High life
Slippery slopes
Taki
Gstaad I thought the best epitaph to all that very sad Klosters business was Adam Shaw's contribution entitled 'You can die for breaking the laws of the mountain'. He describes an avalanche as follows: 'It starts with a low groan, feels like the wrath of God and kills with a primeval disregard for name or blame.'
Adam is a hell of a writer, like his old man, Irwin Shaw, althqugh he prefers to chase women and play polo rather than write. Personally I don't blame him. He grew up in Klosters after attending Le Rosey here in Gstaad. I have never skied with him but I did ski with his father. In fact I did the Wang with Irwin and found it to be a lot less challenging than the black piste of the Videmanette, a mountain near Gstaad. Although most Swiss people I have spoken to since the death of Hugh Lindsay lay the blame squarely on the Swiss guide, I agree with Adam that it was a matter of physics, how two snowflakes, or two thousand snowflakes, bind or un- bind according to stress and temperature. It was simply very bad luck. Now as to whether the royal party should have been skiing there, of course they should have. What is the use of going skiing with a group of strong skiers and remaining on the safe, protected piste full of paparazzi and tourists? And as for some of the comments regarding the Haglamatte and how it was certain death if one made a mistake, I say horse-feathers because the editor will not allow me to say something closer to the truth. Even good skiers make mistakes non-stop, especially when skiing on untracked powder, and very few die. One who made a mistake back in 1959 was Carolyn Townsend, the ex-wife of that ghastly Edgar Bronfman, Austria's friend. She, Sadruddin Khan, Nickie Rommel and I were skiing the black of the Videmanette late one spring afternoon. I remember it well because Rommel, the Field Marshall's nephew, had carried my skis out on to the ledge we took off from because I suffer slightly from vertigo and the path to the ledge was a really hairy one. No sooner had we begun the descent than Carolyn fell and began to roll down a steep hill which had large boulders on its path. Had she not managed to stop she probably would have died, or certainly injured herself critically.
Once she had recovered we continued skiing, and probably made countless, mis- takes. But nothing happened, and all four of us are still around. Although we were terribly excited after we arrived at the bottom, our enthusiasm was somewhat dampened when we heard that the Swiss guides ski the black of the Videmanette after drinking and the lead guide goes down without poles but with an accordion.
It all goes to show that danger in skiing is relative, and if there was no danger what- soever, the only people who would ski would be non-risk takers like insider trad- ers. Two days after the Klosters tragedy, I had a little drama of my own. I had been overdoing it since my arrival in Gstaad, and on Saturday I arrived at the Eagle Club feeling very much under the weather. I sat with Jocelyn Stevens and Vivian Duffield and then went off piste-skiing with them and their guide. Jocelyn and Vivian had very short skis, and are both deep powder fanatics. I had on my racing skis and had a terrible time while we slalomed through deep, wet snow in the woods. Once we got down I felt I had lost some face and wanted to ski some more but I was having trouble breathing so I decided to call it a day.
Once in my room I called the doctor, who diagnosed yet another problem with my ticker, although nothing as bad as the last one in Greece. Which goes to show that had I dropped dead from a heart attack off-piste, all sorts of false rumours would have surfaced about death wishes, deadly off-piste allures, living on the edge and the lingering legacy of guilt. (Which my two skiing companions would not have suffered from, I am sure.) No, skiing off-piste and on dangerous slopes is what skiing should be all about. What the heir to the throne should do after a decent interval is to ski the Wang again. It is what Hugh Lindsay would have wished, I am sure.
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