The Lonely Skier

by Hammond Innes

  ‘Really,’ I said, ‘I must work.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘My God, you take life seriously. What does a day more or less matter? You should have been born in Ireland. Life would have been more fun for you.’ He swung back to the piano and began thumping out one of Elgar’s more solid pieces, looking at me over his shoulder with a twinkle in his eyes. He quickly changed into a gay Irish air. ‘If you change your mind,’ he said, ‘I’ll be leaving about ten.’

  The others were drifting in now, attracted by the music and the smell of bacon and eggs frying. Conscious of a growing audience, Mayne switched to Verdi and began to play seriously again. Only Joe was not interested. He looked tired and liverish. ‘Does he have to make a damned row so early in the morning?’ he grumbled in my ear. ‘Like talking at breakfast—can’t stand it.’ His face looked grey in the hard sunlight and the pouches under his eyes were very marked.

  The mail came up, after breakfast, on the first sleigh. With it was a cable from Engles. It read: Why Mayne Keramikos unmentioned previously. Full information urgent. Engles.

  A few minutes later Mayne came over to me. He had his ski boots on and was carrying a small haversack. ‘What about changing your mind, Blair?’ he said. ‘We needn’t make it a long day. Suppose we’re back by three, would that be all right for you? It’s not much fun going for a ski run by one’s self.’

  I hesitated. I did want to get some writing done. On the other hand, I couldn’t bear the thought of being cooped up in the hut all day. And Engles wanted information about Mayne. It would be a good opportunity to find out about the man. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll be ready in about ten minutes.’

  ‘Good!’ he said. ‘I’ll have Aldo get your skis ready. No need to worry about food. We’ll get it at the hotel at Carbonin.’ His eagerness was infectious. Any one less like a man who had once led a gang of deserters I could not imagine. And suddenly I did not believe a word Keramikos had said. It was too fantastic. The Greek had just been trying to divert my attentions from himself.

  As I came down in my ski suit and boots, Joe raised his eyebrows. He did not say anything, but bent over the camera he was loading. ‘Care to lend me that small camera of yours, Joe?’ I asked.

  He looked up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t trust that camera to any one. Why? Think you can get some shots that I can’t? Where are you off to?’

  ‘Monte Cristallo,’ I told him. ‘Mayne says he can show me a glacier and some fine avalanche slopes. I thought they might produce some good shots. It would be grander stuff than you can get down here.’

  Joe laughed. ‘Shows how little you know about camera work,’ he said. ‘It’s all a matter of angles and light. I haven’t been more than a thousand yards from this hut, but I’ve got everything. I don’t need to go trapesing all over the Dolomites to get my background.’

  ‘I wish I had your sublime self-confidence,’ I said.

  I suppose I had spoken with a shade of bitterness, for he looked up and patted my arm. ‘It’ll come,’ he said. ‘It’ll come. A couple of successes and you’ll never listen to advice again—until it’s too late. I’m at the top now. Nobody can teach me anything about cameras. But it won’t last. In a few years’ time younger men will come along with new ideas which I shan’t be able to see, and that’ll be that. It’s the way it goes in this racket. Engles will tell you the same.’

  I left him then and went out on to the belvedere. Mayne was waiting for me there. Just a couple of successes! It was so easy to talk about it. And I hadn’t even begun a script. The wood of my skis was actually warm to the touch as they stood propped against the balustrade in the sun. But though the sun was warm, it made little or no impression on the snow, which remained hard and frozen.

  We started up across virgin snow until we hit the track to the Passo del Cristallo. It was not really a track—just a few ski marks lightly dusted over with a powder of snow that had drifted across them during the night. The run looked as though it was little used. ‘You know the way, I suppose?’ I asked Mayne.

  He stopped and turned his head. ‘Yes. I haven’t done it this year. But I’ve done it often before. You don’t need to worry about having no guide. It’s quite straightforward until we get up near the top of the pass. There’s a nasty bit of climbing to do to get to the top of it. We’ll be just on ten thousand feet up there. We may have to do the last bit without skis. Then there’s the glacier. That’s about a kilometre. There should be plenty of snow on it. After that it’s quite a simple run down to Carbonin.’ He turned and plodded on ahead of me again, thrusting steadily with his sticks.

