Transcription of Kip Files for the show Sugarloaf #169
Dr. Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to Love Maine Radio show number 169, Sugarloaf. Airing for the first time on Sunday, December 7th 2014. Sugarloaf in Carrabassett Valley is one of Maine’s favorite mountains. The first trail was cut in 1950 by the Sugarloaf Mountain Ski Club and a group of locals known as the Bigalo Boys. Since then Sugarloaf has become a close-knit community of skiers, snow boarders, and outdoor enthusiasts.
Today we speak with Sugarloafer and schooner captain Kip Viles and Jamie Gadooty of the Sugerloaf Ski Patrol, both of whom are featured in Maine Magazine’s December issue. We know you’ll enjoy hearing more about the Sugarloaf family and perhaps be inspired to take a trip up there yourself. Thank you for joining us.
On Love Maine Radio we really enjoy talking to people who love their lives. In front of us I have one of these individuals, I can tell just by having spent a few minutes with him before getting on the air. This is Kip Viles. Kip was born in Bangor Maine, he is the the owner and captain of the schooner “Victory Chimes”. He’s been doing windjammer cruises on the coast of Maine for 25 years and has been a Sugarloafer since 1961. During the winters he works at WSKI TV at Sugarloaf.
Kip: Channel 17.
Dr. Belisle: Channel 17, so you’re a broadcaster.
Kip: Know before you go.
Dr. Belisle: You have a life that I think many people would envy, and Susan Connolly wrote about this in the Sugarloaf issue. People can read about this and the close relationships you’ve had with people at Sugarloaf. This is a very intentional life on your part.
Kip: It is. It wasn’t something I planned. Just my lifestyle allowed me to do it. The sailing aspect of it, it wasn’t when I started in sailing and got into these commercial sail, the opportunity to grow in that industry was small unless you owned your own vessel. As it went on, more vessels were built ave 1976 and more of the traditional stuff came in, and then one thing led to another and I ended up with the “Victory Chimes”. That’s a long story, that’d take a half an hour how I ended up with that.
All that time that I was doing the sailing part I had this passion for skiing. I was never a great skier. I’m an accomplished skier, but not a great skier. I had this passion for it. In 1961, it started when I went with some friends from Bangor to Sugarloaf. We’d drive over. We were weekend skiers, we’d drive over on a Saturday, drive back to Bangor, get up on Sunday, and drive over. Didn’t have a place there. That sort of opened up. You live in Maine and in the winter, if you’re a kid you want to be outside, you have to embrace winter. Here it is, snow. I just loved doing it. I did it all through high school, and then in college, and then right after college I moved to Sugarloaf.
After delivering a vessel to the Bahamas, and then I left the vessel there, and then my flight took me back to Sugarloaf. It took me to Portland, or to Bangor, I can’t remember which one. After that was done I knew I was going to head to go skiing. Because I didn’t want to have a season without having skiing. I had fallen in love with Sugarloaf as a young man because that’s where we skied. As I got older, I could have gone anywhere, anywhere in the world to ski. The reason you get to Sugarloaf is one is the mountain, and then you stay because of the people. The people that I met there are just … There’s no other place like it.
As you drive up 27, or come in, and you get to Kingfield, and you just feel this release. You get up there. It’s a way of life, it really is. That sign, “Life will never be the same”. That’s has been pretty much it for me. What’s amazing is that the people that I settled with there after I got out of college in the 70’s, a lot of them are still there. Never left. Some of them never skied. Go to a ski resort and never ski. Figure that one out. There’s got to be something there.
I don’t know if I could talk about what it is, or write a book about what it is. It’s one of those abstract things that you just gather in your mind and pick it up.
Dr. Belisle: We had Josh and John Christie on the show last year. John is an old friend of yours.
Kip: Yes he is. I wouldn’t say old. That’s the wrong term, isn’t it?
Dr. Belisle: How about long-time friend?
Kip: Long-time friend, yes. John, the first time I met John, he used to do this, he was Director of Sugarloaf, and he used to come over to Bangor and do the Bud Levitt show. Of course he was from Sugarloaf and he was one of our idols as a kid growing up. That makes John a lot older than I am. They used to plow the back of the parking lot, and John would do some turns. We’d go over and just ah, that’s John Christie. He’d get about two turns in and he’d talk. His mannerisms, he’s always been a funny guy, he’s got a great wit.
There was a turn at the time that they were teaching called the Stem Christie. We thought he invented it. He won’t deny that he didn’t but I don’t think he really did. I’ve known John since then. We have a lot of mutual friends. When I finally moved back up to Sugarloaf he’d gone and departed the skiing industry for a while. He was over at Saddleback. Finally came back and sort of reignited that friendship. He’s a great man, he really is. He’s fun to ski with too. He’s just fun to be around.
