Black Mountain Ski School Patch, Rumford — c. 1970s-80s

A vintage Black Mountain Ski School patch from Rumford, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, a pointed shield with a black merrowed border — BLACK MT. over SKI SCHOOL in black caps on a grey sky, a cream summit flanked by black rock, and an instructor in an orange jacket working down the face.

Ski school patches were uniform, not merchandise. You taught, so you had one.

Rumford is a paper-mill town in western Maine, and whoever wore this spent their winters teaching wedge turns to the children of people who worked shifts at the mill — in cold that makes the job a vocation rather than a career, for money that would not have covered the gas.

Instructors are the most consequential and least documented people in the sport. Almost everybody who skis was taught by somebody, and almost nobody can remember that person's name. They are the reason the thing propagates at all, and this is roughly the only object that records they existed.

The orange jacket is not a design flourish, by the way. Instructors wore bright uniform colors so that a class could find them in flat light, and every ski school in the country settled independently on roughly the same solution.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.