  I think if I had had the sense to look at the map before we started out, I should never have gone on that particular run. It is not a beginner’s run. And it looks a bit frightening even on the map. There’s at least a kilometre on the way up to the glacier marked with interrupted lines, denoting ‘difficult itinerary.’ Then there is the glacier itself. And both on the way up from Col da Varda and on the way down to Carbonin, the red hachures of avalanche slopes are shown falling down towards the track on every side.

  As we climbed steadily upwards, zig-zagging in places because of the steepness of the entrance to the pass, I had a glimpse of what was to come. The outer bastions of Monte Cristallo towered above us to the left, a solid wall of jagged edges. To our right, a great field of snow swept precipitously down towards us, like a colossal sheet pinned to the blue sky by a single jagged peak. It was across the lower slopes of this that we were steadily climbing. There was no track at all now. The wind whistling up the pass had completely obliterated the marks of the previous day’s ski-ers. We were alone in a white world and ahead of us the pass rose in rolling downs of snow to the sharp rock teeth that marked the top of the pass. The sunlight had a brittle quality and the bare rock outcrops above us had no warmth in their colouring. They looked cold and black.

  I could, I suppose, have turned back then. But Mayne had a confident air. He was never at a loss for direction. And I was feeling quite at ease now on my skis. The stiffness had worn off and, though the going was hard and I was out of training, I felt quite capable of making it. It was only the solitude and the lurking belief that we should have had a guide on a run of this sort that worried me.

  Once I did say, ‘Do you think we ought to go over the top on to the glacier without a guide?’

  Mayne was making a standing turn at the time. He looked down at me, clearly amused. ‘It’s not half as bad as landing on a shell-torn beach,’ he grinned. Then more seriously, ‘We’ll turn back if you like. But we’re nearly up to the worst bit. See how you make out on that. I’d like to get to the top at any rate and look down to the glacier. But I don’t want to do it alone.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I’m quite all right. But I just feel we ought to have had a guide.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said quite gaily. ‘It’s almost impossible to lose your way on this run. Except for a spell at the top, you’re in the pass the whole time.’

  Soon after this it began to get very steep. The pass towered ahead of us, itself like the face of an avalanche slope. And on each side of us, we were hemmed in by real avalanche slopes that swept high above the pass to the dark crests. It was no longer possible to zig-zag up the slope. It was too steep. We began side-stepping. The snow was hard like ice and at each step it was necessary to stamp the ski edge into the frozen snow to get a grip. Even so, it was only just the inside edge of the ski that bit into the snow. It was hard, tiring work. But there was nothing dangerous about it so long as the skis were kept firm and exactly parallel to the contour of the slope.

  For what seemed ages, I saw nothing of the scenery. Indeed, I did not even look up to see where we were going. I just blindly followed the marks of Mayne’s ski edges. My eyes were fixed entirely on my rhythmically stamping feet, my mind concentrated on maintaining my skis at the correct angle. The higher we climbed the more dangerous it became if the skis faced fractionally down the slope and began to s
lide. So we progressed in complete silence, save for the stamp of our skis and the crunch as they bit into the icy snow.

  ‘Snow’s drifted up here,’ came Mayne’s voice from above. ‘Have to take our skis off soon.’

  A few feet higher up I saw the first sign of rock. It was a small outcrop, smooth and ice-rounded. Then I was up with Mayne. The slope was less now. I stood up and looked about me, blinking my eyes in the sunlight. We were standing on the rim of a great white basin. The snow simply fell away from under our feet. The slope up which we had climbed fanned out and mingled with the avalanche slopes that came in from either side. I could scarcely believe that those were our ski marks climbing up out of the basin—the tracks showed clearly like a little railway line mapped out on white paper.

