South Salt Lake » The slope to success was not always smooth for DaleBoots USA.

Born in the basement of Mel Dalebout's house in Olympus Cove, the company and its innovative ski boots have been around for 40 years. Along the way, they battled the boot-making heavyweights of the world, in the market and in the courts. And they persevered.

Mel persevered, actually. Because that's the kind of guy he is. An innovator who never quits innovating. An old Ute football player who played through pain, just as his legendary coach, Ike Armstrong, would have expected, and never gave up.

And now, at 81, as he remembers those gridiron days with the aid of his new artificial knee and transitions out of ownership of his company, Dalebout's customized-for-comfort, high-performance ski boots are in sporting good stores in eight European countries, including its primary office in the Austrian city of Kitzbühel.

Not a bad legacy for one of Utah's leading ski technology pioneers -- leaving behind a company with two headquarters, one in eyeshot of ski racing's most revered downhill course, the Hahnenkamm, the other in an Olympic host city.

"Good fortune is a product of hard work," says Dalebout, who has lots of little sayings and liberally quotes people from Yogi Berra and Albert Einstein to Frank Lloyd Wright and father Bill, a baker from Ogden who raised his family in Provo. "It's been an adventure, and I've made a living. It didn't make me a millionaire, but I don't need that much money."

The DaleBoot story is rich in local ski color and crosses paths with an illustrious cast of characters -- astronaut John Glenn, radio commentator Lowell Thomas, General Electric boss Jack Welch, actor Robert Redford, former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, wine-maker Robert Mondavi and Yuichiro Miura, "the man who skied down Everest." And, of course, Alta's own Alf Engen.

In one way or another, all were involved in the development, use and acceptance of what started as a revolutionary concept -- ski boots with a form-fitting inner boot that provides a comfortable cushion between sensitive feet and an outer shell bullet hard to elevate performance.

It's a concept that makes perfect sense now to Rob Graham, a former freestyle skier who is buying DaleBoots USA from Dalebout after spending the past five years establishing the company's presence in Europe.

"If someone's feet hurt, and the statistic is that 86 percent of all skiers suffer some sort of discomfort or pain while skiing, they'll buy new boots that fit properly," says Graham. "That's what we do, provide high-performance boots that fit properly. I'd sum it up as fit over flash."

"Form and function" is the phrase that Dalebout would borrow from architect Wright, a longtime hero of this classic over achiever.

In his youth, Dalebout swam, dove, figure skated, took flying lessons and played football, baseball and tennis. He worked hard, too, delivering newspapers, setting pins at a bowling alley, painting mail boxes, laboring at Fisher Brewery, being a lifeguard at Lagoon and a waiter at the Rainbow Rendezvous ballroom in downtown Salt Lake (where he met his late wife, Wanda, a Salt Lake Tribune librarian.)

Skiing changed his life, too. Two years into his University of Utah football career, some friends took him to Alta. He was hooked immediately. "I quit school for winter quarter and became a lift operator."

Skiing every day, helping with avalanche control, Dalebout got good fast. He started racing, winning his first time out. Running in a crowd with Olympic ski racers Jack Reddish, Dick Movitz and Dev Jennings, he almost made the U.S. team for the 1952 Winter Games.

Dalebout also became friends with Engen -- and his feet. "Alf had many broken bones in his feet that created many odd bumps on them."

That got Dalebout thinking about making comfortable boots, thoughts that germinated as he spent years setting race courses, helping Ted Johnson eyeball the slopes that became Snowbird, and talking skiing with Engen and the famous people Alf squired around the mountain.

By the late 1960s, Dalebout was building hard boot shells in his shop at home and injecting foam into bladders surrounding the foot. He tested the boots himself -- and with Alta ski patrol friends -- and made adjustments to ensure the boot was balanced on the ski, whether the wearer's ankles tilted inside or out, or had calves that were thick or thin.

"I will never forget the first test run," he wrote in his autobiography, The Uphill Racer. It was on Sunspot at Alta, one of his favorites.

"I took off, started my first turn, and it was like driving with power steering. The edge control was like nothing I'd ever known before," he said. "At the bottom of the run, an amazing glow came over me. I knew I had a revolutionary breakthrough in ski boot technology."

Not everyone agreed.

"People thought, 'What a wild idea. There's no way that will work.' But he stuck with it and stuck with it and, by golly, he put out quite a product," says ski historian Mike Korologos.

Dalebout's first boot featured a shell made of magnesium, a relatively light metal for which he could design boot-making tools.

"While it received good acceptance by owners, it also was ridiculed by others who called it the 'Frankenstein boot' because of its heavier weight and look," adds Alan Engen, Alf's son and chronicler of Utah ski history.

It also was a bit expensive. That made it hard to compete with the Nordicas and Langes of the bootmaking world, particularly when Dalebout found his finances drained by prolonged litigation over competitors' use of foam-injection technology he felt he developed. But after securing financial backing from Welch and GE, Dalebout ultimately prevailed in the lawsuit.

Over the years, DaleBoot secured 14 patents as Dalebout tweaked his ideas and production processes.

He also built a small staff of loyal employees. His general manager, Adam Olson, is the grandson of a neighbor. Sales manager Mike Sheets is Olson's close friend. Joe Okamura makes boots during the winter. In the summer, he is a landscaper who cares for Dalebout's yard.

They will continue to operate the South Salt Lake fitting center and factory as Graham takes the helm.

That facility produces about 600 pairs of boots annually. The going rate this year is $695, consistent with the lower end of high-performance models. "We don't make an Indy car. We make a good street Corvette," quips Dalebout.

As the company increases its visibility in Europe -- Graham says "sales have grown by 80 percent so far and I expect several midseason orders to push that number north of 100 percent" -- the retiring Dalebout is eager to test his rebuilt knee on the Wasatch slopes where his dreams were molded.

He does so gratefully, noting, "I was lucky to grow up in Utah,"

mikeg@sltrib.com