96-years-old Junior Bounous, one of the world’s oldest living skiers, has clocked up 96 days on the slopes this winter.
Bounous hit the target he had set himself on April 26th at Snowbird resort, which he helped set up more than 50 years ago. Helpfully for hitting the target, Snowbird has one of the longest seasons in North America and is one of less than a dozen areas open through May.
In her report ‘The Wisdom and Wonder of Junior Bounous’ writer Dawn Cardinale tells how Bounous, was born in 1925 in Provo, Utah, and learned to ski on his family’s fruit farm. His initial descents involved avoiding a large pile of manure, which Cardinale notes as, “the perfect foundation for big mountain skiing.”
Cardinale also notes that skiing so much into his late 90s is just the latest in a very long list of achievements in Mr Bounous’s life,
“His list of accomplishments includes movies, magazine covers, gelande championships, national titles, Olympic trials, the US National Ski Hall of Fame and carrying the Olympic torch in 2002. In 2021, he set the Guinness World Record for the oldest heli-skier. Among his fans were Stein Eriksen and Warren Miller, who say that Bounous was “so much better than anybody else,” she explains.
