Author Archives: dorworth

A Sun Valley Musing

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I first saw Sun Valley in 1953 after an all-night drive from Reno, Nevada. I have written elsewhere of that first encounter: “When we woke…the first thing we saw were the 1953 moguls on Exhibition, the most beautiful, exciting sight I’d ever seen. It was love at first vision, me and Bald Mountain, a long-standing love affair that persists to this day.” ….As a skier that was an important moment in life.
All these years later I am a writer who writes about skiing and other things and that writing is influenced, colored, perhaps even determined by my life long relationship with skiing. While skiing, like everything including writing, changes, evolves, grows and sometimes shrinks, the basics never change. Sooner or later we always get back to basics. Seeing the moguls on Exhibition in 1953 sold me on Sun Valley because I wanted to ski, and Exhibition and Bald Mountain revealed to my young mind another dimension of what that might mean. In addition, within a week I had actually watched Stein Eriksen, Christian Pravda and Jack Reddish, among others, skiing on Baldy. No one has ever skied quite like Stein, and to see him in 1953 as a boy in love with ski racing was pure magic, a revelation. I still associate Stein with Sun Valley.
Stein was a world and Olympic champion and the first great ski racer who was also an astute businessman. He made huge contributions to skiing as a racer, businessman and spokesman, but his most enduring impact on skiing was a stylish gymnastic stunt—a full layout front flip on skis—he routinely performed like no one else. It was great athleticism and show business but had nothing to do with ski racing and little to do with mainstream skiing of the time. It can be argued that Stein’s graceful flip would have a bigger impact on skiing than his unique giant slalom turn. Such acrobatics on skis were standard fare in Stein’s native Norway, but they were rare in the U.S. and it took Stein’s assurance and grace to get America’s attention.
Ten years later in 1963 I was living in the Sun Valley dorms and one of my friends and roommate at the time was the irrepressible Bob Burns, also known as Bobbie. He was a phenomenal athlete, a great guy, and he skied like no one we’d ever seen. He did everything wrong according to the technical standards of all we thought we knew about skiing, particularly ski racing. Bob sat back on his heels, locked his feet together, held his hands way too high, swiveled his skis like windshield wipers and violated every basic (as we understood them) tenet of traditional skiing. And, unlike us serious, even grim, ski racers, he smiled the entire time as if he was really having fun. Nobody skied the bumps of Exhibition like Bobbie Burns and none of us could keep up with him and, in truth, we didn’t try. We viewed Bobbie as an anomaly instead of the revolutionary if not prophet of the ski world that he really was. We couldn’t see Bobbie for who he was because what he was doing didn’t fit into our seriously traditional perspective and historical knowledge of skiing. Though few readers of my work today would perceive it as ‘conservative’ that perspective was conservative, one akin to the far more significant and consequential climate change denial perspective of today.
There were a few skiers who responded to Stein’s flip and Bob’s bump technique with the kind of excitement and recognition of possibilities that came to me the first time I saw Bald Mountain. But there were a few, and that was enough. By the early ‘70s aerials and bump skiing were a big part of skiing. Today, from the Olympic games to terrain parks on ski hills all over the world, aerialists and acrobatic bumpsters are integral to and, some would say, the most exciting and vital part of skiing and, of course, snowboarding. In more than just spirit, Shaun White is a direct descendant of the athleticism and spirit (and exhibitionism) of Stein Eriksen’s full layout flips and Bobbie Burns’ flamboyant bump skiing on Exhibition, something neither of them would have imagined in the early 1950s and 1960s. As a writer, I try to monitor my own perceptions of skiing and everything else and not put those observations into the box of my own limited perspectives. Like every writer (and every person), I have had my fair share of both success and failure in this effort.
At the same time that there is evolution, growth and change there is a pull (back?) to the basics. Backcountry skiing—not to be confused with extreme skiing, para-skiing or cliff jumping—has grown in popularity an enormous amount in the past 20 or so years. Part of this growth is the price of a lift pass, prohibitive for much of the community. But there is something else, as many avid backcountry skiers can afford a lift pass and either choose not to have one or split their skiing time between backcounty and the lift serviced ski hill. This something was perhaps best summed up by Pepi Stiegler, who won the Olympic slalom in 1964, ran the Jackson Hole Ski School for many years, is a lifetime alpine skier and who has spent most of his time on skis for the past several years in the backcountry. A few years ago Pepi commented that many long time alpine skiers are turning to the backcountry because “It’s like it was in the beginning. It’s like it was in the beginning.”
That is, back to the basics.

