With early winter weather in southeast Wisconsin hard to predict, trying to hit the ski slopes — even as late as December — has always been a tricky proposition.

Even when you make the ski hill, and the snow, yourself.

In the fall of 1963, as part of its second annual Ski-Vue equipment, clothing and tourism show, Milwaukee's Vagabond Ski Club decided to build a ski slide adjacent to the Pfister Hotel, 424 E. Wisconsin Ave., the headquarters for the show.

The group and the Pfister got the city to close off N. Jefferson St. from E. Wisconsin Ave. to E. Mason St. so they could install "Mount Vagabond," a 35-foot-high ski jump to offer skiing demonstrations during the show, to be held Nov. 16-17 that year. Some of the proceeds from Ski-Vue — for much of the 1960s, Milwaukee's biggest ski-related show — were to go to the United States Olympic Fund to support the U.S. ski team.

Although organizers hoped for snow by mid-November, they planned to cover the slide with three inches of crushed ice.

"And if the temperature doesn't hold, it may be water skiing," Lyle Thompson, general chairman of the event, told the Milwaukee Sentinel in a Nov. 16, 1963, story.

The weather did not cooperate.

On Nov. 16, a Saturday, professional skiers took to the man-made slope, which was covered in 24 tons of crushed ice, "about the biggest frappe ever seen hereabouts," Milwaukee Journal reporter Donald H. Dooley wrote in a story published Nov. 17, 1963. About 2,000 people came out to see the ski-jumpers.

"The temperature was 55 degrees, and the ice melting on the 65-foot-long slope was rushing down the gutters outside the Pfister Hotel," Dooley wrote. " … Only topnotch skiers could have avoided breaking a bone, or someone's in the crowd in the street. They flashed down the 28-foot-wide slope and had to stop on a 15-foot level at the bottom of the hill.

"But no one was hurt."

Dooley reported that the unseasonably warm temperatures likely meant that event organizers would have to restock the slush with another 12 tons of ice for the second day, "since there was no forecast for snow."

In fact, the second day of the 1963 Ski-Vue, the Milwaukee area was hit with more than 1 inch of rain — and, in some places, hail. But no snow.

Still, The Journal reported the next day 11/18/63, the skiers continued their downtown demonstrations in driving rain anyway, even though Mount Vagabond "was covered with almost 40 tons of crushed ice — slushed ice in the rain."

"A few hardy souls huddled under the hotel canopy to keep from getting drenched in frequent downpours," the Sentinel reported on Nov. 18, 1963, "and thunderclaps drowned out the skiing songs being broadcast over the outdoor loudspeaker."

Despite the 1963 washout, Vagabond repeated the experiment in 1964, this time setting up a slope on Michigan St. between 5th and 6th streets, near the Ski-Vue show's headquarters, the Schroeder Hotel (now the Hilton Milwaukee City Center), 509 W. Wisconsin Ave. The street's natural slope was augmented by a ramp, to give the skiers a chance to lift off a little — 15 to 20 feet.

But again, the weather didn't cooperate. It probably didn't help that the 1964 event was held even earlier, on Oct. 31-Nov. 1.

"Balmy temperatures made the slide sticky and the landing sloppy, but several hundred spectators, some in shorts and shirt sleeves, applauded as though the jumpers had set new distance records," Journal reporter Bill Hibbard wrote, in a story published Nov. 1, 1964. "If any records were set, they must have been for longest splash of slush."

ABOUT THIS FEATURE

Each Wednesday, Our Back Pages dips into the Journal Sentinel archives, sharing photos and stories from the past that connect, reflect and sometimes contradict the Milwaukee we know today.

Special thanks to Wisconsin Trails editor Chelsey Lewis for discovering this photo in the Journal Sentinel photo archives.