Category Archives: Skiing

Thinking of Louis Armstrong

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Louis Armstrong. Satchmo. A trumpet played with a sound like no other. An inimitable singing voice resonating life, joy, humor and strength. An improvisational genius of jazz. The name, the nickname, the horn, the voice and the artistic imagination would never be mistaken for anyone besides the man we know as Louis Armstrong.
His music is an integral part of the fabric of American life and culture. As with many Americans and jazz fans from all over the world, Armstrong has been a presence in my life for as long as I can remember. In many ways he is the quintessential American icon, part myth, part legend, completely human and as vital as a heartbeat.
Sometimes his music arrives in the mind while I’ve been working early in the morning or late at night. In that peculiar way of all music and genius musicians particularly, the sound of Louis Armstrong loosens the imagination, warms the heart, and entices the mind to wander into memory and away from the task at hand. Whether this phenomenon contributes to or damages the work in progress is, maybe, something to consider; but it is unquestionable that the music of Louis Armstrong enhances the lives of his listeners.
Though Armstrong died in 1971, I use the present tense because, in truth, the music never dies. His music speaks to the present moment as clearly and with as much vitality as the day it was played.
I saw Armstrong in concert several times in the 1950s and 1960s in the casinos of Reno and Lake Tahoe where I grew up. Until the early 1960s the only black people allowed in the majority of Nevada casinos were entertainers like Armstrong and his band, and they were only allowed on stage and in the dressing rooms.
Since my father was the manager of the New China Club, the only casino in Reno that allowed black people to spend their money within its doors at that time, the subject of racial inequality, prejudice and injustice was familiar to me. An audience of raucous white people (myself included) paying homage to and being entertained by the great Louis Armstrong in a segregated Nevada casino was a twisted, undelicious irony.
He wouldn’t have been allowed to join his own audiences in Nevada to see, say, Frank Sinatra on the same stages. This beautiful man with black skin gave his all in every performance to every audience, black and white and tan. If he resented the racism of his country, it didn’t show through his smile and his music and his song.
Armstrong wasn’t an angry black man, a social activist or even critic. He was the greatest jazz trumpet player of his time, a happy conjunction of talent and soul. His distinctive rough, hoarse singing voice was part of his personality but, in fact, was caused by polyps on his vocal cords. It was his infectious spirit in combination with talent and soul, personality and polyps that made him a major influence in the evolution of jazz, American entertainment and the culture of the world. Armstrong was as American as America gets.
He even made a connection with the world of skiing.
There exists a silly but happy photograph taken in Sun Valley of Armstrong on skis with Andrel Molterer, Roger Staub, Dieter Grieser, Pepi Gramshammer and Stein Eriksen. Armstrong is the dominant person in the group, and it is his smile that stands out among these pale face/Aryan/Nordic grinners. Sun Valley is a long way from the New Orleans ghetto of Storyville where he grew up in the Coloured Waifs’ Home where he learned the rudiments of his music.
One of my associations with Armstrong’s music is with skiing in Italy. In the competition days I was dining in a small restaurant in a village in the Italian Alps and feeling the weight of competitive expectation, the alienation of being the lone American competing against a bevy of Europeans on their turf within their culture trying with inconsistent success to speak their languages, and feeling the will of toughness and constancy dribble away into homesickness and longing for the familiar.
Louis Armstrong’s music began playing over the restaurant loudspeakers. Satchmo’s horn and voice and spirit spoke to me in that little restaurant. Armstrong chased my blues away and allowed my resolve to come back home to my mind where it belongs. Hearing Louis Armstrong in that restaurant was like having a paragraph of encouragement and a good joke from a best friend and advisor at just the right time.
The music of Louis Armstrong has been a friend and balm for the spirit on more than one occasion. In this I am not alone.
Armstrong worked incessantly his entire life, playing his last gig two months before he died. He was a lifelong smoker of the dreaded marijuana, he married three times and he was probably one of the earliest of American draft dodgers.
It is likely that the generally accepted myth of his birth date of July 4, 1900, is a fabrication. His parents were illiterate and many people without birthdays chose July 4th at that time. He was probably born in 1898, though not on July 4, and he would have lied about his age to avoid the draft in World War I.
He had music to play, not wars to fight, and, though the man is gone and the wars are history, the music never dies.

