replied: “Do you think we can ski here?”

Rolling through changes

That set in motion a series of events leading to the ski area’s opening in December of 1961. Berge grew a reputation at the ski school — but perhaps even more so at a nearby jump.

CJ Mueller took the name “Crazy John” for his speed. But what he saw Berge do on that jump seemed even crazier: The skier would flip midair.

“It was pretty unheard of back then,” Mueller says. “It was amazing.”

It was great promotion, a scene for tourists, publications and postcards. Berge had another promotional gig with Colorado Ski Country USA; in the the early days of the trade association, he traveled to praise the sport at functions around the nation.

Through that promotion, Berge didn’t realize the kind of forces he was inadvertently inviting to the industry. More skiers and bigger profits meant the likes of Twentieth Century Fox entering the fold. The company went on to control Aspen Skiing Co., which bought Breckenridge Ski Area in 1970.

Berge wasn’t involved in that next decade. “Aspen never gave me a damn thing,” he says.

A divorce at the time was also changing his trajectory, sending him from his Breckenridge ski shops to jobs back in Norway. He guided climbs on glaciers. Scandinavian Airlines picked him to lead ski tours in Europe with his ad-ready smile. He continued as a stone mason.

While there was hurt back in Breckenridge, Berge always found it to be home. He found appreciation.

“I get recognized everywhere I go,” he says now, blushing. “They say, ‘That’s the guy who started it!’ It makes me feel good.”

Through hard times, Rondi Berge recalls her father’s high spirits never failing. To her, he has always seemed to be the life-loving man that everyone else sees — “unless you were skiing out of control,” she says.

Berge remains critical on the slopes, always analyzing people around him. Maybe it’s the teacher in him, and maybe it’s something else. Stein Eriksen was said to be changed by a collision with a young skier in 2007 that left him with several broken bones. Eriksen died in 2016 at 88.

Berge doesn’t dwell on the end.

“There was another Norwegian, Herman Smith-Johannsen,” says Dayton, the old friend. “He lived to be 113. And when asked the same question (about longevity), he said something about always wondering what’s over the next hill, and always wondering what’s around the next bend in the river.”

That’s Berge approaching 90. There’s a birthday party in the works for next month. A party on the slopes, of course. As for the day, it’ll be one with smaller crowds.

With the crowds, it’s not just about the hazards. Not just about the powder that Berge hates to see eaten up.

It’s the lift lines. That wasted time.

“I don’t do well standing still,” he says.