Dr. Belisle: It’s amazing to me that we have such a dichotomy. I’m a doctor, I see patients who are older and many of them are very sedentary. I couldn’t imagine them walking down the street without assistance never mind getting on the slopes. When you go to Sugarloaf and some of these other mountains you see people who have been skiing for years and years.
Kip: 80 years old, skiing with 80 year old.
Dr. Belisle: Yeah.
Kip: They just get up. They don’t ski as they used to. I think it’s all about, well, it’s a passion for skiing and a passion for Sugarloaf. I think through all this turmoil that Sugarloaf had and skiing industry had throughout, the passion of the people and the mountain kept it alive. There was part of their that they’re not willing to give up. Besides the fact it’s fun. It really is. Put two pieces of wood or metal or fiberglass on your feet and slide down a hill. It’s a youthful thing to do. People do it until they can’t.
My dad skied with me when he was in 80’s, 97 now. He gave it a whirl in his 80’s. We went down the small slopes. He wasn’t a skier growing up but he did as a young man. It’s winter, get outside. Egads. Imagine sitting in front of a TV all winter long or something like that. I’d go nuts.
Dr. Belisle: There’s also something about the setting. In Maine we’re so fortunate because after a snowfall, you can go up and you can be one of the first ones on the mountain. You see the trees, you see the mountains around you. You get to see, sometimes you get to see the sun set really early. There’s so much beauty to be found in winter in Maine. I think if you’re a skier and you’re in the right place at the right time you get to see that beauty.
Kip: I was up at Sugarloaf this weekend. It’s home, and it snowed. It went from fall to winter. The personality of the forest immediately changes. It’s winter, you look around where you were looking at gray and trees with no leaves and stuff like that, that became white. It’s a complete personality change. There’s a buzz around the mountain because it’s the snow, not that it will last, but the snow guns went on and stuff. It’s this rebirth of this wonderful industry that’s just come alive. People are gnawing at the bit to go.
I’m fortunate enough that in my job at SKI I get to go up with the ski patrol in the morning. I’m up there sometimes at sunrise. To be up on that mountain and look over at the Bigalo’s on sunrise, my vocabulary’s not good enough to explain it. I take pictures of it and we show it on the TV an so forth. I’m not that, I don’t know what the words are. I can’t explain what that feeling is when you’re looking. You look over that Bigalo Range, you look around and you go where else would you want to be? I’ve skied the Rockies, I’ve skied Europe. It’s all beautiful. Maybe it’s because I look across that and I say this is home. Maybe it’s that feeling that is so special, I don’t know. I can’t tell you what it is.
In the water they call it sea fever. The skiing, I don’t know what they call it. Ski fever? I don’t know.
Dr. Belisle: You mentioned the ski patrol. I was able to go up and be with the ski patrol to write an article for Maine Magazine, which is in the Sugarloaf issue along with the article that you’re in, written by Susan Connolly. That’s also very interesting thing. What I noticed about the people who are on ski patrol is the same camaraderie that you’ve described with your friends in the Sugarloaf community.
Kip: The ski patrol are my friends. It’s a passion that they have. They come from all walks of life, all economic diversity. They have this passion and part of their passion in the skiing is the ski patrol. They work, oh my god, their day is a long day. They’re up the mountain when other people are still having a cup of coffee and going, “I don’t know if I want to go up there today or not.” They’re there. They’re opening the mountain, they’re closing, they’re on scene for rescue, they’re giving direction. It’s a huge, huge passion that they have. A huge commitment.
I really have a lot of respect for what they do and how they do it. They had training this weekend. They were practicing evacuating lifts and all that type of thing this weekend. It’s the same people. It’s like the restaurants you go to at Sugarloaf. It’s the same people every year. It’s not a huge turnaround. Once you get there you might as well stay there. You’re really never going to leave, really. I don’t think anyway, I didn’t.
Dr. Belisle: You balance out your love of frozen water with your love of unfrozen water.
Kip: Right.
Dr. Belisle: You have a windjammer out of Rockland.
Kip: I do, “Victory Chimes”.
Dr. Belisle: “Victory Chimes”.
