Selden Hannah, better known as Sel, was born in 1913 in Berlin, New Hampshire, a lumber and paper mill town populated by a colony of Norwegians, who brought their own skis and jumping tradition from their homeland. The Nansen Ski Club built a 45-meter ski jump near Berlin in Paine's Pasture that Sel mastered by age eight. He wasn't much older when he traveled south to Gorham, New Hampshire, and onto Pinkham Notch where he skied on the lower slopes of Mount Washington via the Carriage Road, in Tuckerman Ravine, and occasionally from the summit.