Over the Hill, At Breakneck Speed

Among members of the Capital Golden Skiers Club, Peter Russell is the top man, the inspiration.

At 88, he is the club's oldest skier. But he takes to the slopes from Aspen to Italy with the gusto of a teenager.

Not even a broken hip could stop him. When he failed to return after taking "one last run" during a club trip to Vail, Colo., a few years ago, members eventually found him at a hospital. He had been going much too fast, he said, as he attempted to make a U-turn on the bumpy moguls slope.

The accident, which left him with a limp, didn't end his ability to ski. "When you bend your knees, everything levels out," he said cheerfully.

Right after the crash, the Northwest Washington resident sent friends an updated photo of himself -- on skis, waving his crutches as ski poles.

That is the kind of thing the club has come to expect from Russell, a retired Army colonel. A 1942 graduate of West Point whose career took him from World War II Algiers to Vietnam, he is the group's master storyteller, bon vivant and proof that advanced age is nothing to sit down about.

"At one of our planning meetings, the hostess looked out and said, 'Gee, I wonder who has that sports car out there?' And it was Peter. So he gets around," said the club's president, Donald Vierimaa of Alexandria.

The club, for skiers 50 and older, has 130 members from the District, Maryland and Virginia, including 22 couples. Thirty-three members are 78 or older, said Vierimaa, who, at 69, considers himself one of "the youngsters." The club operated for years as part of the Over the Hill Gang, an international group, and now belongs to the Blue Ridge Ski Council.

Many of the members are retired federal government workers or retired members of the military; several were born in Europe. Some began skiing very young. Others, such as Russell, who was in his mid-50s when he took up the sport, became enthusiasts much later.

Each season, the club takes about five big ski trips, mostly out west. More frequent jaunts to such local spots as Ski Liberty, just north of the Maryland border in Pennsylvania, are "sort of impromptu," Vierimaa said, "because we never know what the weather's going to be like."

The group is part social club. Members often get together to go to the theater, eat out, play bridge or, occasionally, go kayaking.

Russell joined 10 years ago after the death of his wife, Nancy, and has been a colorful presence ever since: showing up in a kilt; wearing fake tattoos to a Halloween luncheon; doffing his green Bavarian hat, studded with pins from ski spots around the world. One of them says "Broken Bone Club"; another, "80-Plus."