Of Troglodytes and Technology

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I glide into the eighth decade of life on earth and the seventh of climbing and riding up and skiing down its snow-covered hills and mountains with the intention to continue doing so more attentively than tentatively. Personal intention and attention are things we can control, or at least influence, unlike the weather and the snowpack and the intentions and attentions of our fellow skiers and other citizens of the planet. Like every person past the age of innocence I am continually reminded of both change and constancy in the things of life and in the intentions and attentions of its peoples, and the world of skiing and skiers is, it seems to me, a microcosm of the larger world.
Years ago, Bob Beattie, one of the best friends American skiing has ever had, passed on to me a universal truism that I always try to keep in mind, especially if a situation or premise seems opaque, contradictory or just feels wrong. He said, “The basics never change.” Those four words have helped me more than words can describe, though sometimes the basics seem buried in an avalanche of modernity and have to be dug out and revived in order to be more fully appreciated, and their corollaries certainly describe some constant verities and directions: “If it looks dangerous it probably is;” “Why would something appear too good to be true if it wasn’t?;” “If it feels bad, it is;” “If you wouldn’t do it if the camera weren’t there and you do it anyway, perhaps your lens is not as well-ground and polished as the camera’s;” and the Kris Kristofferson koan so well known to people of my generation and bent of mind: ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”
Such ruminations about the basics come naturally to one who counts himself basically fortunate to still be carving tracks seven decades down the slope, still contemplating and observing that in skiing as elsewhere sorting out the basics among the changes is a constant practice, as necessary as weeding and watering the garden. A list of recommended gear for the well-prepared, modern, back-country skier prompts some reflections and observations.
The modern back-country skier is encouraged to carry the following: backpack ($150), helmet ($100), skins ($100), saw ($20 to $50), probe ($30), stove ($50 to $150), cook kit ($15 to $60), water bottle ($15) (thermos ($30) optional), compass ($15 to $70), map ($20), whistle ($3), two-way radio ($35 to $100), phone (satellite if possible) ($50 a week to rent, $1500 to own), shovel ($30 to $70), Avalung ($130) or ABS Airbag ($800), snow study kit ($70 to $120), heart rate monitor ($60 to $650), first aid kit ($20 to $150), transceiver ($200 to $500), bivouac bag ($150), tool kit ($45 to $75), GPS ($300), goggles ($30 to $180), colored ribbon and orange chalk—for the helicopter in case of rescue—(ribbon and chalk are inexpensive but you can’t afford the helicopter), headlamp ($30 to $100), extra clothes, food and the knowledge and training of at least a Level I Avalanche Course $200 to $500) and a First Aid Wilderness Responder Course ($650) as well as the latest local avalanche advisory (prices included as caveat emptor for prospective backcountry skiers as well as caveat for those ‘earn your turns’ back to the basics Brahmins who sniff at the effete, less organic, lift-riding, alpine skier elitists who generally have far fewer avalanche concerns). These and other things are used in one of the three categories of avalanche gear: avalanche avoidance, avalanche survival and search and rescue.
These items and the admonition “be prepared to spend the night out” are among the modern prerequisites for a day trip into the local mountains. For an overnight tour or longer a tent, pad, sleeping bag and more food need to be added. The majority of the items mentioned are tools of security, not toys of recreation. The life of skiing is recreation, and while back country skiing may well be among the most dangerous of outdoor activities (including climbing, hang gliding and BASE jumping), the question arises: at what point do the anxieties of security diminish/destroy/deny the pleasures of recreation? The solo ski mountaineer is an anomaly in today’s backcountry in some measure because the soloist cannot rely on or, really, even consider technology as useful in a crisis, and yet for some the solo experience of the backcountry is the best recreation of all. The expansion of the possible in skiing big lines, steeper slopes and riskier situations has gone hand-in-hand with the technology of security. (It also goes hand in hand with the democratization of abilities that the technology of wider skis and stiffer boots has introduced to skiing.) It seems to me that both metaphorically and experientially the combined physical and psychic weight of all that security both changes and interferes with the joy and freedom of a well executed turn. I have already mentioned that skiing is a microcosm of our world.
It is true that the only sure way to stay out of an avalanche is to ski slopes less than 30 degree steepness, and that gets old and tame and not very exciting. It is (equally?) true as well that having and using all the most modern avalanche technology and scientific knowledge and analysis does not guarantee that the slope analyzed as safe will not slide. There are no guarantees, only risk assessment.
