How the 10th Mountain Division Built America’s Cold-Weather Warfare Doctrine
Military.com | By Allen Frazier
Published October 09, 2025 at 10:00am EDT
At 9,200 feet in the Colorado Rockies, the U.S. Army built Camp Hale in 1942 to train a new kind of soldier. The 10th Mountain Division was created to fight in snow, ice, and high-altitude terrain that had hampered armies for centuries. Its formation was the result of a civilian campaign led by Charles Minot “Minnie” Dole, the founder of the National Ski Patrol, who convinced Army leaders that the United States needed a force capable of operating in extreme cold-weather conditions.
Over the next two years, thousands of men learned to ski, climb, and survive at Hale, developing tactics and equipment that turned into one of the Army’s most influential training programs. When the division deployed to Italy in 1945, its success in the Apennine Mountains proved that Dole’s idea had been right—and its lessons still shape how American troops train for cold-weather warfare today.
Dole wasn’t a soldier, but he understood mountains better than anyone in Washington. A lifelong skier from Connecticut and founder of the National Ski Patrol, Dole spent the early years of World War II warning that the U.S. Army had no troops trained for winter or alpine combat. His letters to the War Department went unanswered until he wrote directly to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall in 1940, arguing that the nation was unprepared for cold, snow, and altitude as an enemy.
Dole backed his case with examples from Europe. Finland’s ski troops had bloodied Soviet forces in the Winter War, and Germany’s Gebirgsjäger had used mountain skills to seize Norway and Greece. He proposed that the Army use his Ski Patrol as a recruiting network to find athletes, climbers, and woodsmen who already had the physical skills the service lacked.
https://www.military.com/feature/2025/10/08/how-10th-mountain-division-built-americas-cold-weather-warfare-doctrine.html