Kip: If you’re a state of Mainer and every state had it’s own quarter made. In 2003 we printed our quarter. Every state has its own quarter. If you look on the back of a state of Maine quarter that’s my vessel. Go figure. The passion for historical vessels on the coast of Maine is unsurpassed in the United States. We have the largest commercially operated sailing fleet. No engines, it’s a sailing fleet, in North America. More that 70% of our fleet are national historic landmarks. Some of the vessels were built back in 1871. These vessels just sort of gravitated to Maine because it was the last place that these vessels could still generate income. They were all built not because it’s fun to build a funky old wooden boat, it’s to generate income for their owners. Some of these vessels, they had no other business to do.
In the 1930’s and ’40’s this windjammer business started. People thought wouldn’t it be fun to go out on these vessels before they all disappear? It created enough income that people could make a living taking people on trips, overnight trips. It started with day trips and then went to overnight trip when the day trip, because the wind change couldn’t back in. Here we go.
It started. What we call a windjammer. It was at one time a type of vessel, and now it is what we do. Instead of what you were, it is now what we do. We go wind-jamming. It’s overnight. It’s sort of like executive camping at sea. It’s not your cruise ship, it’s a different type of thing all together. We don’t have a schedule, we go sailing, overnight, where you going to go? Where we end up. Maine is so perfect for this because we have 3000 islands, or maybe more at low tide. They go out almost 30 miles, so well-protected. It still has this feeling of wilderness. It’s the same look when get atop of Sugarloaf and look over Bigalo, you get on the deck at Isla Ho on the vessel, and look, and you may see one little house. It has that same feeling, this wilderness feeling. It’s perfect for them.
It’s a wonderful season because it’s summertime and it’s June through September. It’s easy on these older vessels and stuff. It’s great. This all gravitated toward Maine. I get into it as a young man because I don’t know even know. I grew up on a lake outside of Bangor and learned to sail when, I don’t know, 4, 5 years old with clotheslines attached to a pea pod, which is a rolling canoe, and we had built a sail for it. When I was 9 or 10 my uncle and my dad ended up with this friendship sloop. It was a sailing lobster boat. All of the sudden I’m on the coast and its opened up this world to me.
I saw these old vessels, and they really interested me. I did all of the racing, the high tech stuff. It wasn’t for me. I liked traditional vessels so much more. So I get into the windjammer business as a kid. Washing dishes, doing anything I could to get on the water. That expanded into doing other things, opening other doors. I sailed square riggers, I sailed vessels that are from 1841 on up. It’s taken me around the world. I’ve been very fortunate about it. It is a huge passion to me. It’s a huge passion. Saving these vessels and saving this way of life is hugely important.
My vessel was one of 3000 built on the east coast. It’s a three-masted schooner. As far as I can tell, other historians may argue the point, but it was the most successful sailing vessel the North American’s ever built. If we didn’t invent the schooner we perfected it in the new world. I can take you 20 minute show right through this whole historical thing. We built two-masted, three-masted, four, five, six, up to seven masted schooners. The three-masted was the most successful sailing vessel we ever built.
It’s the one that survived, has never missed a year of commercial sail in a 115 years, and that’s the “Victory Chimes”. Absolutely phenomenal. She’s been in private hands all her life. She’s done it on her own. She doesn’t get grants. She can’t, even though she’s a national historic landmark she can’t get grants. She can’t get any tax incentives that they gave private citizens to own buildings that national historic landmarks. On her own, without an engine, she’s a sailing vessel, 170 feet long, has never missed a year of commercial sail. She made it on her own. Absolutely phenomenal.
The reason she did it is because she got to Maine at the right time. She always found an owner that would take care of her. She always found people that were interested in going. Without that generated income all we’d have is pictures.
Maybe they drag her up in [Wiscosset 00:16:59]. You remember those vessels in Wiscosset? We could drag her up there, you could watch her rot. God.
I don’t know how I got onto that. That’s how I got into wind-jamming. It’s a huge passion for that, as I do for skiing.
Dr. Belisle: Here on Love Maine Radio we’ve long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepherd of Shepherd Financial.
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Consider this scenario that a lot of us have gone through or that you may be going through right now. You have money to support yourself and your family but it’s not always there at the right time, or you don’t believe that you can access it. That happened to me recently and also in a big way in 2008. Like you I have experiences these financial highs and lows. It feels as though you’re on some kind of a strange roller coaster and that you’re constantly wrestling with what you want versus what you need. You’ve got bills and really want to pay them off. You’re sort of living in the past so you can move forward. Finding peace in the middle of our culture can make it difficult to make good financial decisions. Especially if you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The first step is to stop and breathe. Look around. Walk around. Talk to people. Trade and commerce are going to happen. Money is what makes it easier.
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Dr. Belisle: It’s through your work with windjammers and the “Victory Chimes” and the work that you’ve done in Mystic Connecticut that you were able to throw out the first pitch for the Red Sox.