Two recent conversations are relevant. I was describing to a highly experienced and competent back-country skier an incident in Switzerland nearly 40 years ago when I shut down a film shoot involving the day’s work for 10 people simply because I didn’t like the look of the bowl we were set up to ski which slid on its own two days later, substantiating my sense of its instability. It was a huge slide. My friend said, “Didn’t you dig a pit?” I replied, “No. We didn’t know about the science of digging pits to understand avalanche danger.” What I didn’t say to my friend, for whom the techniques and technology of back country security are intrinsic to the experience, is that had we known such things and had the shovels to dig a pit the results might have confused more than clarified what was, for me, a straight forward issue. Pits are a treasure of useful information for the knowledgeable digger, but spatial variability in the snowpack is as real as the differences between every snowflake that has ever fallen or ever will. If we had dug a pit and the results showed stability there would have been enormous peer and professional pressure to keep the show going, to ski the slope and get the shot. While peer approval confers its own kind of security, it is basically as riven with a sort of spatial variability that makes the most trembling snowpack look like Gibraltar. Peer pressure, like the illusion of security in what is in essence a dangerous activity, tends to distract both mind and heart from the basics of survival. Before continuing, I wish to make it clear that this in no way is a call to not dig pits, study the daily avalanche reports, carry the tools of rescue or acquire as much knowledge as possible about the proper use of those tools and the contingencies of disaster, all of which have and will continue to save people’s lives in the back country. It is only to point out that they change the back country skiing experience in more ways than extra weight and expense. For some people they tend to make risk assessment a technological issue and instill an unwarranted confidence that, it can be argued, costs as many (or more) lives than it saves.
I mean, a great deal of backcountry skiing was accomplished before snow science, transceivers and the other gear was developed and used, and, while modern skiing in all ways is of a far higher standard with a greater range of possibilities it is worth questioning whether personal skills of survival are being replaced by technological fixes of security. It is an issue that I think deserves more attention than it gets. One leading avalanche professional commented on the subject, “I’m the sort to embrace technology to give me an edge. Having an edge is all it takes to stay alive sometimes.” The question is this: does embracing technology both give an edge and tend to push one over it?
Of the three categories of avalanche gear, the first—avoidance—is by far the most significant, important and useful. I know many people who have survived avalanches unscathed, a few who have survived with varying levels of damage, and all too many who did not survive. That said, in my view the only attitude and intention to take into the back country is that if you are caught in an avalanche you are completely fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Using the gear in and of all three avalanche technology categories requires proper use of human faculties prior to and with at least as much proficiency as with the technology. At the (considerable) risk of appearing to indulge in what a devoutly Christian ski mountaineer in a decidedly un-Christian (or, at least, un-Christ-like) comment about a piece I wrote a few years ago about other changes in our world of mountains as another “troglodytian rant,” there is, is seems to me, a tendency among devotees of the technological to relegate to Purgatory or even lower realms the pure, organic, Caveman’s, basic judgment of the kind that knows in the bone that security and survival are not the same thing. The security of wearing a transceiver in an avalanche is insurance that one’s companions will be able to find and dig out the transceiver, but it does not mean that what the transceiver is attached to will survive.
Not long ago I was talking with a friend who is one of America’s best avalanche authorities. I had been expressing my admitted lack of knowledge tinged with skepticism about the relative merits of the Avalung and, more important, the subtle shift in a sense of security and thinking about the consequences of risk its bearer will take into the mountains. I know that a (very) few skiers have survived avalanches because they had one, but I was questioning the premise that most skiers caught in an avalanche will have the time, presence of mind and ability to grab the air tube, place it in his or her mouth and keep it there while the avalanche runs its bumpy course and finally buries the Avalung equipped skier. My friend agreed that it could be a problem but that a skier about to ski a slope that might slide will have the mouthpiece handy in case it becomes necessary. My friend prefers the ABS airbag system that will help keep the avalanched skier or at least the airbag on the surface, partly because the ABS rip cord is more accessible and easier to engage than the Avalung mouthpiece. An avalanche pro I know says  “…almost every time I put the Avalung mouthpiece in at the top of a run I hear a voice: ‘Can’t hurt. Could help a lot.’”
I agree.
However, as I carve tracks into the eighth decade I hope to continue my basic Troglodyte ways of never skiing a slope that I even suspect might slide, whether skiing alone or with a partner or partners. And though I make sure my backcountry partners carry shovels and know how to use their transceivers, I shy away from seeking a security I do not feel in a bag of air or a mouthpiece that any avalanche worth a collapsing snow crystal might rip out of my mouth as quickly, easily and irrevocably as, say, the SEC’s most recent failure to adhere and pay attention to the basics and protect the American economy.

