Bliss built a double toboggan slide in ‘Snow Canyon’ (the locals’ name for Granlibakken Valley at the time) to provide winter activities for Tahoe Tavern Resort.

At about the same time, a group of Norwegian skiers, including seven-time national champion Lars Haugen, was touring the west and giving ski jumping exhibitions.

[6] Kjell “Rusty” Rustad, a retired sea captain and former ski jumper, had moved from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe because it reminded him of his home in Norway.

With the goal of providing local skiing for Tahoe City residents, he secured a land use permit from the U.S. Forest Service and purchased 74 acres (300,000 m2) in the Olympic Hill valley.

In 1946, he began bringing skiers from the road to his resort aboard a surplus World War II landing craft (shared with Squaw Valley's Wayne Poulsen) that could navigate the snow.

In 1953, Rustad relinquished part of his US Forest Service lease on acreage on the North side of the valley to University of California (UC) Berkeley's International House.