  I looked ahead of us. There was nothing but smoothed rock and jagged tooth-like peaks. ‘That’s Popena,’ Mayne said, pointing to a single peak rising sharply almost straight ahead of us. ‘The track runs just under that to the left.’ The sun was cold—the air strangely visible, like a white vapour. It was a cold, rarified air and I could feel my heart pumping against my ribs.

  A little farther on, we removed our skis. It was just drift snow here and, with our skis over our shoulders, we made steady progress, choosing the rock outcrops and avoiding the drifts.

  At last we stood at the top of the pass.

  The main peaks were still above us. But they only topped our present position by a few hundred feet. We were looking out upon a world of jumbled rocks—black teeth in white gums of snow. It was cold and silent. Nothing lived here. Nothing had ever lived here. We might have been at one of the Poles or in some forgotten land of the Ice Age. This was the territory of Olympian Gods. The dark peaks jostled one another, battling to be the first to pierce the heavens, and all about them their snow skirts dropped away to the world below, that nice comfortable world where human beings lived. ‘Wesson should bring his camera up here,’ I said, half to myself.

  Mayne laughed. ‘It’d kill him. He’d have heart failure before he got anywhere near the top.’

  It was cold as soon as we stood still. The wind was quite strong and cut through our windbreakers. It drove the snow across the rocks on which we stood like dust. It was frozen, powdery snow. I could sift it through my gloved hands like flour. Here and there along the ridges a great curtain of it would be lifted up by the wind and would drift across the face of the rock like driven spume. There was no sign of the blue sky that had looked so bright and gay from Col da Varda. The air was white with light.

  Mayne pointed to the great bulk of Monte Cristallo. The sky had darkened there and the top of the mountain was gradually being obscured as though by a veil. The sun was only visible as an iridescent light. ‘Going to snow soon,’ he said. ‘Better be moving. I’d like to get across the glacier before it comes on thick. Later it doesn’t matter. We’ll be in the pass. If it looks bad after lunch, we’d better come back by Lake Misurina.’

  He was so confident and I was so reluctant to face the steep descent into that basin that I raised no objection to going forward. Soon we reached the glacier and put on our skis. It was very little different to the rock slopes that encompassed it, for it was covered with a blanket of snow. Only here and there was there any sign of the ice that formed the foundation for the snow. The going was much easier now. The slope was quite gentle and our skis slid easily across the snow with only an occasional thrust of our sticks. The brightness slowly dimmed and the sky became heavy and leaden. I did not like the look of it. You feel so small and unimportant up there in the mountains. And it’s not a pleasant feeling. You feel that one rumble of thunder and the elements can sweep you out of existence. One by one the peaks that surrounded the glacier in a serrated edge were blotted out.

  We were barely halfway across the glacier when it began to snow. At first it was just a few flakes drifting across our path in the wind. But it grew rapidly thicker. It came in gusts, so that one moment it was barely possible to see the edges of the glacier and the next it was almost clear, so that it was possible to see the encircling crests that swept upwards to bury their peaks in the grey sky.

  Mayne had increased the pace. I became very conscious of the pounding of my heart. Whether it was the continued exercise at that altitude or nervousness I do not know. Probably both. In all that world of grey and white, the only friendly thing was Mayne’s back and the slender track of his skis that seemed to link us like a rope across the snow.

  At last we were across the glacier. The snow was falling steadily now, a slanting, driven fall that stung the face and clung to the eyes. The slope became steeper. We began to travel fast, zig-zagging down through tumbled slopes of soft, fresh snow. It became steeper still and the pace even faster.

  I kept in the actual track of Mayne’s skis. Sometimes I lost sight of him in the snow. But always there were the ski tracks to follow. The only sounds were the steady hiss of driven snow and the friendly biting sound of my skis. I followed blindly. I had no idea where we were going. But we were going downhill and that was all I cared. How Mayne managed to keep a sense of direction in that murk I do not know.

  I suddenly found him standing still, waiting for me. His face was hardly recognisable, it was so covered in snow. He looked like a snow man. ‘It’s coming on thick,’ he said as I came up with him. ‘Have to increase the pace. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. Anything so long as we got down as quickly as possible. The smoke of our breath was whipped away by the wind.