A True Hero of the Old West

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“We have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Skiing is as crucial to the vitality of many mountain towns of the modern west as, say, mining and logging and ranching once were and, in some places, still are. It is arguable whether the cattle, mining and logging barons (some of them robbers, some not), and the gunmen who did their bidding, of the west’s 19th and early 20th centuries could be viewed as heroes, but they certainly were powerful icons of undisputed influence who have, for the most part, left environmental and therefore social devastation in their clear-cut, open-pit, over-grazed, violent wake. Skiing, however, has some genuine heroes who, as Joseph Campbell points out, have left a thread to guide us to the center of our own existence where it is possible to see more clearly what we do and why and what it might mean.
Each year there are more and more skiers venturing into the backcountry. They seek different rewards—nature, solitude, untracked skiing, a relief from the congestion, pretension and effortless convenience of modern ski resorts and a better workout than can be found on their lifts, and adventure with consequences for lapses in judgment, knowledge or respect—traveling out to find “the center of our own existence.”
And in western America the first great hero of backcountry skiing must surely be the Norwegian immigrant known as Snowshoe Thompson. Born Jon Torsteinson-Rue (later changed to John A. Thompson) April 30, 1827 in a small town in the Telemark region of Norway he came to America at age 10, living in Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin before moving to Placerville, California in 1851 to join the gold rush. In 1855 he saw an ad in the Sacramento Union newspaper: “People lost to the world; Uncle Sam needs a mail carrier” to carry mail from Placerville east across the snow of wintertime in the Sierra Nevada to Mormon Station, Utah which later became Genoa, Nevada.
Like most Norwegians of Telemark he had learned to ski as a child and brought those skills to the New World. He was the only applicant for the mail job, and in January 1856 a crowd in Placerville watched him leave on his first 90 mile journey across the Sierra. His homemade skis (called ‘snowshoes’, thus the nickname) were 10 feet long, made of oak and weighed 25 pounds, though in later years he got them down to about 9’4” and a bit lighter. Few in the crowd thought he would make it, but five days later he returned, having delivered the mail going east and bringing back the mail going west. Thus began the career of a true hero of the old west, the father of California skiing, and a truly legendary postman.
Two to four times a month for the next 20 winters Thompson made the trip, 3 days east, 2 days coming back west, covering between 25 and 40 miles a day. Because his sack of mail weighed between 60 and 100 pounds he carried minimal personal equipment: a few crackers, some bread and dried meat to eat; a heavy Mackinaw and a wide rimmed hat for shelter and sleep. He didn’t use a compass and once said, “There is no danger of getting lost in a narrow range of mountains like the Sierra, if a man has his wits about him.” Every modern day backcountry skier—with lightweight tent and sleeping bag and insulated mattress, compact stove, skis, boots, poles, gloves and layered system of clothing weighing less that one of Thompson’s skis, GPS, cell phone, transceiver, shovel and probe—can appreciate the simplicity and austerity of Snowshoe’s tours across the Sierra.
The Sacramento Union wrote of Thompson, “His reliability, kindness and physical prowess quickly earned the admiration and respect of the Sierra residents.”
He was never paid for his efforts and service. He continued to do it for reasons that are speculative; but every skier can appreciate that skiing is something other than the economics of skiing, especially in the backcountry. Ron Watters wrote of Thompson, paraphrasing Dan DeQuille “The mountains were his sanctuary, and storms were just another part of its raw beauty. On his skis, he could freely move across the snow covered landscape. The feeling of freedom must have been never more real to Thompson than when gliding downhill, holding his balance pole out in front of him, dipping it one direction and then the other, his wide-brimmed hat flapping in the wind and the Sierras spread out in front of him. At times like that, he must have felt like a soaring eagle.”
And S.A. Kinsey, the postmaster of Genoa, where Thompson is buried, said, “Most remarkable man I ever knew, that Snowshoe Thompson. He must be made of iron. Besides, he never thinks of himself, but he’d give his last breath for anyone else—even a total stranger.” A true hero of the old west, at the center of our own existence.