Remembering Galen and Barbara

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In 1969 I was walking along the base of El Capitan in the lovely Yosemite with a couple of climbing buddies when we ran into Galen Rowell. I was new to climbing and not up on my Yosemite climbing history and had never heard Galen’s name, but we were introduced and I was immediately struck by the fierce intensity of his person. His handshake was firm, his smile sincere, and there was a gleeful, wild passion in his eyes that I liked and trusted from the very beginning. We climbed together part of that day and began a friendship that endured and immeasurably enriched and informed my life.
Galen Rowell immeasurably enriched and informed the lives of many, many people. I believe Galen’s work has enriched and made more secure the lives of all the creatures which inhabit the earth. I say this because that work has raised man’s awareness of the beauty, the inherent dignity, the fragility and the spiritual dimension of the wild places, the wild creatures, and the wild people of the world. As we all know, too many of the wild places are being polluted and destroyed, too many of the wild creatures are either domesticated or on the verge of extinction, and far too many of the wild people are becoming corporate executives. Only human awareness can save the wild, and we need the wild.
We need the wild in order to survive. Nature needs the wild in order to be nature. We need the wild as individuals, as a people (Americans in our case), as members of the biological community of the planet (Homo sapiens). Galen’s images, writings, activism and the path of his life are reminders to us of that need. There are others better qualified to comment on Galen’s contributions and accomplishments in the climbing world, and others still who know far more about the skill and beauty and ultimate value of his photography and writing. But as his friend I know that the essence and source of his success, accomplishment and vision was in that wild passion he brought to whatever he was doing. I have known very few people with the kind of energy and ability to focus in the moment as Galen Rowell. Whether he was climbing, taking photographs, giving a talk, discussing the ideas of Konrad Lorenz or the observations of John McPhee or the music of Villa Lobos, or taking one of his power runs in the Berkeley Hills, life was always an adventure for him. And, of course, anyone who was ever in an automobile with Galen at the wheel knows that driving with him was always a memorable adventure for his passengers.
It has been one of the great privileges of my life to have shared some of that adventure with Galen—-in his beloved Sierra, in the Rockies, in China and Tibet, and, of course, in Berkeley and Yosemite.
In the mid 1970s I was working as a ski coach in Squaw Valley. A woman named Barbara Cushman was involved in a small clothing company called SPACE COWBOY, and she wanted to make ski parkas for our coaches. I met her and her handshake was firm, her smile sincere (and beautiful), and there was a no bullshit honesty in her eyes that I liked and trusted immediately. She said she would make (and sell) us the best parkas we had ever seen. True to her word, as always, she did. All the coaches cherished and stayed warm in our SPACE COWBOY parkas. A couple of years later she had left behind her SPACE COWBOY phase of life and was working for the North Face when we met again and she became a good friend. Barbara was a rare and charming combination of toughness and vulnerability, personal ambition and concern for the world, playfulness and seriousness. Like Galen, she had a wild and deep source of energy and a great ability to focus on the task at hand. As a businesswoman she could drive a hard bargain, but she believed in what she was doing and she always delivered the best. Barbara strove for excellence with integrity in everything. Those two words—excellence and integrity—come easily to mind when thinking of Barbara Cushman Rowell. She was a loyal and wonderful friend to me, and we had a lot of good times and many laughs together.
When Galen and Barbara met in 1981 at the North Face, it was love at first sight. They immediately embarked on a phenomenal partnership. Like every relationship, theirs was not without difficult times, but I consider Barbara and Galen to be one of the true great love stories of our circle of friends. In so many ways they were a perfect match. The most obvious example is that while Galen provided the images that made Mountain Light what it is, it was Barbara who made the business of Mountain Light what it is. They supported, encouraged, prodded and pushed each other in the life long project of continuing to grow, continuing to learn, and continuing to expand their personal horizons and capabilities.
Sometime in the late 1980s I noticed that I seldom thought of Galen alone or of Barbara alone. I thought of them as Barbara and Galen, Galen and Barbara, a unit, an entity larger and more significant that the sum of the two of them. And to the end, that entity of those two beautiful people continued to grow and to explore and experience life with wild passion and no bullshit honesty.
We should all do as well.
And there is this: a few years ago the Yosemite Institute hosted an event in Galen’s honor. I was asked to say a few words. Though I had planned on saying something else, on the spur of the moment I took that opportunity to publicly thank Galen and Barbara for being my friends for many years, for their support and encouragement in some very bad times, and for sharing in the good ones. I told them I deeply valued their presence on this earth, and I thanked them for enriching and informing my life. I am so very glad and grateful that I did that when I had the chance, for there will never be another.
It seems to me that the most meaningful, living tribute each of us could offer to Galen and Barbara is to make the extra effort to keep in touch with those who have mattered in our lives and to make sure they know they matter. Keep in touch with old friends. Keep in touch with new friends. Keep in touch with adventure. Keep in touch with passion. Keep in touch with the wild. Keep in touch. Keep in touch. Keep in touch.
And say “thank you” for family, and “thank you” for friendship while you can.
Thank you.

