The History of Action Ski

Skiing for Garry Brown started on the water while working as a camp counselor at Camp Seagull, a YMCA summer camp located in Arapahoe, NC. Days there were spent taking kids out on the water, running boats, and water skiing in his spare time. This love for skiing shifted to the snow with his college admission to Appalachian State University. While there, Garry met local ski greats like Jim Cottrell, Jack Lester, and others, who acted as ski mentors for him and helped cultivate his new found passion for the sport. Both during and after college, Garry worked as a ski instructor at the up-and-coming French-Swiss Ski college and spread his time between tuning gear in the surrounding ski shops and teaching ski lessons to the likes of both U.S. Marine platoons and weekend vacationers.

Throughout the early 60s and 70s, interest in skiing the mountains along the east coast of the US was beginning to boom. Suddenly, there were opportunities for families to head to the nearby mountains to ski for the weekend without having to pay a small fortune for travel to the larger slopes out west. Resorts like Beech, Appalachian, and Sugar Mountain opened their doors to veteran and novice skiers alike. It wasn’t long after that Garry decided to branch out on his own. His goal was to create a business which incorporated both the family-centric values instilled from his time at camp and his technical understanding of skiing in a way that ultimately provided reliable equipment and access for people interested in the nearby slopes. So in 1986, Action Ski was officially born.

Since then, Action Ski has worked with a variety of private groups, non-profits, and corporate companies over the last several decades to organize and facilitate thousands of memorable trips to the slopes. Today, much is still the same including both Garry’s passion for the snow sport industry and Action Ski’s focus on treating customers like family. At Action Ski, we remain deeply rooted in our community, and look forward to meeting and serving whomever walks through the doors next!