Unlike most people, who never get the opportunity to name anything except their children and their pets, ski area operators share Adam’s privilege of providing names for a number of entities at the same time. What is more, because most ski areas are private property, the usual governmental constraints on length, frivolity, vulgarity, duplication or truth in labeling do not apply.
How have the namers exercised their privilege? We were curious, so we surveyed over 200 ski areas in the United States, plus a few in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We collected some 5,000 trail names and with the help of a computer, we sorted them in various ways and then analyzed names and naming processes.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of the names look like what they are: names of ski trails. Names like Alpine Run, West Bowl, Brennan’s Trail and The Traverse could hardly be anything but trail names. But many namers have branched out with entire phrases such as Go for Gold, Comin’ Thru, Lost in the Woods, E.Z. Does It and All the Way. Mild profanity (or prayerfulness) is represented by names like Heck No, O-God, What the Hell and Our Father. Less imaginative names may consist only of letters of the alphabet or numbers. Quite a few trail names consist of an acronym or an acronym with a number such as C.O.D., PDF, R2 D2 and 7-UP.
Among the literary devices used to add interest, memorability and humor to trail names are alliteration, rhyme and punning. Alliteration is especially common. A few representative examples are Double Diamond, Galloping Goose, Bunny Buster, Mogul Mania and Triple Trouble. Many of the rhyming names are from pre-existing phrases: Hell’s Bells, Hari Kari, Hot Spot, Hokey Pokey. Perhaps the most entertaining names, however, are the puns, some of them very clever or outrageous. Fanny Hill (six occurrences) is the favorite, but we also found four occurrences each of Psychopath, Powderkeg and Racer’s Edge. Sometimes one must know the name of another trail on the same mountain to understand the joke. Thus, for example, Sun Valley, Id., has both Exhibition and Inhibition; Snowbird, Ut., has Carbonate and Bicarbonate. Monday Mourning is fully appreciated only if one remembers that the name of the ski area itself is Sunday River, Me. A few of the many other miscellaneous puns are Tucker Doubt, Stemtation, Slidewinder, Para-chute, Treble Cliff and Pasture Ability.
Of the three great kingdoms— animal, vegetable and mineral—the animal and the vegetable are highly popular sources of trail names. Many of the animal names, and all of the most frequent ones, are of animals that one might reasonably associate with skiing terrain: Bear, Deer, Beaver, Eagle, Fox, Grizzly, Ptarmigan, Rabbit. Others would, at the very least, cause some excitement if spotted near a ski slope: Chamois, Cheetah, Cobra, Dinosaurus, Dragon, Dromedary, Gator, Kangaroo, Monkey, Stingray, Phoenix, Tiger. The most common vegetable names are of trees familiar to ski areas, including Pine, Spruce, Birch, Juniper, Aspen and Tamarack. Less predictable vegetable names are Cinnamon, Peanut, Pumpkin and Rubarb (sic). Minerals provide few ski trail names, perhaps because rocks of any sort are unpopular with skiers. Apart from one Limestone and one Granite, all the recorded mineral names are “prior-use” names.
By “prior-use,” we refer to nostalgic names recalling earlier days and prior uses or inhabitants of the area. The four major prior-use categories that we identified are logging, mining, railroading and Indian life. Sample logging-related names are Blue Ox, Cat Skinner, Chainsaw, Log Jam, Lumber Jack, Sawmill and Timber Trail. Among the mining-related names are Claim Jumper, Clementine, Fool’s Gold, Lost Prospector, Lucky Strike, Motherlode, Pay Dirt and Platinum. Railroad-related names include Dead Spike, Derailer, Loose Caboose, Narrow Gauge, Round House, Stoker and Trestle. But the number of trail names relating to Indians far outnumbers all the other prior-use names put together. We identified at least 24 different tribal names among the trail names: Abnaki, Apache, Iroquois, Lenape, Mohican, Shawnee, Ute. Hundreds of trail names are from local Indian place-names such as Alleghany, Arkansas, Kancamagus, Kinnikinick, Lackawanna, Pepacton, Pukaswa, Skookum and Toiyabe. Individual Indians are commemorated in names such as Chief Joseph Bowl, Geronimo, Montezuma, Pocahontas and Sitting Bull. More miscellaneous references to Indians include names like Arrowhead, Firewater, Peace Pipe, Sachem, Tomahawk, Good Medicine, Heep Steep and Plenty Coups. One interesting finding about Indian names is that their frequency is inversely proportional to the density of the contemporary Indian population. That is, ski areas in states like Arizona and California with a relatively high Indian population today have proportionally far fewer Indian names than do ski areas in states like Pennsylvania.