Kip: Go figure. Some kid from Bangor Maine gets to throw the first pitch. I think Seth Wescott and I are the only two Sugerloafers that have a first pitch. The difference between Seth is he’s a gold metal winner, fun to ski with if you can keep up with him. Yeah, I was working for Mystic on the Charles W. Morgan, which was a whaling ship. It hadn’t been sailed in a century. They hired me to sail it. We ended up in Boston. They had a Mystic Seaport night at Fenway. About three weeks before we got there they asked me can you throw a baseball? Well, when I was 10 or 11 I did yeah. Could you throw the first pitch? I said absolutely. I’m not going to miss this opportunity.
I bought a couple of gloves and a couple of baseballs. Every port we would stop in with the Charles W. Morgan I’d take one of the crew members ashore and mark off the distance, and started throwing the baseball so I wouldn’t miss. I nailed it. 30,000 people watching. It was, just to be out at that historic, because it’s not a stadium, it’s Fenway. The history there. It started at Fenway and hopefully it’ll end at Fenway, baseball. You just think of all of those people that were there and saw the games, and all these great athletes that were out throwing pitches and on that field, that had the honor and the privilege to be out there. I get to walk out there. Holy smokes. It’s quite humbling. It was fun, it was a lot of fun.
Dr. Belisle: We’ve talked about the intentionality aspect. You intentionally are living this life that you love. We can tell that you love it. Anybody who’s listening can tell that you love it.
Kip: Yeah, I have a passion don’t I?
Dr. Belisle: There’s also the fact that you’ve grabbed these opportunities. I believe you were telling me about a conversation you had with your father 40 years ago.
Kip: My dad, god love him. He’s still alive. He’ll be 97 in December. My all-time hero. He really is. His way of life in growing up was always this passion for life. He made decisions in his life after World War II when he could finally settle down and stuff. He was a college student when the war broke out, and that sort of changed everything. He became a naval aviator. It was also family first and then passion for life second.
I had a lot of opportunities, and it was given to me by my family. Not that we had lots of money but we just did this as a family. It was all this stuff. It was great stuff. Always an adventure.
I remember driving down, might have been in high school, probably in high school. We’re driving 95 for some reason. This is typical of my dad, I get my learner’s permit and we were going to drive to, we had to go to New Jersey because he had family in New Jersey. He and I were going to drive down. The day I went and passed my test. Back then an adult had to be with you and stuff like that. He sits in the back seat, gives me the car keys, and says go to New Jersey. So I drove to New Jersey the first I’d ever driven. This is my dad.
On one of these drives he says Kip, you live in a country where you have a choice. Very fortunate to have this choice. You can go with the quality of life or the quantity of life. He says really, I don’t think if you’re buried in a gold sarcophagus or a pine box it makes a whole lot of difference at the end. It’s not a dress rehearsal. If I were you I’d go with the quality of life. Enjoy it as much as you can because we’re all one heartbeat from having that part of the journey over, go for it.
I took that to heart. Watching him anyway, and his passion for life, he still has it. He still has it. He struggled to get around but he still has this wonderful passion for life. You can see it in his eyes and his mannerisms. At 97.
He said to me the other day if you call me up and I don’t answer I’m in a happy place, don’t worry about it. That’s his passion for life. He’ll go it’ll be all right. You can drop me off at the side of the road, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine, don’t worry about it. I’m going to continue on this path and I’m going to enjoy life as best I can.
He gave me that and I took it to heart. Whether he had said that or not and I had followed this path I don’t know. I’d like to think that he was the one who steered me on to these great adventures that I’d have.
This was during the Vietnam War. Dad, I’m taking a semester off and taking this vessel to the Caribbean and we’re going to sail down there and then go around to the Panama Canal to San Diego. He says when are you going? When are you leaving? The problem with that was that you had this thing called the Draft Board. You had to be careful because you had this student deferment. Anyway I did that, with his blessing. He said I’ll help pack, this is great, sounds great, go for it. What an adventure? Why not?
When I bought the “Victory Chimes” he was the first one to go yes. Everybody else thought I was nuts. Buy this big, large wooden vessel and decide you’re going to make a living at it. Everybody saying are you nuts? With his encouragement off I went.
Dr. Belisle: He was encouraged by his father you said.
Kip: I think so. Although I didn’t know him very well, but he talks about his dad a lot. I remember my grandfather, he died when I was 6 or 7. You’re image is just this physical image, it’s not really, I didn’t get to know him. Just a physical image. I know my grandfather, my father’s father, through my father. I think it was either my father … His mother was always up for his … My dad decided to go get a pilot’s license. His father was like there’s no money in that, what are you doing that for? His mother would secretly give him money to do these lessons. I think a lot of his life’s passion came from his mother, and his sense of humor came from his father. You’d have to ask him, I don’t know. That’s just a guess on my part.
