Bobbie Burns was one of the most recognizable skiers from any generation, and is referred to by many as "The Original Hotdogger”. There was no mistaking Bobbie flying down Sun Valley with his long blonde locks flying in the wind and there was also no mistaking the 60” poles! Bobbie always looked at skiing as a limitless form of expression which is why he found racing to be too confining. He felt that when you had gates, you had to go too slow. Bobbie simply put the free in freestyle and essentially created an entire sport.In the later years, Bobbie was one of the first to experiment with shapes of skis, from Bobbie’s “Bad Ass Sidecut”, one of the earlier shape skis, to the Fat Albert, one of the first powder/fat skis. It showed that Bobbie was always looking into the future in ski designs. Bobbie later played with Nano technology in some of his skis.
My very first interaction with Bobbie was in the early 2000s. I came across a pair of Bobbie’s nano technology skis on Craigslist. I decided to reach out to Bobbie and ask him about the skis. Bobbie was extremely helpful in our almost hour conversation and eventually commented that the skis that I had purchased were actually stolen from him. It turns out that it was not uncommon for Bobbie to leave skis by his back door for people to take and demo and hopefully return. This particular pair, along with a few others, were never returned. I felt awful and offered to immediately return these to him. Bobbie graciously declined because he said I didn’t do anything wrong and was unaware that they were indeed stolen. Tricia and I still have these ski in our collection.
Bobbie was unable to attend the induction but we were able to spend much time with his daughter Montana, her family, along with many of the Hot Doggers from the 1970’s. Bobbie had The Ski on the feet of so many iconic freestylers like Mark Stiegemeier, Jack Taylor, and Stu O’Brien, along with fellow HoF inductees Alan Shoenberger and Bob Salerno. To have Bobbie inducted in Sun Valley was simply serendipitous. Please read Bobbie’s biography on the US Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame site HERE.
Bobbie Burns’ fingerprints are all over freestyle skiing and the sport would not have exploded in the 1970’s if it weren’t for Bobbie. Everyone who has skied a mogul run without abandon owes a pole raised to The Ski to honor the Snowgoose. SkiTalk has a full catalog of Bobbie Burns and The Ski images archived HERE. Please take a moment to look through the many pages and feel free to add comments here.