THE ONLY PATH: A Memoir

by Dick Dorworth

Dorworth has written elsewhere, "We were young ski racers in 1953, boys in love with an activity that took me out of myself and into a world of mountains, snow, crystal clean air and focused vision, out of the anger, confusion, and encompassing fury of my particular set of circumstances within a rage-filled generation. Skiing and, more specifically, ski racing probably saved my life, allowing me to grow into a social critic instead of the sociopath I might have become in response to society’s violent and small-minded hypocrisies, pretensions, and shallow smugness. Skiing kept anger, adolescent hormones, and confusion in check enough to focus on a path that was to take me skiing all over the world. It formed and informed my life at least as much as the dynamics of family, the structure of schools, the warmth and generosity of true friends, the betrayals of false friends, and the other (and normal) vicissitudes of life." The Only Path is a depiction of how that love saved him from dysfunction, alcoholism, and alienation.

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 16, 2017

About the author

Dick Dorworth has skied and climbed in Europe, Asia, Alaska and South America; but he’s spent most of his life in the mountains of the West. He ski raced extensively from 1950 through 1965 and set the world record for speed on skis in Portillo, Chile in 1963. Dick taught and coached skiing for years,served as coach of the U.S. Ski Men’s Team, and later Directorof the Aspen Mountain Ski School.

Dorworth’s writing has appeared in Ski, Skiing, Powder, Snow Country, Mountain Gazette, Men’s Journal, Climbing, New West, Mariah, Wild Duck Review, Summit, and Backpacker.

Today he is a reporter and regular columnist for the Idaho Mountain Express in Ketchum, his home base. Most winter days he skis, either on his favorite mountain, Baldy, or in the backcountry. In summer he climbs.

Night Driving, Dorworth’s first book, was published in 2007 by First Ascent Press. The Perfect Turn, a collection of Dick’s ski writing, ranging from expedition accounts, to biographies of remarkable and particularly engaging skiers, to ski fiction was published by Western Eye Press in 2010 and immediately won the Ski History Association prize for the best new ski book of the year. Dorworth’s next book, The Straight Course, a memoir of speed skiing adventures around the world in the 60s was published the following year, also by Western Eye Press.