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Ski-ing had to end somewhere and perhaps here is as good a place as any. Switzerland on this side, Italy beyond. GlΓΌhwein to warm the cockles of your heart. |
Mountains have always been my favourite natural backdrop. I read about them long before I was old enough or – independent enough – to use them. First it was rocky outcrops near home. After four weeks with the Outward Bound Mountain School I graduated to longer climbs in the Lake District.
Climbing lapsed when I moved to London and got married. Round about 1978, in my early forties, I had enough money to consider the Alps but for various reasons I turned to ski-ing. Rhapsodising about it right up to 2007 when, aged 72, on the lower slopes of that most mountain-like mountain, the Matterhorn, I was made to realise it was all over. Finito. The body couldn’t take it any longer.
But here’s the thing. Ski-ing is a sport but it’s also physics. An energy transaction and that too is part of its charm.
Ski-ing requires us to buy energy. Down in the valley we’re unaware of the need, clumping around, our boots returning to earth in an unregarded way. But then we spend money (a shocking amount these days, I’m afraid) and emerge at the vertiginous top of the ski-lift, the lower temperature sawing at our cheeks. Below is a delicious slope which is also our bank statement. And hey! We’re temporarily in credit. Gravity smiles up at us and says: spend me.
No engine needed. Not even the beneficial effects of airflow. We may spend our credit very quickly in a direct Schuss, or more slowly, swinging from left to right to left in a series of elegantly contrived curves. Dancing, if you will; where style outranks the distance travelled. The peaks rush past and we are exhilarated.
Zero quickly arrives in the right-hand column. All gone. But we’ve moved and have been moved.
Elegant and rhapsodic RR. You have put into words your joy and sensations.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same about fast motorcycling, but it drains the bank balance less (I tell myself)
I think you can console yourself (if you feel the need to) in the knowledge that most of us invest substantial sums of money into our passions. My optics are worth a king’s ransom, but worth every penny, and we haven’t got into my wife’s. I have paid ridiculous fees to roam the Himalayas in search of elusive species, but have never regretted it for a moment. Perhaps I should have taken up skiing too. I might have got to to a couple of places a little faster!
ReplyDeleteAvus/DMG: Most non-skiers misunderstand ski-ing. Imagining that the aim is to get to the bottom of the piste, as if ski-ing were the reverse of rock-climbing where getting to the top of the rock-face is certainly the target. Reaching the end of the ski piste is incidental; the real aim of ski-ing is to master and then refine certain non-intuitive body movements which help promote greater ski-ing efficiency (in effect reduce the controlling physical inputs to a mnimum) and thereafter delight in the sensual delights of effortless locomotion with the skis close together and in parallel both through the turns and when travelling directly downwards in the schuss.
ReplyDeleteWatch any popular section of piste and it quickly becomes apparent that a majority of skiers are nowhere near this nirvana: upper bodies sway this way and that, skis frequently depart from parallel and form a V, sounds are scratchy rather than hissy, pole planting becomes irrelevant, and progress follows vicious zig-zags instead of a linked series of shallow curves. At the bottom of the piste the incompetents stop abruptly, breathing noisily and wishing to hell the pain in thighs, knees and calves would abate. The polished skier glides towards the bottom station of the ski-lift keen to go up again and attend to the details even more minutely.
Ironically, when I finally and unexpectedly lost all my carefully accumulated skills and coordination at Zermatt I'd been improving over the previous decade.This was hard to take.
The above post was a deliberate conceit using in-and-out cash flow as a metaphor for ski-ing as a process. To my knowledge no one I know of has used this illustration.
As to cost. In my day they were bearable. But more recently the combination of raised temperatures during winter (ie, less snow) and restrictions imposed by the pandemic (ie, no skiers) meant that most ski stations lost money heavily. One result was a huge increase in ski-pass costs. I did hear that one of the major US stations was charging $250 A DAY! That could well have covered a fortnight's pass at Santa Caterina in Italy where I started out in the late seventies.
Hello, Roderick:
ReplyDeleteA while ago you were inquiring about a possible connection between my young friend, Zach, and a schoolboy acquaintane of yours.
Here is his reply.
not that I know of but could very well be. My grandpa summerhayes and his entire family is from the UK! He came over here during WW2
On Thu, Oct 5, 2023 at 11:02 AM David Gascoigne wrote:
Hi Zach:
The following comment was left on my blog:
Summerhayes - a moderately unusual surname. But a youth with that name and with exotic geographical origins (details now forgotten) joined my class at Bradford Grammar School, Yorkshire West Riding, UK, in the late forties. Memorable in that a flask of fuming hydrochloric (?) acid spilled over his thigh and he was shipped off to hospital. Any relation?
Do you have any idea?
David
DMG: Re Summerhayes. I was at BGS during the last year of WW2 and left, aged 15, in 1951. (In those days advanced education was discouraged in youths applying for journalistic jobs on newspapers). Summerhayes (I've forgotten his first name) arrived mid-term but I have a sense this was post-war. He was a likeable lad and rather more articulate than most of my classmates; something of an upper-class accent too. I should admit that my class was in the dumbo-stream ("The scugs' class", as my father used to say accusingly since he was paying fees for my so-called education.) So it seems unlikely even if there were were a few near-misses. It was just a thought. Please thank Zach for responding.
DeleteI went cross-country skiing once, but that is the extent of my winter sports - very tame, and I fell a lot. Downhill skiing? Climbing? Nope. I'm not against these thrill seeking winter sports, but I never really had the opportunity or the inclination.
ReplyDelete