 

 

Topaz

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On February 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066, was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, authorizing the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent and Japanese immigrants living on the west coast of America. Less than 10 weeks after Pearl Harbor more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up, stripped of their rights, property, belongings, jobs, and in some cases separated from their families and interred in 10 inland detention camps in six western states and Arkansas. In 1988 the U.S. Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which officially apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation noted that the government’s actions in 1942 were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”
The internment of Japanese American citizens in those camps is a dark stain on American history.
One of those camps was named Topaz, located near Delta, Utah. Topaz, like other camps, has been referred to as a war relocation center, relocation camp, relocation center, internment camp, and concentration camp, and the controversy over which term is most appropriate continues to the present day. It was originally called the Central Utah Relocation Center, a name abandoned when it was realized the acronym was pronounced “curse.” It was briefly named Delta for the closest town until the Mormon residents of that community objected to their town being associated with “a prison for the innocent.” Topaz was named for a nearby mountain and eventually was home to 9000 Japanese Americans and covered 31 square miles, most of it used for agriculture, and was the 5th largest community in Utah at the time.
Among its citizens/internees were David Tatsuno and his entire family. David, a devoted family man who had been (and would be again after the war) a prominent businessman and civic leader in the San Francisco Bay Area, was also an avid home movie buff. Things like movie cameras, still cameras and short-wave radios were not allowed in the internment camps and Tatsuno left his movie camera with a friend before leaving the Bay Area. Tatsuno was put in charge of the camp’s co-operative where his superior, Walter Henderick, was both a sympathetic man and a home movie buff. Breaking the law, Henderick arranged for Tatsuno to receive his camera in Topaz.
The rest, truly, is history, American history as recorded by one who lived it. “Topaz” is the only 8mm film inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Archives besides the Abraham Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Objective Reality

