y I feel luck and , I’ve in skiing because belonged ys outside, “I’ve alwa Dingle kes place ta t .” —Sasha o spor to y e, m ther that alwa ys belonged VIETNAM WAS NOT an easy country to grow up in during the ’60s and ’70s, especially for women. “Girls couldn’t do sports and I resented that. I always felt like I was different,” Cúc says. “We had a small house with tight living quarters, so I always preferred to be outdoors, to be free.” Years later, in her early 20s, Cúc visited California’s Big Bear, where she walked on snow for the first time. It was as magical as she’d always imagined it would be. Cúc was working as an engineer at IBM at the time and it was there that she met fellow engineer Steve Dingle. The two began dating and Steve, who was from Vermont, invited Cúc back home for Thanksgiving, where he took her skiing at Sugarbush during the holiday break. When Steve went for a few solo runs, Cúc attempted to snowplow down an icy beginner hill. She promptly tore her ACL. That didn’t turn her off from skiing, however. Once she’d recovered, Cúc was back at it. She returned to the bunny hill, vibrant and ready, a clunky knee brace strapped to the outside of her bright one-piece suit. It was the 1980s and Cúc had found her calling. “I remember the sensation was scary at first, but I liked being outdoors and seeing the scenery. It’s exhilarating when you ski a challenging run,” Cúc says. “I said, ‘This is my sport, I love it.’” She and Steve took regular trips to Tahoe and Jackson Hole. When they settled in Vermont, where they both worked as engineers, they got season passes to Sugarbush. In March of 1986, Cúc invited Liên on a birthday trip to Jackson Hole. It was Liên’s first time downhill skiing. “I borrowed ski clothing from Cúc and rented equipment for the week. Everything fit poorly,” Liên says. But the sight and feel of sliding down snow captivated her. A year later, Liên met a mogul skier on a chairlift at Big Bear, a U.S. Ski Team athlete by the name of Pete Norman. “I had been watching him ski throughout the day and was amazed that there was someone who actually skied like people in the movies,” Liên says. They got married that spring, in 1987, on the tram at Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe, CA. At home in Westlake Village near Los Angeles, Liên and Pete had Ian and then Krystin, teaching both to ski at Big Bear and Mount Baldy. Krystin was named after the word “crystal,” like a snowflake, Liên says. During a ski trip to June Mountain near Mammoth, Ian asked his parents, “Do we have to go home?” With that, in 1995, Liên and Pete decided to move to a ski town so they’d never have to leave the mountains again. “Our children loved being on snow. So we adjusted our career path to fulfill the dream of moving to Lake Tahoe and living in snow country,” says Liên, who worked as a computer programmer. The family moved into a condo across the street from Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe, where they could see classic runs like the Face and Gunbarrel from their window. “Skiing was our most unifying activity,” Krystin says. “It wasn’t even a question. We all went skiing together.” Krystin and Ian joined Heavenly’s race team and later trained in moguls, aerials and ski ballet. Across the country in Jericho, VT, Cúc and Steve were raising two children as well, Sasha and Adrian, who were roughly the same ages as their California cousins. They spent every weekend at Sugarbush, where the two siblings became accomplished skiers. “There wasn’t a lot to do in rural Vermont other than be outside, so my introduction to backcountry skiing was walking around the woods on cross-country skis with my family,” Sasha says. Every year, Cúc and Liên would get their families together to ski. “We are sisters, two years apart, and in a Vietnamese family you have close ties with your siblings,” Liên says. “After marriage, we lived far apart from each other and didn’t get to do as much together. But skiing brought our families together.” Hùynh Family 063
The Ski Journal Volume 16, Issue 4: Page 63
