Communities are built on lore—stories with just enough detail to convince you they might be true, and an overdose of magic to make you suspend common sense.
The origin story of Norquay’s infamous Mountain Smoker goes like this: On March 17 th , 1956, a stranger calling himself Billy Binder rode the North American Chair and told lift operator Red Crozier he was going to “smoke the hill”. Billy made one turn off the chair, pointed it straight down, and hit terminal velocity on the Widowmaker. He disintegrated in flames—the only thing found was a single burnt boot.
In Billy ‘Smoker’ Binder’s memory, Doug and Lynne Godfrey (who used to own Banff store, Mountain Magic) launched the Mountain Smoker on March 17 th , 1976. From the late ‘70s to early ‘80s, once a year, skiers congregated atop the Big Chair with no rules—just a ticking clock for three hours. Primed like athletes chasing the sub-4-minute mile, they battled it out, fought to be the first one on the chair, and tucked to cross the finish line before the clock ran out. The ones who lasted became legends…and even the ones who didn’t.
I never skied the Mountain Smoker, but the race carved one vivid memory: the call that sent me to the Banff hospital. It was 2011 and my dad had crashed on his 11th run and knocked himself out. How he made it back to the lodge remains unclear—adrenaline, stubbornness, maybe both. Dad was 85 at the time.
Even my nephew Noah, whose winter days are spent sailing off ridges and diving through couloirs, says it’s “by far the most intense leg burn I’ve ever experienced”.
The event’s first winner was 14-year-old Roland Fuhrman in 1976 with 18 runs. Phil Monod won the following year, raising the bar to 20 runs, and Keith Humphrey claimed the third year with 21 runs. Then, one skier rose above the ranks: Bob Rankin, a Norquay ski patroller, won four consecutive years from ’81 to ’84, peaking with a record 24 runs—a mark he hit twice. His main rivals were Fuhrman and Dave ‘Bammer’ Raham. On 223cm Elan downhill skis, Rankin disappeared moguls and clocked his fastest run in 52 seconds. The top woman during this era was Sarah Lynch with 20 runs. The Crag & Canyon once immortalised Greg Paltinger for pulling off the greatest crash of the race and still finishing 8th.
“Non-stop, every run,” Rankin tells me from Blue River where he’s been a Heli-ski guide for the past 36 years. “Norquay still holds a big space in my heart, times of my life working there and living in Banff—the best memories for sure. The best ‘little big mountain’ in the Bow Valley!”
The Smoker had a comeback from 2006-2014. Norquay’s own Andre Quenneville won in 2009 with 22 runs. But times change and as one former winner, Dan Evans, puts it: “the Mountain Smoker was a lot more cowboy back then!”
The math boggles the mind. So many runs, so little time. Maybe the lift was faster back then, or maybe Bob’s boots, like Billy Binder’s, caught fire. Either way, magic happened.