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Journalists are often denounced for lacking “objectivity” in their work. Such accusations, in my opinion, are more often than not without merit, even though they are true. As a journalism student at the University of Nevada in the 1950s I don’t remember “objectivity” being discussed specifically as a tool of the second oldest profession, though the concept was understood to be a sacred tenet of the trade. How could one not be objective about who/what/where/when/why and how? Objectivity was never actually defined (how could it be?), but it seemed to encompass such concepts as fairness, truth, balance, presenting all sides of an issue, checking facts with a critical and skeptical mind and to never, ever accept without question and independent research the ‘official’ (usually press release) version of anything given out by the political, corporate, military, bureaucratic and even personal front men we referred to as flacks but which now have other titles, both pretentious and colloquial, including press secretary, public relations officer, spokesman and spin doctor. In my opinion, it is on this latter point that American journalists deserve bountiful criticism, not for lacking objectivity.
This was useful information, objectivity as a reliable ideal, a goal. Fortunately, our journalism professors, A.L. Higginbotham and Keiste Janulis, were men of the real world of gradation and doubt and organic, unending questioning, not fundamentalists with obdurate answers to limited questions, though ‘Higgie’ could be evangelical when it came to the importance and value of good journalism and a free press to a free society. In every class (especially Janulis’), without making it an issue, it was made clear that pure journalistic objectivity was as unreal as such imaginative concepts as virgin birth, Santa Claus and the more recent phantasm of compassionate conservatism. Journalism, like everything it reported, was not black or white, good or evil, with us or against us, but, rather, an on going dialogue, discovery and evolving perspective as reported by flesh and blood and all too subjective human beings. Objectivity, it seemed, was all too subjective. How could it not be? A hundred journalists will have a hundred different definitions of objectivity. In recognition of this dilemma, the Society of Professional Journalists dropped “objectivity” from its ethics code in 1996.
Janulis had worked as an A.P. reporter and traveled the world and viewed the affairs and machinations of man with a bemused skepticism befitting a professional journalist. He was Lithuanian and had been news editor of the Baltic Times in Estonia, covered World War II for the Chicago Tribune, earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and had studied German and Russian propaganda at the University of Lithuania. He knew that the world was filled with nuance and danger and that neither safety nor truth could be found in absolutes. Janulis’ perspective appealed to me in part because it was so human. That is, ethically he was a professional, not a proselytizer. Journalism was a profession practiced by humans, and anyone who expects objectivity from humans is being neither objective nor attentive.
I have always been thankful that Higgie and Jan were my teachers in that formative time.
In one course our textbook was a well known national weekly news magazine. We were primarily print media students and we read the magazine cover to cover each week, examining every photo, advertisement, story, review, editorial and letter to the editor. It was considered the standard of good journalism at that time, but we learned that pure objectivity about even who/what/where/when/why and how was easier said than done. We learned to look for what was left out of a story and we talked about how the story could be written differently with the same set of facts. We compared letters to the editor with the previous stories that inspired them, and discussed letters we might write concerning the same stories. We looked for the particular bias and perspective (the angle) that produced the story. Years later a friend who wrote for this magazine told me about quitting after covering the story of the sinking of the U.S. nuclear submarine Thresher in 1963. He interviewed dozens of family members of the 129 men who died in the accident 200 miles off Cape Cod. Many of them reported that their dead loved ones had anticipated such a failure on what was reputed to be the most advanced submarine ever built and had complained their safety was compromised. The magazine refused to include these pertinent remarks in the article because they reflected badly on the U.S. military, not a popular perspective in those Cold War days. While there may be some national security justifications for such editing, it is neither complete nor objective (whatever that means) journalism, but it was an insider’s illustration of the particular biases and perspectives we studied in school.
And, of course, even then, in those days of the decent if bland, squeaky clean Eisenhower and 99.9 percent pure Ivory soap and calling for Philip Morris, we noted and looked for correlations between advertising and the editorial and news content of a publication. Then, as now, they were easy to find.
In addition to the purely human obstacles to objectivity in journalism, there are economic ones. Journalism, too, is a business. This is not to condone or excoriate the excesses and limitations of journalism, but only to recognize them for what they are and what they are not.
The only objectivity is outside the purview of journalism as we know it, that which includes everyone and everything. Jim Harrison said it best: “….reality is an aggregate of the perceptions of all creatures, not just ourselves.”

