MT HOOD PERSONALITIES

Meet Joie Smith

Times with Wooden Skis, Horses & Hitches in Rhododendron

Sometime or other in your adventures on Mt. Hood you might find yourself in need of a tow.  If you call Alpine Towing in Rhododendron and Joie Smith’s on duty, you’ll get to meet someone whose years of adventure and work have given her a peerless knowledge of and respect for the mountain.

Joie Smith grew up in Southeast Portland on what was then family fields ranging from Mt. Tabor to Laurelhurst.  A pony barn at SE 47th and Stark housed some four-legged friends of her childhood; she’s been fond of horses ever since.       

Skiing was another childhood pleasure that has shaped the life she’s built in The Villages of Mt Hood.  A child when Timberline opened in 1937, she learned to ski by following her father on his visits there.  She skied a bit in high school, and at Hoodoo when she attended college at the University of Oregon.  She transferred home to attend Vanport College, majoring in Mechanical Engineering, and earned an Upper Division Certificate in Engineering in the late forties.  

During these years of movement and achievement, Joie headed to the mountain more and more.  She joined the local ski patrol, then became a member of the historic Oregon National Ski Patrol before she earned her college certificate.

She also raced, but in 1955 misfortune struck.  During that year’s Golden Rose race, Joie came around a corner to find the previous skier downed and surrounded by onlookers directly in her path.  This was right before the advent of plastic and metal skis; Joie was wearing wooden ones.  Rather than risk running into the crowd and harming someone with the splinters, she skied off the course at speed.  The resulting crash compound fractured her leg.

Though this did make her move a bit slower for a while – “I was down for a year,” she says – Joie had things to do.  She had opened her own ski shop in 1954, making a business out of something she loved, and it was that which cut into her ski time most.  After all, everyone wants to ski on weekends, and if she had a weekday off, not every service was open then.  She had to take time to move the business once, in the 1959-1960 season, to the building that now houses Alpine Towing in Rhododendron.  In 1960, she was one of 5 women selected nationwide for the 85-strong National Ski Patrol for that year’s Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California.

Last but not least, in the early 60’s Joie drove other people’s tow trucks and realized the area needed more of that service.  She closed the ski shop, bought her first truck, and opened Alpine Towing in 1967.  She’s got six trucks now to ensure there’s a truck working for every tow.  She brings in help when workload demands, but otherwise it’s all Joie.

If she’s not towing, she’s riding a horse whenever possible.  She’s had up to ten head at a time in her adult life.  Some served as tough terrain haulers for Portland General Electric.  Smart and hardy as her horses are, she notes that they do need certain things from the folks they meet on the trail.  Horses have right-of-way, so when hiking or mountain biking, keep an eye out for horse tracks, take care on downgrades and curves, and say something friendly so the horse knows you’re coming and doesn’t spook!

Joie remembers a time when people were more used to horses.  This brings to her mind what’s changed most on the mountain:  new sports such as mountain biking and snowboarding, more people having more impact, but not as much emotional investment.  She regrets seeing campgrounds closed after vandalization, and too little government revenue available to keep public lands open and groomed for everyone’s enjoyment.  She wishes young people could grow up knowing how to care for nature through courteous use and informed policies.

“Wouldn’t it be great if children could have classes about outdoor usage, and how to treat it?” she asks.  Yet she also readily invites everyone, whatever age, to start that great learning when she says, “It’s beautiful country, big country, and very unforgiving if you don’t respect it.  Come and appreciate it – it really is all here to be appreciated and enjoyed.”  And Joie Smith would know.

 

MARCH/APRIL 2008 « Back to this issue...