The father of Stevens Pass gets a chairlift in his name

Decades before there were snowboards, North Face jackets or high-speed quad chairlifts, Bruce Kehr was at Stevens Pass.

It was 1937 when Kehr and Don Adams, a skiing friend and business partner, acquired rights to a chunk of Big Chief Mountain. They cleared trees, and with an old Ford V-8 engine, some rope and wheels, they built the area’s first rope tow.

From that seminal 1937-38 ski season, Stevens Pass has developed into 1,125 acres of skiable terrain. It has 37 major runs on two mountains. The winter resort, 65 miles southeast of Everett on U.S. 2, owes much of its history to Kehr and his wife, Virginia. Adams sold his interest in the business, and the Kehrs operated Stevens Pass from 1937 until 1976, living, working and skiing in their cherished Cascades.

Bruce Kehr, who was raised in Puyallup and later lived at Lake Chelan, died last year. His wife died in 2005. Although Stevens Pass has been owned and operated by Harbor Properties of Seattle since 1976, the Kehrs’ legacy is well remembered.

On Sunday, the man who shaped Stevens Pass will be commemorated when the Big Chief chairlift is renamed Kehr’s Chair. Members of the couple’s family and skiers will gather at 9 a.m. Sunday for the unveiling of new signs and a historical display. They’ll take a first ride up the newly named lift, which serves the slope where Bruce Kehr built that first rope tow.

The Kehrs’ niece, Sharron Ward, remembers her aunt and uncle teaching her to ski.

“The hill where the chairlift is going to be renamed, we would ski with those rope tows all the time,” said Ward, who lives in Chelan with her husband, Brad Ward. She spent summers, too, at Stevens Pass. Her aunt and uncle would take her swimming at Lake Wenatchee.

In the early days, Sharron Ward said, the rope tow mechanism was built into the vestibule of the Kehrs’ mountain home. Brad Ward said that years ago, the Kehrs had no phone or refrigeration. Snowed in at times, their only communication was by ham radio.

“They were hands-on, they were up there all the time,” said Ron Downing, a longtime owner of Mount Pilchuck Ski &Sport store in south Everett. Downing recalls the old rope tows, No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3. “One was fast, two was faster, and three was even faster yet. They’d burn up your gloves,” he said.

Rick Sola, who ran Stevens Pass Ski School from 1974 until 1979, said the Kehr house still stands, adjacent to the resort’s Pacific Crest Lodge. He has good memories of the couple’s later years at Stevens Pass.

“Even after Stevens Pass changed hands, we would still see them. He was a good skier, a very good old-school skier. He was a true, alpine, parallel-christie kind of guy,” said Sola, now a lending specialist with Golf Savings Bank.

“I don’t think Bruce ever strapped on a snowboard,” said Sola, adding that Virginia Kehr loved powder snow. “He was a quiet man. They loved the mountains and loved Stevens.”

Sola said Kehr considered elevation as well as location in finding a perfect spot for skiers. “With an Eastern Washington weather influence, it had a moniker, ‘Stevens Pass is higher and drier,’ ” Sola said. Just over the Snohomish County line on U.S. 2, Stevens Pass “straddles King and Chelan counties,” Sola said. “The Pacific Crest Trail goes through the middle of it.”

Sola considers the name Kehr’s Chair a fitting tribute.

“It will be tremendously well received, particularly by folks who know the history,” he said. “They were true pioneer entrepreneurs of the Pacific Northwest ski industry.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.