 

Downhill Slide

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Every person who lives in or near or who visits any ski town in America has cause to read “Downhill Slide” by Hal Clifford. Every person interested in the effects of the corporate bottom line on the daily life of common people and the larger (and common) environment has cause to read this book. Every American mountain town citizen who has not been disconnected from the world around him or her by greed or become brain-dead and frozen-hearted from the cumulative effects of looking at life from the ostrich position has cause to read this book. Even the latter have cause to read “Downhill Slide,” but their reaction to it will be different than those whose love of skiing, mountains, elk, deer, lynx, wolves, eagles, clear running streams, authentic experience, the natural world, and community as something more, and more valuable, than political and economic power is deeper than, say, a latte topping, a copper roof on a 50,000 square foot house lived in two weeks a year, or the relationship between, say, the President of Vail Resorts and the Latino population of the trailer parks of Leadville, described by Clifford as, “hardworking, foreign-born, often semiliterate laborers, many of them illegal, who commute long distances to work the menial jobs that keep four-season ski resorts functioning.”

This book is properly described as “an impassioned expose” of how America’s ski corporations “are gutting ski towns, the natural environment, and skiing itself in a largely futile search for short term profits.” Most people who have spent their lives in ski towns know this at some level, but “Downhill Slide” is the first time that all the relevant history, the pertinent facts, the well researched documentation and such an informed insight has been gathered in one place so that the big picture can be seen by the little people. Clifford has done a masterful job of journalism, and the ski towns of America and everyone who loves skiing and the mountains should be (and, I believe, will be) grateful to him. For he not only describes the uninviting, destructive and inauthentic social and environmental landscape of corporate American skiing, he suggests a genuine option to the predominant theme park culture and business of today’s Ski Town USA. That alternative is nothing more radical or complicated than shifting control of local businesses away from absentee and usually corporate ownership to local control. It is a concept as authentic and American as Mom, apple pie, the town hall meeting, self reliance and self determination.

“Downhill Slide” is full of lines like “One does not have to be a hard-core environmental activist to question the wisdom of letting corporations develop public land in order to service their debt and boost shareholders’ profits without materially advancing the public good.” Clifford dispels any illusion the uninformed or the naïve may have that the U.S. Forest Service is able to protect publicly owned lands for the public good. He writes, “There are plenty of individuals in the forest Service who recognize their agency is falling down on the job and who wish things were different. But so long as the agency is obliged by Congress to find its funding in places beyond Capitol Hill, it is going to be compromised in its stewardship of America’s public lands. Those who pay the highest price for this co-opting reside in the communities, both natural and human, situated near ski resorts.” The key phrase is “both natural and human.”

It is evident and well documented, but not well enough publicized that Clifford is accurate when he writes, “The development and expansion of large ski resorts on public lands degrades the natural environment in ways that are as pervasive, far reaching, and difficult to remediate as those caused by excessive logging, grazing and mining. Around ski resorts, these consequences are effectively permanent.”

Clifford describes several instances of the impact of ski resorts, directly or indirectly, on the migration paths and calving habitat and, therefore, survival of elk, including a herd in the Roaring Fork Valley of Aspen and Snowmass. Local residents have long been critical of the Aspen Skiing Company, the U.S. Forest Service and local government’s ineffectiveness in protecting these elk. Many years ago a high ranking official of the Aspen Skiing Company (which today has the best environmental policies and record of any American ski resort) said to me in reference to this very herd, “Fuck the elk. They’re going to die anyway. We might as well get it over with and get on with it.” By “it” he meant progress, development, the fattening of the bottom line. Though this particular official would publicly and hypocritically deny his own statement, just as corporate ski executives and ski town developers all over America would distance themselves from the attitude behind it, “Fuck the elk” (and the water, and the environment, and the people who commute 100 miles a day and more to work for less than $10 an hour) is the modus operandi of the corporate ski world of America. Clifford describes this world with insight, facts, and unflinching honesty.

