Long before Gore-Tex jackets and foam-core fiberglass skis, there was "Snowshoe" Thompson.

In 1856, just 10 years after Donner Party members died in the bitterly cold mountain heights, John A. "Snowshoe" Thompson crossed the Sierra Nevada dozens of times on hand-fashioned skis.

In the mid-1800s, John A. "Snowshoe" Thompson skied across the Sierra many times, often in fierce weather, to deliver the mail. He is best known fo the 90-mile trek he would make from Placerville to Genoa, Nev., covering the distance in only two days.

It wasn't for fun. Thompson was the only winter mail link across the Sierra for years, until rail lines were laid through the peaks.

He was quite a sight, according to one memoir published much later.

"Snowshoe Thompson passed us daily, carrying the mail between Meadow Lake City and Cisco," wrote Clarence Wooster in the California Historical Society Quarterly in 1939.

"We would watch him sail down this four-mile course at great speed, cross the ice-frozen river, throw our mail toward the house and glide out of sight, up and over a hill."

That route would have been near present-day Interstate 80, but Thompson was better known for carrying the mail from Placerville to Genoa, Nev., a 90-mile trek that follows parts of modern Highway 50.

"He was able to go from Carson Valley to Placerville in two days, making forty-five miles a day," wrote Dan DeQuille, a Nevada newsman who was a contemporary of Mark Twain. "Not a house was then found in all that distance. Between the two points all was wilderness. It was a Siberia of snow."

DeQuille -- a pen name for William Wright -- interviewed Thompson in 1876, shortly before the famed skier died.

Thompson started his route after reading an advertisement in a Sacramento paper. At the time, Thompson was trying to make a go of farming along Putah Creek.

But his background -- he was born in Telemark, Norway -- gave him the know-how to fashion a rough set of oak skis. Others called them Norwegian snowshoes, hence the nickname.

Modern backcountry skis weigh around 5 pounds each. Thompson's weighed 25 pounds and were 10 feet long.

No problem for Thompson. He practiced on them a bit and then accepted the job. The following was printed in the Sacramento Union on Nov. 17, 1856:

"CARSON VALLEY -- Communication with Carson Valley will be kept open by Mr. Thompson, who will run an express all winter."

Without benefit of a tent and carrying 60 to 100 pounds of mail -- and sometimes printer's type and ore samples -- Thompson headed off in the bitterest weather with meager provisions.

Thompson skied until tired and made camp wherever he found himself.

"Stretched upon his bed of boughs, with his feet to his fire, and his head resting upon one of Uncle Sam's mailbags, he slept as soundly as if occupying the best bed ever made; though, perhaps, beneath his couch there was a depth of from ten to thirty feet of snow," DeQuille wrote.

When the weather was severe, Thompson would get atop the biggest rock he could find and, in the blinding blizzard, dance Norwegian folk dances to keep himself warm until it was light enough or clear enough to proceed.

"He was the only guy in the mountains doing all this stuff," said Mark McLaughlin, a weather historian in Emerald Bay.

Not that there weren't others trying to cross.

Thompson once rescued a businessman who had been holed up in a mountain cabin for weeks with no fire and nothing to eat but raw flour.

When Thompson found the man, his feet were frozen. Thompson started a fire and went to organize a rescue. When rescuers got the man to town, his legs needed to be amputated, so Thompson made another long ski trip to get anesthetic.

Over the years, Thompson received repeated promises of reimbursement for his twice-monthly trips. In the interim, he had been living and trying to farm on a homestead in Diamond Valley in Alpine County.

In 1872, seeking payment, he headed to Washington to hit up Congress.

On the way, his train was blocked by a snow drift. Thompson hiked through the snow about 90 miles to Cheyenne, Wyo. where he caught another train.

"That kind of got him a little notorious," said McLaughlin. Eastern newspapers described him as the man who beat the train from the West Coast.

But fame was not fortune. Congress failed to pay what Thompson thought was his due. His public pay for years of service was less than $100.

Thompson died at age 49 in 1876. He left a wife, Agnes, whom he married in 1866, and a 9-year-old son, Arthur.

He was buried in Genoa, where his headstone is carved with a pair of skis. Arthur, who died two years later, is buried next to him.

Thompson's fame lives on in many places.

His skis are in the El Dorado County History Museum, other effects are in a museum in Genoa, a statue of him stands at Boreal Ridge, a plaque was dedicated in Los Angeles and there is even a Snowshoe Thompson Lodge of the Sons of Norway -- in Yuba City.