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.

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.

 

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.

 

OBLA, DOMS, DUMB and ULLR

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It happens every ski season. Out of shape, often overweight, clueless skiers return to the slopes after a seven or more month hiatus and attempt to ski him and her self back into shape. More often than not, the ski yourself back into shape crowd are advanced intermediate or better skiers. They know how to ski but just don’t seem to understand or at least appreciate that in skiing, as in the rest of life, there’s more to the action than technique, technology and the Puritan derived faith that will power conquering pain is virtuous, practical, intelligent and might work. As Santayana says, “If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.”
Trying to ski oneself into skiing shape is lunacy. There is enough inherent risk in skiing without tilting the odds against the skier by being ill prepared. Ullr, the Norse god of skiing, was known for strength, and arriving at the beginning of the ski season without lots of it is gambling with an already risky business. Do not blow off Ullr.
Still, in skiing as in the rest of life, there are no guarantees. The well trained skier who begins the season is only changing the odds in his or her favor. Ullr approves of playing the odds.
The best conditioned skier will, after enough runs, become fatigued. This is especially true early in the season when even the fit body is not yet well trained for skiing. There is nothing that will fine tune the conditioning of a skier except skiing, so early in the season it pays even the most physically fit skier to pay attention to how the body feels. The muscles are used differently in a gym, on a mountain bike and running than they are on a pair of skis, and they will fatigue sooner and deeper than they did at the end of the previous ski season. The body announces its fatigue with OBLA (onset of blood lactate accumulation) and it should be heeded. OBLA means the body is tired and needs a little respite before resuming skiing. The body is not sore, just tired. An hour’s rest will usually suffice, though OBLA will likely appear sooner than it did during the first round. OBLA is manageable. It is only fatigue, but to ignore OBLA signs while skiing is akin to driving an automobile with bald tires at high speeds on wet roads. Tired muscles do not function very timely or well. Any skier who is that out of touch with his body is a threat to himself, to other skiers, and, of course, to Ullr’s Angels, the ski patrol who will sooner or later have to collect him.
More serious and more prevalent among early season out of shape skiers is DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), a completely different malady than OBLA, though the two are often confused with each other. DOMS is not caused by lactate accumulation and does not announce fatigue to the body, but it is often caused by ignoring OBLA and pushing on through fatigue. DOMS is authentic microscopic injury and accompanying inflammation to muscle fibers. DOMS means there is damage that must be healed before the body can function properly, not just fatigue that can be addressed with a little rest. Soreness means there are small tears in the muscle fiber, actual physical damage, not just the fatigue that an hour’s rest will alleviate; and just using those injured muscles increases the risk of further destruction. DOMS appears a day or sometimes two after the exercise that caused it. Sore muscles will be weaker, prone to further injury, and slower to act and react. Using such muscles on a pair of skis is akin to driving an automobile with tires beyond bald, showing the threads, at high speeds on wet roads. Any skier that out of touch with his body is both dumb and dangerous. “The good thing about such people,” says one knowledgeable physical therapist, “is that they’re good for business.”
The solution is, of course, a pre-season conditioning program entered into no later than the first of September. Any skier who does not have such a program in their past is going to have OBLA, DOMS and dumb in their future.
It is the way of Ullr.