Ski-ing in Switzerland
THE Swiss Winter Sport season, the best for many years, has passed its zenith so far as visitors arc concerned, but, as regards conditions, it is still swinging upwards to its finest period. The anxious litelier, with but six weeks in which tb make his profit, sees the holiday crowds leave just when the cream of what he has to offer is at hand. The great surge to the snow occurs from Christmas to January 20th, and a large tourist agency stated the other day that 15,000 applicants were unable to find accommodation, round figures which may well be true, for hotels in the good centres have certainly been over-packed. This holiday congestion, however, is not to be remedied, for the hotel-keepers' slogan : " Take your winter sport later," is one the majority cannot obey. By mid-February the hotels have emptied ; only the lucky few remain to enjoy comparatively deserted slopes, a sun growing daily in power, and, on the whole, a steadier type of weather. Already, the lengthening days are laying a deeper blue upon the wonderful snow shadows ; life in the frozen forests has begun to stir, as the script of tiny feet near water holes proclaims ; there is almost, towards evening and before the bitter frost that follows sunset, a suspicion of coming spring. February, as increasing numbers have discovered, will always be the best as well as the most interesting month for winter sport.
With ski-ing in the mind, for skating and tobogganing can be had elsewhere, really good centres are com- paratively few ; nor can they be increased indefinitely, since they depend upon the lie of the country and are not to be manufactured. The pessimists declare that in twenty-five years the Alps will have become intolerably over-crowded, and there is justification for their fear, provided that the popularity of the sport continues its present upward curve. Yet the holidays set a limit here, and it is difficult to see how the present month can be available to office workers and professional folk generally. February, think the optimists, can never be over-crowded for the fortunate ones who can make use of it.
Observation seems to divide skiers, roughly, into two main classes : those who wish to become masters of a difficult craft, and those who use their ski to get about the otherwise inaccessible mountains. Two types of " centre " have accordingly arisen to meet, respectively, what these classes demand. There are places that cater for the former almost exclusively, where tests are de rigueur, and where expeditions are organized to suit the grade of the runners who are allowed to join them. The pace of a party is the pace of its slowest member, and no one must be left behind, nor even out of sight for long. Such places emphasize style and skill. They work for the standard of British ski-ing. They are admirable. To the second class of skier, however, they are anathema ; organization interferes with liberty ; tests, though they could be passed, are a nuisance and a bother. A more happy-go-lucky spirit reigns, and only the solitary runner is looked at askance, even seriously lectured. No one who sits down to dinner after a tiring day and hears the call for volunteers in a search party for sonic solitary skier can think of this individual with entire kindness. Here, incidentally, the one drawback to this marvellous sport is touched : it may be begun well after fifty and enjoyed to an almost unbelievable age ; it is, equally, for the very young, for .children ; it is sport in which men and women meet practically on equal terms ; but the delight of a long day out alone on the heights, since this is unfair to others, must be forgone.
If the problem of the hotel-keeper is to fill his house after the holiday rush is over, that of the skier is to make the snow serve him, while preventing it " hitting-back." Long-tour ski-ing is a battle between Nature in no mood to be trifled with, and a man on narrow slats ; for the snow, of course, can hit back ; in the accumulation of these exquisite geometrical flakes hides a solemn and a rather dreadful death. Falling; accidents are a risk belonging to most sports that involve speed, but the avalanche—act of God though it be—is peculiar to ski-ing. The skier himself can start it. No one who has had even the most distant acquaintance with this downhill slide of a great snow-mass can look at a steep slope again without a deep respect, for there hangs, perilously poised, a menace he has no means of countering. Any slope over 2 5 degrees is a potential avalanche, and chances of escape are small. Snow-craft is complex, nor easily learned, perhaps never wholly learned ; the closest possible obser- vation, of daily, even hourly weather is essential. Has the recent fall of fresh snow had time to freeze on safely to the couche below, and on what kind of surface did it drop--frozen crust, or dry, powdery crystals ? The temperature of the air when it fell is also of importance, since this decides whether it has attached itself securely, making a homogeneous mass of new with old, or inse- curely, which means that a .day or so must elapse before the welding process is effected. The party started in still, cold air, but the weather has changed in the last hour, and the sensitive surface of the snow-field changes with it. The Foehn, warm treacherous wind, is blowing ; the sky, slightly overcast, prevents the earth's heat escaping—it strikes the clouds and falls back again, spoiling the surface of the field. But it does more, this pernicious warm wind : it warms the earth beneath the snow, so that the stecpish slope that might be crossed an hour ago is no longer as safe as it was. The additional moisture brought up by the Foehn adds enormously, and swiftly, to the weight of hanging snow ; the warming ground on which it lies weakens its attachment ; it lies now, this huge mass, in unstable equilibrium, so unstable that a few pair of narrow skis, cutting across its base of support, are enough to set it sliding. This particular slope, perhaps, has never been known to move before, but the knowledgeable man respects it for that very reason, and on this Foehn morning he avoids it. Some of us must surely shudder when we remember the slopes we crossed, the cornices we gaily slithered down in the days of our careless ignorance !
This intimacy with Nature, already noticed, is indeed the note chiefly sounded in the hotel of a good ski-in, centre. It is the primitive life. Outside the warm, gay rooms lies the snow, the bitter cold, friendly or hostile. Warmth of clothing, food, speed, self-protection in numerous forms, these are the matters of prime interest, and they are essential matters. Mention the latest " gadget," and the discussion of polities, of finance, of literature dies away ; a new polishing-wax thrills ; an improved fastening might conceivably interrupt a concert. If indulged in over-long it may perhaps stupefy, but, taken wisely, it must surely add to the length of one's days.
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD.
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