Learning to Ski

by Algernon Blackwood

It is greatly to the advantage of skiing that you can get an immense amount of enjoyment from it without being an expert. There is more pure fun in learning how to ski than in any other form of sport I know. The slopes where first you practised remain in the memory longer than many a subsequent tour, for the big tours become a composite picture after a time, so that even the photographs you took are impossible to “place.” But that first slope is never forgotten. There you fell backwards, forwards, sideways; there you wallowed, struggled, kicked; and there, often enough, you simply stuck, jammed like a jigsaw puzzle, staring with sheer amazement into parts of your anatomy you had never seen before, feeling disentanglement of legs and arms a sheer impossibility. To be believed, these contortions must be seen. “You’ll go like the wind in a day or two,” said the man who imagined he was helping me, the first time I stood on ski. Then wind goes backwards, was my silent rejoinder. There was no breath to speak. And the truth is, no one can help much, Beyond giving a general idea of how to stand, how to place the feet, and how to hold the guiding sticks, verbal advice is of comparatively small assistance. Example counts, of course; and to observe a clever runner is an inspiration in itself. For the rest, a few days’ practice on a friendly slope near home, followed by half-day trips to give variety of steepness, angle, kinds of different snow, seems invariably the quickest way to learn.

The first winter I went to Switzerland, skating and tobogganning were the enjoyments I chiefly had in view; but I thought I might just as well ski a bit too. With others it may be different, but before a month was gone the skating-rink saw me no more. Grinding round and round a circumscribed space with the eye always upon a bilious-looking orange somehow lost its attractiveness, and tobogganning was only worth considering when the condition of snow upon the open heights made skiing quite impossible. That upper world of dazzling white, in windless sunshine and beneath a cloudless sky, once tasted, becomes irresistible.

I followed the routine like most others. I went to the Bazaar de la Poste and hired a villainous pair of ski at 20fr. for the season. I thought them perfect, the fastenings admirable, the length and weight and curve just right, and I used them almost daily for three months. Hundreds of miles they carried me, above the tree-line, into unknown silent valleys, over ridges innumerable, into what always seemed absolutely undiscovered country; they did not break when I fell; they took the snow grandly, waxed or unwaxed; and I regarded them as cheap and glorious invitations into Fairyland, But in all this I was supremely lucky. Cheap they certainly were, but in all other respects I should regard them now as worthless, even dangerous. Reasonably good ski may, of course, be hired at a Bazaar de la Poste as well as at a recognised Sports-Arlikel Bureau in Geneva, but the chances are against it. “It’s a marvel they didn’t break the first time you put them on,” the expert told me afterwards; “you must have had a lot of unnecessary falls with them.” It is nice to have one’s clumsiness explained in this way; but his remarks were valuable as well. For he showed me how the grain must never run off the ski, but flow straight down its entire length, because where the grain runs off indicates a probable breaking place; and he told me to choose the hard American hickory when posible and to use fastenings that make it quite easy to kneel without hurting toes or ankles. “It’s a wonder to me,” he added, looking at the fastenings that had given me many a painful wrench when falling, “that your toes are not all broken long ago.”

Nowadays, in a Swiss winter hotel, there is always someone who will guide the novice in his selection and steer him away from needless danger; and it is unnecessary here to enter into endless detail on these very important points. There are books galore which indulge in this till the reader sinks exhausted and feels the art of skiing is entirely beyond him. Having got your instruments and having practised near home sufficiently to be able to balance with a reasonable speed and steepness, able to turn a little too, in case a horrid tree rushes suddenly towards you (as a tree invariably does), it is time pack a knapsack with chicken and oranges, chocolate, and peppermint lozenges for the inevitable thirst⁠—and start at dawn for a rousing trip among the lonely heights. You carry your big waterproof gauntlets for the descent, and you take an extra pair of warm woollen gloves for the freezing ridges; also a paper waistcoat or Shetland vest, or anything you can muster that you hope will keep the wind out. Nothing really keeps the wind out, but the paper vests are best, weighing a few ounces and taking up no room, but costing⁠—some eighteen francs at that. Dawn, of course, is nice and late⁠—somewhere about eight o’clock⁠—and the valley is icy cold, for the sun rarely tops the summits before eleven. But as you rise to meet it, the heat increases, and by the time you do meet it, blazing down upon you in full dazzling splendour, you are probably perspiring as though you had played a single at tennis in the month of August. Off comes the coat then, and is tucked into the knap-sack straps. That the mercury stands probably 10deg. below freezing-point you simply cannot believe, for the air is soft and balmy, and the warmth is so pervading that the idea of bathing may even occur to you. Only the glittering icicles that hang without dripping from the branches, and the silence of the torrent beneath its lid of solid ice, persuade you that the cold is actually intense. This, and the sudden change of temperature on your skin when you pass through the shadows of the trees, remind you that you are climbing under almost Arctic conditions. The huge, fern-like crystals on the surface of the snow, gleaming with violet rays, may further convey a hint of the truth, and the moustaches of your companions (three in a party are better than two, in case of accident, and alone never, on even an hour’s expedition!) are most likely picturesque with little fringes of clear ice as well. If there is wind, of course, there is no chance of underrating the actual cold; but as a rule these cloudless days are, fortunately, also windless⁠—until the ridge is reached.