  ‘Stick to my tracks,’ he said. ‘Don’t diverge or we’ll lose touch with each other.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I assured him.

  ‘It’s good, fast going now,’ he added. ‘We’ll be out of the worst of it soon.’ He stepped back into his tracks where they finished abruptly and pushed off ahead of me again.

  I was a bit worried as we started off, for I did not know how much better Mayne was as a ski-er than myself. And ski-ing across fresh snow is not the same as ski-ing down one of the regular runs. The ski runs are flattened so that you can put a brake on your speed by snow-ploughing—pressing the skis out with the heels so that they are thrusting sideways with the points together, like a snow-plough. You can stem, too. But in fresh snow, you can’t do that. You adjust your speed by varying the steepness of the run. If a slope is too steep for you, you take it in a series of diagonals. You can only go fast and straight on clean snow if you can do a real Christi—and the Christiana turn is the most difficult of all, a jump to clear the skis from their tracks and a right angle turn in mid-air.

  I mention this because it worried me at the time. I have never got as far in ski-ing as the Christiana turn and, if Mayne could Christi, I wondered if he would realise that I could not. I wished I had mentioned the fact to him when he suggested increasing the pace.

  But soon my only concern was to keep my skis in his tracks. We were going in an oblique run down the shoulder of a long hill. Mayne was taking a steep diagonal and we were running at something over thirty miles an hour through thick, driving snow. It is not an experience I wish to repeat. I could have followed the line of his skis on a gentler run and zig-zagged down to meet it when I got too far above his line. But that would slow my pace and I did not dare fall too far behind. As it was, the snow was quite thick in his tracks by the time I followed on. In places they were being half obliterated in a matter of seconds.

  The snow whipped at my face and blinded my eyes. I was chilled right through with the cold and the speed. In places the snow was very soft and Mayne’s skis had bitten deep into it. This made it difficult for me at times to retain my balance.

  At the end of that long diagonal run, I found him waiting for me, a solitary figure in that blur of white and grey, the track of his skis running right up to him like a little railway. I stepped out of his tracks just before I reached him and stopped by running uphill. I looked at him and saw that he had brought himself up standing by a Christi. A wide arc of ploughed-u
p snow showed where he had made the turn.

  ‘Just wanted to find out whether you were all right on a Christi,’ he called to me.

  I shook my head. ‘Sorry!’ I shouted back.

  ‘All right. Just wanted to know. We’ll soon be in the pass now. That’ll give us some shelter. I’ll go easy and stick to diagonals.’

  He turned and started off again. I joined his ski tracks and followed on. We reached a steeper part, made two diagonals down it, with standing turns at the end of each. Then followed a long clear run across a sloping field of snow.

  It was like a plateau—like a white sloping desk-top. As I came to the edge of it, I realised suddenly that it was going to drop away sharply. I remember noticing how the edges of Mayne’s ski tracks stood out against the grey void of falling snow beyond the lip. Then I was over the edge, plunging, head well down, along tracks that ran straight as a die down a long, very steep hillside of snow.

  I should have fallen before my speed became too great. But I had confidence in Mayne’s judgment. I felt sure that the steep descent must end in a rise. Mayne would never have taken it straight otherwise. The wind pressed in an icy blanket against my face. Already I was travelling at a tremendous pace. The snow was thick and I could not see more than forty or fifty yards ahead. I kept my legs braced and supple at the knees and let myself go. It was exhilarating, like going downhill on the Giant Racer.

  Then suddenly the snow lifted a little. Mayne’s tracks ran down into the bottom of a steep-sided little valley of snow. The opposite slope of that valley seemed to rise almost sheer. It was like a wall of snow, and I was hurtling towards it. And at the bottom I could see the flurry of churned-up snow where Mayne had been forced to do a Christi. His tracks ran on away to the right along the floor of the valley.

  My heart leaped in my throat. There was nothing I could do about it but hope that my skis would make the opposite side and not dig their points in. I dared not fall now. I was going too fast.