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Peter Giese - Personal Communication
Meeting, 14 August 2001
Peter Giese is one of Hans Otto Giese's sons. We met for a short time and Peter showed me three family scrapbooks, spanning 1935-44. At the end of our meeting Peter agreed to let me borrow the scrapbooks for a short time to review them. Here are a few notes from our conversation.
by Lowell SkoogHans Otto Giese was born in December 1902 and grew up in Freiburg, Germany. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1923. Once in America he put himself through school and became an attorney.
Otto Giese was involved in early ski mountaineering on most of the Cascade volcanoes. He was also involved in the Greathouse rescue on Mt Rainier and was a key person in launching the Silver Skis races. He was a competitive skier in jumping, cross-country and downhill. Peter said that his father's proudest accomplishment in skiing was starting an all-city high school ski racing program. I mentioned seeing an article that said Otto had won the X-C ski event in the "German Olympics" before he emmigrated, but Peter didn't know anything about that.
Meeting, 28 August 2001
I spoke to Peter briefly when I returned the scrapbooks to him. I asked whether there were earlier scrapbooks, since the ones I borrowed spanned the period between 1935-44 and Otto was involved in pioneering trips before that. Peter said he had looked for other scrapbooks but not found them. He said he'd do some more checking and let me know if he found anything.
by Lowell Skoog
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