And once the ridge is topped, after two or three hours of steady, grinding pull, you stand so delighted and amazed at the prospect of further valleys opening into a glory of white enchantment at your feet that you quite forget the moment has arrived to extract that paper waistcoat from your pocket⁠—until the wind, rising from leagues of winter to remind you, makes you feel that your skin is bare and that you have no clothing on at all. In less than a minute you stand shivering to the bone. And now, according to endurance and desire, you climb still higher⁠—there is always something higher that entices dreadfully, to many a man’s undoing⁠—or else find a place for lunch. Of course, there is no water; but the oranges have their value, and by increasing their juice with snow stuffed into a small neat hole, prove generally sufficient, till water is found again on the way down. And the spot for lunch is usually the sheltered side of some deserted chalet, where reflected sunshine brings the temperature to over 70deg., and where boards may often be loosened from their chains of ice and used as seats, even as sleeping-places for an after-luncheon doze. It is possible, however, that the chalets are snowed under, so that you stand on the roof without discovering the fact at all, in which case a stalwart pine tree makes an admirable back, and the dead branches, dry as touchwood, provide an easy and most comforting blaze. Lucky that man, though, and wonderful his circulation, who can keep his feet warm, even inside three pairs of socks, until the time comes for starting downwards. And numb toes cause many a fall in the first fifteen minutes of the descent, to say nothing of the abominable pain when the blood returns. Which latter detail applies to fingers too⁠—and hence that extra pair of woollen gloves. In spite of the blazing sun, it is often a painful business fastening on your ski again.

The delights of that luncheon hour, I always think, are⁠—next to the homeward speed⁠—chief of the whole expedition. The scenery and the air intoxicate; the lights are ever changing; the wintry grandeur of the bigger peaks about you, and, above all, the peace and silence of these trackless fields of snow, combine in a memory of sheer joy and beauty. And the ski, stuck upright in deep snow (in shade, too, and after cleaning, lest you find ice upon the fastenings later), form slender, graceful lines that cast long shadows on the dazzling white carpet. No blemish anywhere. The world lies spotless pure in all directions. And the descent is so inviting that at the slightest word the camp is struck and the brief preparations finished. It is here that the novice generally makes his big mistake. He thinks his toil is over. Actually, it is just beginning. For the work involved in picking one’s self up after innumerable tumbles is about the most exhausting kind I know. It ends by sorely trying the temper into the bargain. Falls follow one another so inexcusably. They seem beyond all understanding or explanation. The speed, by its demoralising effect upon nerve and judgment, account for a hundred or so, but the other hundreds seem simply caused by the mountains out of pure spite. And the nearer you get home⁠—just when you wish to make an effective arrival, too⁠—your sense of balance has departed finally, and it seems impossible to stand upright for two minutes in succession. The explanation lies partly, however, in the fact that brain and muscles are both tired, and that slopes you could have easily negotiated earlier in the day now present insuperable difficulties. The prolonged effort to keep true balance is an exhausting business altogether, and the beginner is wise to restrain his ardour during the ascent and be content at first with a reasonable height. Later, of course, balance becomes automatic. You hardly think about it.

But the glory of the day remains in the memory. A hot bath takes away the stiffness. You have learned more than you perhaps imagine. And next morning, full of life and zest, you start off again upon another trip⁠—and probably fall a little less, or possibly a little more. It all depends.