Dr. Belisle: What’s next for you? What do you think your life is going to hold, or does it really matter?
Kip: It really doesn’t. There are a lot of adventures I’d like to take while I could still do them in the sailing and skiing world, and other things I’d just like to at. The “Victory Chimes” sort of holds me here. I love what I do but I have to be here all summer long. I can’t take off. Last year I did, and I found out that the vessel could actually operate without me. I don’t know. There’s a lot of things, I have this passion about history. I would like to explore history a little bit more. I think as a society we stand in one spot and we look down at our feet and we don’t look, we don’t dare to look up and turn around to look at where we’ve been or what our consequences are, look ahead. I don’t know about ahead and that’s all, we all can take that. There’s something about looking behind that’s real.
I’d like to get people to stand up and look behind them and see how they got to where they are. This whaling vessel I took out this summer. Oh, a whaling vessel. Yes, slaughtering whales wasn’t something that we like to talk about. Although it was a huge part of the growth of this country. Without it we might not be where are today. Without the innovation of sailing vessels, that’s another whole thing. You ask a high school kid name an important historic commercial sailing vessel built in the United States, and we built lots, we built record beaters that haven’t been beat today. The records haven’t been beat today. These old, big old wooden vessels.
You know what they’ll say? Because I take high schoolers. They’ll look at you and go Mayflower? Not really American built. We have no sense of how we got to where we are. It was hugely important. The whaling industry was hugely important. Thank god we discovered oil in the ground to save the whales. It was a huge part of American history, a huge part. We lit the world. If you wanted to have a lamp on, because candles were too expensive. If you wanted to have light in the 1820’s you had to have whale oil or you were living in the dark. That’s hard for us to put our mind around. You ask a sailor of the 1840’s could we kill all the whales in the ocean? They’d look at you and go there’s too many of them, absolutely not. We can’t do it. When we started to mechanize it we almost did it.
It was a huge important part of our growth. Not only of the energy that it created that fueled the industrial revolution, but all the businesses that were around it. Coopers, they built barrels, and sail makers. It just fueled us. If Bedford Massachusetts, which was the whaling capital of the world, was the richest town in North America during the whaling industry. I guess it’s like Houston, energy.
It was a nasty business whaling, but it … Anyway, I get passionate about stuff like that. I would love to get and talk and get people excited about that. In skiing, may passion for skiing is so great. I could stay right at Sugarloaf. I travel around, do some skiing, but I went there because that was the best skiing available to me and I stayed there because I met guys like John Christie. It’s loaded with them. They’re still there. Younger people that are coming up that are the next gen, they’re still there. They’re still coming. It’s a wonderful place.
The skiing’s great. It’s the best skiing in the east. It’s the best mountain in the east. I’ve skied them all. I had skied them all. Maybe it’s because it’s so far away, it’s hard to get to, that people … It is a special place. It really is. I can’t say enough about it. Anyway, it sounds like I’m a spokesman for the mountain. Although I don’t work for the mountain, that’s why I’m there anyway.
Dr. Belisle: I encourage people to read more about you and your relationship with John Christie in the Sugarloaf issue of the magazine.
Kip: I haven’t seen it yet. Are you going to show me a copy?
Dr. Belisle: I think we might have a copy we can show you.
Kip: Oh no. I can’t, I’ve got to be sworn to secrecy though, right?
Dr. Belisle: I don’t know if that’s going to work for you. It seems to me like you …
Kip: No no, it’s in there? What did they say in Seinfeld? It’s in the vault. It’s in the vault.
Dr. Belisle: OK.
Kip: No, wow. I think as a pass holder I get the magazine. It comes to my house.
Dr. Belisle: Yes.
Kip: It is a wonderful magazine. It’s great. You’ve done some wonderful stuff with Maine. It’s a great spot. Your magazine does a wonderful job of exploring that.
Dr. Belisle: Thank you.
Kip: You’re welcome.
Dr. Belisle: I think we’re as passionate about what we do as you are about …
Kip: It seems to be here.
Dr. Belisle: About you and your world.
Kip: Right.
Dr. Belisle: We’ve been speaking with Kip Viles who is a Sugarloafer and also the owner and captain of the schooner “Victory Chimes” and also a broadcaster with WSKI TV, Sugarloaf. Thanks so much for coming in.
Kip: You’re welcome. Thank you. It’s fun.