SKI-ING IN A FORTNIGHT
By. MICHAEL ROBERTS
ONE summer's day, a yedr or two ago, Paris enjoyed the spectacle of a type who skied clown the steps below the Sacre-Coeur, and the same indiridd" distin- guished himself a little later by being towed along the Champs Elysees on skis at forty miles an hour. For myself, though I once spent a snowless Christmas in the Jura rattling my bones over roots and stones, I prefer more favourable conditions, and when this year we arrived at the Gare de Lyon and found that it was raining- almost everywhere, I decided firmly that we must go to Val d'Isere where there would be, at any rate, a metre of snow beneath the slush. Janet, as a beginner, agreed. When we came back to the station after dinner, a difficulty arose. 20.35 hours is not 10.85 p.m., and our train had just gone. We decided to go to Modane by the 23.20: after all, Modane and Lanslc- bourg have a well-established reputation for winter sports—there was an embassy from the Court of Tuscany which crossed the Mont Cenis in 1643 and went back up several times for the pleasure of sliding down on sledges made of torn-off branches ; and in the eighteenth Century there was an Englishman who enjoyed the sensation so much that he stayed at Lanslebourg all the winter.
In these days of sanctions there are few travellers towards Italy, and we had a third-class compartment to ourselves all the way. In the early morning, we passed through the Jura : it was raining, and there LIS no snow below 4,000 feet. At St. Jean de Maurienne things looked a little better ; but at Modane it was still raining, and we joined four old ladies with chickens in baskets, three young women who had lost their skis, three chasseurs Alpine who had overstayed their leave, a dozen small boys in charge of a cure, and one consti- pated-looking tax-collector, in the electrobus for Lansle- bourg. At Lanslebourg, sleet was falling ; the Hotel Valloire was closed. The proprietor, remembering us as summer clients, gave us a meal in the bureau, and talked gloomily of the avalanches and lack of accom- modation higher up the valley. It was 11.7 km. to Bessans, and it took us 3i hours. We arrived at Bessans utterly exhausted and stumbled down into the cellars of the old Hotel du Mont-Iseran (the existence of the Mont-Iseran was disproved 50 years ago, though the mountain is still marked on the official maps of the P.T.T.). At Bessans, in the winter, the whole world lives underground with the cattle, and we dined in an atmosphere warmed by the steaming breath of three cows, two mules, and a calf. But our foreign accents and our expensive-looking skis earned us a bedroom and hot-water bottle in the frozen world above. We were glad to come down for breakfast to the animal heat of the underworld. It was still snowing.
All the way out Janet, who was determined to learn Ski-ing in a Fortnight (or rather ten days), had been poring over Arnold Lunn. She was perturbed because her skis were not, as he recommends, eight to ten inches wide. We spent the first day struggling up and down slopes in which we were buried to the waist. The snow was damnably soft and wet. Once we saw an old countryman and his wife ride by on a mule about the size of a small rocking-hOrse, and we envied the speed and ease of their motion along the track to Cueigne. 'The next day, however, was clear ; and we found slopes on which we could practise snow-plough and stemming turns, and watch the avalanches across the valley- falling with the incredible slowness of an express train moving across a distant landscape. One more fine day, with the sun shining on the bronze spire of the. village church, and we had .appreeiably improved. We had, in fact, reached Chapter IV, though of course we lacked the finish of the village children who rushed straight down the slopes on their home-made skis, feet wide apart and body bent well forward from the waist, sticks waving wildly. The evening offered some excitement : it was New. Year's Eve and the courier came up from Lansle- bourg for the first time in four days. For all we knew, M. Laval had been defeated in the Chamber ; M. Herriot had formed a government, had joined Mr. Eden at Geneva and imposed a petrol embargo on Italy ; Mussolini had bombed the British Navy and his indothitable troops had struggled over the Col Perdu and were even now descending the valley. The Petit Dauphinois, that model of all provincial newspapers, appeared to be reassuring, but we decided to go up to Bonneval and sec. In due course, if the weather held, we might even cross the Col d'Iscran to Val d'Isere.
At Bonneval a small hotel, the Chalet-Hotel des Glaciers des Evettes, has just been built, and we were the first visitors. The proprietor is a political refugee with a fund of stories of the days when he paid for Comrade Mussolini's dinners in Lausanne; and of the troubles in Turin before the March on Rome. He is a good innkeeper too, and his wife an excellent cook. We were the only guests, and each morning we conferred with her about the white hares and partridges which hung among the icicles outside the window. One by one they disappeared, but the weather didn't improve : all day long the avalanches fell on both sides of the valley. Once we struggled up a thousand feet towards the pass, but the tourmezzte was howling, the track was buried under six feet or more of dangerous, heavy snow, visibility was limited -to about twenty feet. We came back down and worked through Chapter VI of Mr. Lunn.
The last morning came, and I woke up, listening, The drip-drip of melting snow had stopped, sunlight came through the shutters, and there was ice inside the window- pane. We dressed and packed, had breakfast and paid our modest bill. By half-past eight we had said good-bye. fastened our seal-sldns to our skis, and were trudging up the crisp, firm slopes to the beginning of the gorges. Slowly the peaks of the MaurienneAlbaron, Ciamarella, Charbonel—came into sight under an indigo sky, deeper than the sky of summer: There was no cloud anywhere, no sign of an avalanche, and the waterfalls were frozen to twisted lace. The only sound was the swish of our skis and creak of our sticks as the points moved through the hard snow. But avalanches are deceitful things: it was cold, but not cold enough for certainty, and the foot of the funnel-shaped gullies coming down into the gorges was always a place to avoid. Above 8,000 feet the snow had been crusted by the wind and care was needed. It was half-past two before we reached the top of the Col.
The rest was easy. But ski-ing on practice slopes is different from running down three thousand feet with heavy rucksacks. There were no cliffs to fall over, but plenty of sudden changes of snow to pitch the top-heavy runner head-first into a drift or leave him falling back- wards while his feet ran suddenly away. Two or three skiers had come up towards the Col. from Val d'Isere, -not knowing the way down. The kind of pride which is more effective than the most earnest determination kept us on- our feet. We raced them down to the valley, contouring round the miniature gorges and the pinewoods. It was not very elegant ski-ing and would not have qualified any- body for Mr. Lunn's two stars, but it was good fun, and we had made a journey from one place to another and overcome a few difficulties, and been in places where no one had been for a month ; and when we got down to Val d'Isere, we were the arrivals of the day. Our old friend Pierre Bond, at the Hotel de la Galise, brought out the Genepy • de Maison : M. Bock at the HOtel Parisien, returned the Cinzano which we offered for old times' sake by offering a couple more. " Tomorrow," we said to ourselves, " we must sneak off down the valley before our obvious clumsiness --destroys our ski-ing reputations." The last thing I remember of that night is a reunion at the -Had des Glaciers, with the wireless politelyasking if we had tried Banania, the penny breakfast, or if we suffered from griping pains in the stomach. "Messieurs et Mesdames," I was saying, as the room lurched like a sinking ship, " Nous aeons bu tout cc quc nous pourons.. Satire qui pent." .
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