in Franconia, New Hampshire, located at the base of the Cannon Mountain Tramway. Schussing the Headwall Three times during the 1930s, a ski race was run from the summit cone of Mount Washington, the highest mountain in the northeastern United States, to the base lodge at Pinkham Notch. The course of the race – dubbed "the American Inferno" – ran over the headwall of Tuckerman Ravine, which in some areas drops at more than 50 degrees. Since the 1930s, attempts to recreate the original American Inferno have been cancelled several times due to extreme weather conditions. Although races along parts of the route have been held from time to time, it is unlikely that the "true" American Inferno of the 1930s will ever be held again due to its highly unsafe design, as well as weather problems – both extreme winter weather at the summit and spring melting and flooding at the base. Two weeks after winning the national downhill championship in the spring of 1939, Toni Matt entered the third (and last) running of the American Inferno. He did not plan to schuss the entire Headwall; instead he intended to make a few turns before tucking and heading straight down. However, he did not realize that he had not yet reached the lip, the steepest part of the approach to the Headwall. By the time he realized his error, it was too late to turn. Years later, he said that when he reached the floor of the Headwall, at the transition from steep to relatively flat, he felt lucky to be "nineteen, stupid, and have strong legs". Matt's top speed, estimated by study of movie film, was 90 mph. His winning time for the 3.8-mile race was 6 minutes 29.2 seconds. The second-place finisher, Olympian Dick Durrance, took a full minute longer. The next day the Boston Herald described the impression Matt's run made: Maintaining almost unbelievable speed and control down the snow fields of the summit cone, the almost vertical 1000-foot headwall of Tuckerman ravine and the twisting pitches of the Sherburne trail, Matt literally raced the entire field of 44 starters into the snow. Although a few other skiers are known to have schussed the Headwall in the past hundred years, none have done it like Toni Matt, who was already moving at a high speed (estimated by Matt to be 40–45 mph) when he dropped over