He touches on the philosophical/theological schism in western consciousness about the proper use of land, particularly public land. He asks, with a touch of irony, “Is nature a warehouse or a temple? (Albeit perhaps a temple with a gym attached.)”

And Clifford does not leave unscathed the warehousers and the novus rex of Ski Town USA. “The conceit,” he writes, “Is that money can get for you what you gave up. The implicit message in the marketing of the modern skiing lifestyle, and especially of the real estate associated with it, is that although the buyer chose at an early age not to drop out and live an alternative life on the edge, but instead to stay on track with his or her nose to the grindstone—that despite this fact, with enough money, the buyer supposedly can go and purchase the alternative life he or she did not choose. Stated like that, such as assertion seems patently false.”

Yes it does because it is, but there is nothing false about “Downhill Slide” or the assertion behind it. Hal Clifford has performed an invaluable service for the ski towns of America. His book is a cautionary tale, and, more, what it describes can be viewed as a microcosm of the effects of corporate ownership on mountain communities, their citizens, wildlife, and the environment throughout the world. “Downhill Slide” is a reminder of some of the consequences of ignoring John Muir’s insight of 1869: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

“Downhill Slide” is hitched to all our lives and is a great read.

 

What We Bring to Sitting

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“Enlightenment comes from practice, thus enlightenment is limitless; practice comes from enlightenment, thus practice has no beginning.”

Dogen Zenji

Sitting is the foundation of Buddhist practice and what we bring to our daily sitting is our own enlightenment, even if we do not feel or think of ourselves as particularly enlightened. What we build on that foundation is both limitless and entirely dependant on what we bring to each of our daily sittings. Since the only thing possible to bring to sitting is what is right here, right now, in the present moment of sitting, and since no two moments are the same, the foundation of our daily practice is constantly shifting.

Among other things this suggests that what we normally mean by the word ‘foundation’ is something both very different and much less substantial, while at the same time being much the same and just as durable, as the foundation of a solid house. One way of approaching this apparent contradiction is by substituting the word ‘foundation’ for the word ‘form’ in the Heart Sutra, chanted by Buddhists throughout the world. That is, “Foundation is emptiness, emptiness is also foundation.” What we bring to each sitting is our own foundation, our own form, our own emptiness in the present moment.

We bring the present moment to the present sitting and no two moments and no two sittings are the same, and today’s sitting practice is not built on yesterday’s in the same sense that the breath you are taking at this moment is not built on the one before it and is a completely different one than the next one to come. Each breath, each sitting, each moment in life is unique, limitless and without beginning. Our practice is determined by the commitment we bring to the awareness of each moment and there is no beginning to that limitless practice.

In a commentary on the Heart Sutra, Thich Nhat Hahn explains, “In Buddhist meditation we do not struggle for the kind of enlightenment that will happen five or ten years from now. We practice so that each moment of our life becomes real life. And, therefore, when we meditate, we sit for sitting; we don’t sit for something else. If we sit for twenty minutes, those twenty minutes should bring us joy, life. If we practice walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive. The same kind of mindfulness can be practiced when we eat breakfast, or when we hold a child in our arms. Hugging is a Western custom, but we from the East would like to contribute the practice of conscious breathing to it. When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, breathe in and out three times and your happiness will be multiplied by at least tenfold. And when you look at someone, really look at them with mindfulness, and practice conscious breathing.”

This commentary of Thich Nhat Hahn’s gently but without hesitation suggests that what we bring to sitting, daily practice, to every act and thought of our lives is total mindfulness in the present moment. Past and future do not exist. There may (or may not) be more to enlightenment than total mindfulness in the present moment but that is surely its essence.

At the end of that same commentary Thich Nhat Hahn concludes, “Understanding is the fruit of meditation. Understanding is the basis of everything.

“Each breath we take, each step we make, each smile we realize is a positive contribution to peace, a necessary step in the direction of peace for the world. In the light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.”

Think of that….“peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.”

