Lori Starbuck (center), seen here with Rick Lamb (left) and Drew Judycki (right), represented Powder Puff Ski Area and the Red River Ski Area at the sports show in the Astrodome in Houston in the mid-1970s.
“It was a lot of fun,” she says. “We had folks from both ski areas and we took ski ramps that we made. We did demonstrations, but if I remember right, we let people come up and try to ski! “
Loraine Lori (Starbuck) Harris has lived in Oregon for the past three decades, first in Rouge River and then Klamath Falls, her current home. She has worked in the Business Office of Oregon Institute of Technology “for eleven years the first time, and for the past five years – sixteen years total.” She loves her work.
Her parents, Gary and Francis (Fran) Starbuck moved from Vermont to Red River in 1960. Gary became a ski instructor and eventually became ski school director at Red River Ski Area. Fran worked at the Moly Mine.
Lori learned to ski at the Red River Ski Area “when I was two or three” and remembers hanging around with Rudi Woerndle, whose father Toni was the first ski school director at RRSA and operated the Alpine Lodge with his wife Ilse.
In 1970, the Starbucks partnered with John and Judy Miller and purchased land from Lester Lewis on Red River’s west side. Lewis had an amusement attraction called whirlybirds – inner tubes for sliding downhill – and an ice skating rink on part of an area that had been owned originally by Orrin Mallette, one of the founders of Red River City in 1895. Lori was 13 when they bought what would become Powder Puff Ski Area, known as a great place to learn to ski.
“I skied everyday at Powder Puff when I wasn’t in school.” She fondly remembers the Powder Puff Rangers, the ski school for the area. She was probably 15 when she started teaching skiing.
“It was a good job. That and waiting tables. What else do you do in Red River, right? Teach skiing during the day and work at night somewhere!” Lori has fond memories of working for Linda and John Hoag at Sundance Mexican Restaurant because “they were great to work for, very caring people.”
The Starbucks/Millers owned Powder Puff from 1970 -1979, when it was sold to the Veale family, owners of RRSA. “Powder Puff was one of those moments in time. It was just… great!”