In contrast to the prior-use names are the fantasy names, metaphorical and hyperbolic names referring to such things as danger, courage, egotism, pleasure, guns, hell, etc. For instance, typical danger names are Dynamite, Fireball, Flame Out, Jaws of Death, Kamikaze, Muerte, Sayonara, Suicide, Widowmaker. Egotism names include Alter Ego, Catharsis, Ego Alley, Psyched Out, Superstar, The Showoff, Watch Me. Among the pleasure names are Cloud 9, Ecstasy, Fantastic, Magnifico, Nirvana, Sheer Bliss, Tranquility. Trails named for guns include Derringer, Fast Draw, Pistol, Recoil, Riccochet, Six Shooter.
Almost a fourth of the ski areas in our sample followed what we call a thematic naming policy. That is, some or all of their trail names related to the same general semantic area. The Indian theme is the most popular, accounting for almost a fifth of all the themes. Aside from these, however, the themes are very diverse: Egypt, magic, Robin Hood, logging, Bambi, Scotland, mining, the universe, etc. As an example of what thematic names are like, we might cite Wildcat Mt., N.H. with its trail names of Polecat, Bobcat, Snowcat Slope, Tomcat, Lynx, Cougar, Cattrack, Alley Cat, Catapault and Catenary.
The great diversity of names and types of names given to ski trails might suggest that there are no restrictions at all on naming trails. This is not so; we noticed a number of seeming taboos—names or topics made obvious by their absence. First, true obscenity is out (regardless of what the skiers themselves may call a trail). Second, despite all the fantasy names referring to danger and violence, the threat expressed by the name cannot be real. Thus, while Bandido and Gunslinger are acceptable, names like Mugger and Holdup are not because they are just too uncomfortably close to our real fears. Similarly, no trails are named Radioactive Run, Neutron Bomb, Atomic Blast, or the like. Weather is in general a popular topic, and names like Cyclone, Twister and Typhoon are common. We found 35 different names beginning with Snow. But in our entire sample of over 5,000 names, not one mentioned rain or ice. Names involving serious personal injury are also taboo; Fanny Hill, Bassackwards, and Bummer Flats are acceptable because a fall on one’s buttocks is more amusing (at least to spectators) than serious. But Twisted Ankle, Triple Fracture and even Broken Ski do not appear on trail maps.
Most trail names consist of two parts, a specific and a generic. The specific is what we have been discussing thus far, the “name” part of the name, so to speak. The generic defines what is being named, that is, the trail. We have been using the term trail thus far as an all-purpose generic, but it is not even the most common one used. Our sample contained hundreds of different generic terms, but only 43 of these appeared over 10 times each, and only 20 appeared over 20 times. The hands-down favorite was Run, with 228 occurrences. Bowl followed with 137, and then Trail with 119 occurrences. Slope was the generic of 81 trail names, Ridge of 57, Road of 56, Hill of 53 and Chute of 50.
Most ski trails are, of course, rated according to difficulty. Is there any correlation between the rated difficulty of a trail and the name given to it? The answer is yes . . . to some extent. Thus, for example, every trail name that included the words Papoose, Novice, Practice or Gentle was rated easiest. Very likely to be easiest were trails whose names included School, Snowflake, Bunny, Open, Sugar, Yellow or Slow. (But, perhaps surprisingly, the word Easy itself was no guarantee of an easiest trail.) Most trails with flower names (e.g., Azalea, Buttercup, Rosebud) were also easiest, as were trails with names that conventionally suggest slowness, gentleness, easiness and the like—names such as Duck Soup, Sesame Street, Rocking Chair and Play Yard. Finally, most trails whose names included terms for baby or small animals were easiest: Bambi, Bear Cub, Fawn, Cottontail.
Names are not at all a reliable guide to intermediate trails, and not especially informative for most difficult trails. However, the skier looking for the greatest challenges would rarely go wrong if he or she sought out the trails whose names imply racing, speed, difficulty, steepness, danger, guns, large animals, devils, violent weather, fire, glory, mental instability—and any trail whose name begins with the letter Z.
This is a synopsis of a longer article, “Ski-Trail Names: A New Toponymic Category,” which originally appeared in Names (32:3 [Sept. 1984], pp.191-217.
Editor’s Note
Anyone with further observations on names at ski resorts is welcome to submit comments.