That’s what we bring to sitting.

 

Emile Allais

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On October 17, 2012 Emile Allais died at the age of 100. The following is from my essay “Europe: Fourth Time Around” about a trip to Europe in 1973 with Pat Bauman and Jon Reveal to make a film for Warren Miller. The essay appears in my book “Night Driving.”

 

Emile Allais. A magic name in different times and places of the skiing world. Emile was world champion before I was born. He was the leading French skier of the 1930’s. During World War II he belonged to the French underground. After that war he went to Sun Valley to teach skiing. In accordance with the mentality of that Austrian dominated place, Emile, one of the best skiers who have ever lived, was relegated to teaching beginners on Dollar Mountain. He took this in stride and taught his pupils quietly and well. In those days, as today, the Exhibition Run on Baldy was one of the most serious ski runs in America, and it had never been skied without several turns. One day, during his lunch break, Allais took the bus over to Baldy, rode the lifts up to Round House, skied down to the top of Exhibition, stopped to check it out, and then skated four or five times into the first schuss of Exhibition. When he finished, he skied down River Run, took the bus back to Dollar, and taught his afternoon beginning classes in skiing. His point had been made on all but the emptiest of heads, but he left Sun Valley the next year.
Allais then became the first Director of the Squaw Valley Ski School. When I was a young boy I used to watch Emile every chance I got to ski at Squaw. It was amazing that a man could ski that well, that fast and with such assurance. He was one of my first boyhood heroes. He was the coach of the 1952 U.S. Olympic Ski Team and Brooks Dodge later said Allais was the best coach he had ever known. It is worth remembering that Bill Beck’s 5th place finish in the 1952 Olympic downhill was until 1984 the best U.S. result in that event.
Now Allais is Director of Skiing at Flaine, and he owns a large ski shop there: He is 61 years old, has a beautiful mane of white hair, and is a gentle, soft spoken, reflective man. He has a three-year-old daughter, a thirty-year-old wife, and he wants to have another child.
Warren used to teach skiing for Emile at Squaw Valley in the early 1950’s and he holds high esteem for Allais. The grand old man of skiing was very receptive to Warren’s request to ski with us.
And early one morning all of us were on the first telepherique up the mountain. We were going skiing with this fine, grey-haired old gentleman who used to be a champion. We would have to slow down, take it easy; and in the privacy of our own minds, all three of us were condescending; and that attitude is a mistake in any situation. We knew that Emile sets his bindings so loose that none of us would be able to make two turns without coming out; and how, we thought, could anyone ski hard, fast or in difficult terrain with bindings so loose? With feeling, with feeling.
None of us will forget that day. That evening I wrote in my notebook: “Emile really blew us out today. He was leading, and we were honored, however condescendingly, to be skiing with him. After all, he is 61, and his mane perfectly white. On the first take he just smoked down the mountain doing fast, short turns in marginal snow, jumping off small cliffs and, in short, gettin’ it on. I was grinning (skiing last) and thinking, ‘you sly old fox, Emile.’ And we had to ski to keep up. I loved it.”
After the take, Warren said to Jon, “Now that he’s got your attention, what shall we do next?” Later, Warren mentioned that everything in life depends on your attitude. “Emile still skis the hardest runs. He works only during the winter. In the summer he goes sailing in the Mediterranean. He has enormous amounts of energy that some would mistake for enthusiasm; but he covers it with a quiet, almost reserved dignity. He must have been a hard competitor, and a ferocious fighter for the underground. I have noticed that he spends a lot of time looking quietly at the mountain. He has a lot of years’ experience and living to reflect upon.
From my notebook: “Emile gives me great joy and confidence. I can look forward to, with luck, 30 more years of good skiing. At least.”
When the light got too bad for filming we went skiing with Emile. Headed off into untracked snow, full of trees, gullies and steep, rolling terrain. We were cruising along at a moderately high speed when Emile disappeared into a gully, losing it just as he went out of sight. I stopped at the edge, more than a little concerned, and looked down to see Emile sitting in the snow, both skis off, snow all over him, and laughing like Chaplin makes you laugh. He laughed and laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh with him. “Oh,” he said with gentle firmness, “it’s good for us to fall down every now and then,” and he laughed some more.

