Dave Irons

Dave Irons grew up in South Paris, Maine in the forties and fifties when Paris Manufacturing was still one of the nation’s leading ski producers. Using those wood skis Irons learned to ski on a small hill behind his family’s home. Another popular local hill was actually above the plant where local skiers got their skis. Dave’s only competition was as a Boy Scout around 1949 or 1950 in a meet between a South Paris troop and a Bethel troop. This trip to a small rope tow area on Vernon Street in Bethel was also his first chance to ride any kind of lift. With no high school team, skiing was limited to climbing local hills and visiting a rope tow in Norway in high school years.

Following high school it was skiing at Pleasant Mountain (now Shawnee Peak), with occasional visits to Sugarloaf in the late fifties. The opening of Sunday River in 1959 provided a new place to ski and Irons became a regular weekend skier, finally joining the Sunday River Ski Patrol in 1968, a patrol he directed from 1971 to 1982. During 20 years of patrolling, three as a full time professional, the South Paris native achieved the highest levels, certified by the National Ski Patrol and the Professional Ski Patrol Association and served as an examiner for both organizations. When the Maine region of NSPS instituted a first aid exam for Senior Patrollers, Irons was among a group of first aid instructors that developed the procedures for the exam. Irons served as an examiner until 1988 when his broadcasting and writing prevented confining his activities to a single ski area.

In 1960 as a radio announcer, he first got involved in ski reporting including reports in his daily sports shows. Although full time announcing ended in 1963, play by play and ski reports continued and in the early seventies Dave Irons ski columns began to appear in the Portland Papers. Since that time his ski articles and columns have been published in SKI, SKIING, Snow Country, Ski Racing, Snoweast, New England Ski Journal and Playboy. From the mid eighties to the mid nineties Irons was Senior Editor for the Ski Industry Letter and for two years had a ski column in the New York Daily News. He is also a regular contributor to ski sections in the Boston Globe. His longest running regular gig is a weekly ski column in the Sunday edition of the Lewiston Sun Journal which started in 1983 and continues.

Broadcast ski reports continued on WMTW TV, WYNZ, WLBZ and WPOR through the eighties in into the nineties. For more than forty years, Irons has covered every aspect of skiing, equipment, major events, competition from local junior to World Cup and travel taking him to a majority of the major ski resorts in North America and some in Europe and South America.

For his service to NSPS he was awarded a National Appointment (#4651). A member of the Eastern Ski Writers Association since 1976 he served as President 1990-1992 and as President of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association 2000-2002, serving on the boards of both organizations for more than 15 years and co authoring the ethics code for NASJA.

Dave’s keen interest in Maine’s skiing pioneers led to the creation of the Maine Ski Hall of Fame in 2003. His work on this along with his hundreds of articles promoting skiing earned Dave Irons a place in the Maine Ski Hall of Fame.