Roland Huntford's brilliant history begins 20,000 years ago in the last ice age on the icy tundra of an unformed earth. Man is a travelling animal, and on these icy slopes skiing began as a means of survival.

That it has developed into the leisure and sporting pursuit of choice by so much of the globe bears testament to its elemental appeal. In polar exploration, it has changed the course of history. Elsewhere, in war and peace, it has done so too.  The origins of skiing are bound up in with the emergence of modern man and the world we live in today.

Preface,Acknowledgements                                                   Note, Maps  
1. Skiing Necesse Est                                       
2. Ski Tracks in the Milky Way                                   
3. The Earliest Written Sources                    
4. The Finnish National Epic: Kalevala 
5. The First Printed
6. Norway - the Cradle of Skiing as a Sport
7. The Influence of Rousseau                  
8. The Ski in Foreign Literature
9. Evolution of Skiing as a Sport
10. The Men of Telemark
11. Development of Technique and Equipment
12. The First Nordic Marathon                                            
13. The Conquest of the Mountain World     
14. Fridtjof Nansen and the First Crossing of Greenland
15. The Nordic Olympia
16. The Waisted Telemark Ski
17. The Rise of Ski Touring and the Misadventures of Roald Amundsen
18. As Important as the Plays of Ibsen
19. The Spread of Skiing on the Continent
20. Norwegians Bring Skiing to Austria-Hungary and Montenegro
21. Skiing Comes to Switzerland
22. Davos
23. The English Skiing at Davos 
24. Mathias Zdarsky
25. St.Moritz  
26. Skiing in France
27. Polar Exloration 
28. The Inventions that Founded Modern Skiing 
29. The New World
30. The Study of Snow Structure
31. The First Winter Olympics at Chamonix
32. Mass Winter Tourism
33. The International Recognition of Downhill Skiing
34. Skiing Mechanized and Politicized
35. Military Skiing
36. Skiing Since 1945
Bibliography