 

Finding Friendship in Snow

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A big winter with an unusually heavy snowpack leads to a big spring’s runoff which will be a benign wetness or a destructive flood, depending on a variety of factors. Among them are location, how fast the snowpack melts, when it melts, how full (or not) are key reservoirs at crucial times, the strength of levees and what progress and hubris has developed within historic floodplains. Big snow years, periods of drought, times of flood, and other natural occurrences like forest fires, tsunamis and earthquakes are as natural, recurring and predictable as……well……big snow years, periods of drought, etc.
It was only a hundred years ago that the beginning of a reliable method of measuring the water content of a snowpack in order to estimate the size of the springtime runoff was developed. This was almost entirely through the efforts, ingenuity and imagination of one man, Dr. James Edward Church, Jr., known as “Ward” to his friends. Church was born in Michigan in 1869 and was a professor at the University of Nevada in Reno from 1899 until his retirement in 1939, teaching courses in Latin, German and the appreciation of literature and beauty in art and nature. The Church Fine Arts Building on the University of Nevada campus in Reno is named after him, and his and his wife’s ashes are interred in its cornerstone.
One description of Church reads, “Quiet and unassuming, he was the essence of the Renaissance man, with his interests in science, the classics and art. Dr. Church died in Reno on August 5, 1959 at the age of 90.”
Church, the accomplished Renaissance man, became fascinated with the Sierra Nevada, a completely different landscape from his native Michigan, particularly Mt. Rose which rises above Reno like a sentinel. In 1895, on a dare, he made the first known mid-winter ascent of the 10,776 foot peak. Church and his wife, Florence, made many winter ascents of Sierra peaks, including Whitney and Shasta, and they wrote about their adventures in the Sierra Club Bulletin. Though their backcountry gear was rustic and heavy by modern standards, it is reported that Florence lined their sleeping bag with rabbit furs.
His attraction to mountains was intellectual as well as adventurous, as befits a Renaissance man. In 1906 Church and Sam Doten of the University’s Agricultural Experiment Station built by hand a weather observatory on the summit of Mt. Rose, ferrying all material either by backpack or horseback. The observatory recorded data on snow deposits, wind velocities and runoff, and its remnants are still in place. Church developed the Mt. Rose snow sampler, a hollow metal tube with a serrated collar which removed a core of the snow pack which could then be weighed to calculate the water content.
Church developed the first system for accurately comparing snow and water content against the subsequent flow of streams in the Lake Tahoe area which allowed people to forecast water availability and to plan accordingly, in the case of Tahoe by knowing how much water to let into the Truckee River at what time of year. This system became known as the percentage or Nevada system and became the standard one used in the west. It is in use today throughout the world.
Though Church was a fine professor and popular with students, he was world famous because of his expertise with snow surveying which had nothing to do with his chosen profession. He became a world traveler as a snow survey consultant, visiting and working in Russia, Europe, Greenland, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Argentina, all of which used the Nevada system to provide runoff forecasts and regulate reservoirs.
After an eleven month study in Argentina, Church, described as a peace-loving man, noted that in both the Andes and the Himalayas water sources were in one country and their outlets in another. He wrote, “Thus, barrier ranges and trunk streams merge national interests like children in a family. My wanderings have become adventures in international peace. At the end of the rainbow I sought snow and found friendship.”
How very many people who live in the mountains and mountain towns of western America can identify with that statement, “At the end of the rainbow I sought snow and found friendship.”
In this time when the snows of winter are changing patterns and moving north and the leaders of our nation continue to seek oil and power and wealth and continue to find enemies, it is good to remember Ward Church, the Renaissance man who sought snow and found friends and adventures in peace.