[Concluded]
Apparently Jim smiled all the time because he was stoned all the time. Who wouldn’t be with the world wired like he had it? As I’d never tried skiing stoned before (and don’t smoke cigarettes), he had to show me all the tricks of lighting up and staying lit on a chair lift. I quickly discovered the first problem was lighting the match; and the second was keeping it lit. Working behind four cupped hands, I tried igniting the joint from the match’s initial flare-up. All I got was a nose full of sulfur. Next, I tired working inside my parka; I quickly saw the dangers of self-immolation with that technique. I was getting desperate; Jim was still smiling benevolently. Then he drawled, “Hey, wait a minute; I’ve got a lighter in here somewhere.” He fumbled in his overall pockets awhile and drew out a Cricket.
Luckily, Warm Springs is a long lift, and by the time we hit the off ramp, I was totally loaded. I wasn’t sure my legs were still operational. I had some Raichle Red Boots, which weighed about ten pounds apiece, some off brand metal skis, and Look bindings. In that get-up, I felt like a life-size Bozo balloon doll; knock me down, my feet stay planted, and I pop right back up. Of course, that’s not what happens when your balance is disrupted while skiing – usually your posterior hits the snow, and hands and feet reach for the sky. But it’s a good attitude to have while skiing, to think your feet will always stay below you, especially if you’ve been up all night, and have reached that state of muddled euphoria where your brain is having a tough time distinguishing between aural and visual sensory input.
Forgetting my sister and her friends, we took off down the slope. Upper Warm Springs starts with a gentle track down to tree-line, then reaches a short, steep face (usually well-moguled) and opens in a long steady evenly pitched trail 2000 vertical feet to the bottom of Warm Springs and Plaza lifts. When packed smooth, as it was this day, it is a cruiser’s paradise. The morning had been overcast, but the sun had been out for an hour or so, softening up the dry hard surface of the snow until it had the wet slick smoothness of a newly Zamboni’ed ice rink. I was still in the skid and slide stage of ski ability, and Jim was no better, but the sun, the snow, and the vaporous refreshment allowed me total enjoyment of what I was doing. For the first time I experienced a feeling of disconnection between my observing, calculating self, and the part of me that was doing the skiing. The first two or three turns were tentative, but after I realised I could actually ski in this seemingly debilitated condition, I began to enjoy myself totally. Meanwhile, my thighs and lungs were getting a workout. Desperately, they tried to send messages upstairs, but the circuits were blocked. I mean, I was lost in the scene somewhere, and I wasn’t going to let little things like shaking rubbery legs or fiery dyspnea in my chest stop my fun. Reaching the bottom, I skidded to s stop, landing on my butt. Jim was already in a similar position, leaning back against the post of a “Slow Skiing Area” sign, letting the sun shine flush against him as he watched the skiers slide by.
“Whatcha doin’?” I asked.
“Look at these people!” he shouted, although I was only two feet away.
I looked. There was a rhythm going on up there; everyone swinging back and forth, taking one turn to the right for each turn to the left. Skiers of all abilities, each coming down the hill in his or her own unique fashion, yet the whole scene had a consistent pattern. The whole hill was wired into one organic unit, each skier running on his or her own little track, like a subway or an electric street car. Of course, every now and then, someone would jump the track, but, hey, they always got back up, maintaining the flow. As each skier floated by me, the visual image seemed to precede the muted scrape of skis against the snow, much like a fast jet passing overhead. I focused on the sound of the hill, a rhythmic swishing, accentuated by a dopplered ebb and flow as someone passed by. The noontime sun blazed directly into my face, burning the scene into an abstraction of reality.
“Yeah,” I said.
That evening, after I’d slept a few hours, my sister took us out bar-hopping in downtown Ketchum. Start with a few beers at the Pioneer, cross the street and check out the Alpine, drop in next door for a serious Wild Turkey session at the Yacht Club, then outside for a bracing breath of frozen air, going all the way across the street to Slavey’s. In Ketchum, barhopping is just that – you can get drunk four times over and never walk more than 100 yards.
On the way to Slavey’s, Dave looked over his shoulder toward the summit of Baldy, where the snowcats and Thiokols were crisscrossing the slopes, their headlights careening wildly off the trees and across the moguls. An eerie sight, especially for one who’s been up all night, skied all day, then had six rounds of Wild Turkey.
“What’s that up there? Dave said.
“What?” my sister replied, looking somewhere in the direction of Hailey, down Main Street. At least she was looking out for cars as we stood there stupidly in the middle of the road, leaning on the snow pushed into piles along the center line.
“Up there, those lights!”
One of Leigh’s friends, farther gone than the rest of us, raced to the curb, lay down in the gutter, and tried to hide under his ten-gallon Stetson. “My God, it’s true! They’re landing – they’re landing!”
Someone said, “They’ve already landed, and they’re disguised as snow-cats!”
“Come one, what’s going on up there?” Dave pleaded.
“Well, I said, the Chinese need lights, you know.”
My sister eyed me askance. She was used to my cockeyed, but perfectly logical stories to explain almost anything.
“What?!” he said, eyes flaming as red as his hair.
“Sure, the Chinese. One hundred thousand of ’em. They go up there every night to polish the moguls.”
“Polish the moguls?”
“Yeah. See, Sun Valley is famous for its bumps. They like to keep them shined, so they look sharp in the sun. Polish ’em every night when it’s not snowing. The Chinese work cheap – they’re descendants of the guys who put the railroad up here.
“Do they really do that?” Dave asked Leigh. He’d only known me for four months, so he hadn’t quite figured me out yet.
“Well …” she started.
“They work mostly on Limelight,” I continued. “They get the undersides really smooth. It makes for easier skiing.”
“OK, you’re so smart,” my sister smirked at me, “We’ll go up there and ski Limelight under the lift tomorrow. Then you’ll really see Chinese moguls.”
Imagine if you will an Idaho January thaw, with the Chinook winds coming in and warming up the slopes, maybe even bringing in some rain to make the bumps nice and wet. Then the freeze came, and the bumps turn into Chinese moguls, burnished hard and smooth on the underside, with frozen grapefruit-sized clumps of snow covering their uphill portion. You’ve skied them before, cursed them as you slid around them or rammed your skis into the irregular, unyielding upper surface. Well, now you know how they got that way. One hundred thousand Chinamen, out there at midnight, polishing up the bumps, just for your enjoyment.
My attempt at skiing them the next morning was, of course, a total physical and mental disaster. I had no idea how to maneuver my stiff 200 cm skis in the impossibly small chutes between the massive bumps, which looked like a bunch of white asteroids scattered randomly down the slope. My Raichle Red boots, like all boots of that era (known as the Year of the Jet Stick – remember?), were not high backed, and were incredibly unyielding in all directions of flex. It felt to me as if the mountain were trying to create a new set of ankles for me about five inches above the original ones. When I got home that night, I had a perfect ring of bruises, a purple donut (or maybe a bagel) around each leg where the boot tops had been torturing me.
I became convinced I knew nothing about skiing and couldn’t possibly learn, especially with the big boys all around me who were able to ski straight down the face of Limelight, suffering no trauma other than what appeared to be repetitive shoulder dislocation as they planted their poles in the ice atop each bump with every turn.
Seeking to placate my feelings, my sister took me to the only place on the mountain without any bumps – the Bowls. Great: six-day old powder with a two inch thick breakable crust on top. Perfect for my ego. I told myself I really must learn how to ski someday.