Danny and the Round the Bend Ski Club (Part 2).
Mornings were torture. Everything froze. The ink froze in our pens. Shaving was quite out of the question; a Standing Order of the unit allowed us to grow beards for the duration of the Course (I believe this concession was unique in the RAF at that time). The results were very mixed.
Shared hardship bound us together, we formed a "Round the Bend Ski Club" for alumni of the School. The locals were good woodcarvers, they turned out a Club tankard with a metal liner (beaten out of old tin cans). It was embellished with a carving of a bearded figure hurtling down a slope on skis. *
We had a Club song, but all I can remember of it now was the refrain (to the tune of the "Camptown Races"):
"Oh, Suzannah, why don't you marry me ?
For I'm comin' down the Red Run with a bandage on my knee !"
They'd laid out a nursery slope close to the hotel. We kept ourselves warm and developed our ski muscles herring-boning up and snow-ploughing down with varying degrees of success. None of us had skied before, and I don't think our "instructors" had done much. We worked it out as we went along. They'd prepared a booklet of helpful hints, most of which described the various kinds of avalanches and how not to start one. It was not encouraging.
After the first ten days, we graduated to the upper slopes of the mountain. I can't remember its name, but it went up to about 10,000 ft. There were no skilifts, ** so how did we get up to the top of the aforesaid "Red Run" ? (I think it was the only run).
* I have it still somewhere, together with a set of "liar" dice (the prince of all bar counter games - it has the added advantage of greatly slowing down the rate of drinking).
** There are now. Gulmarg has been developed into a proper ski resort.
Ponies again. You rode the pony, the pony-wallah shouldered your skis (matchsticks for a hillman to carry), and led his beast. These mountain ponies needed to be very sure-footed, for in places they had to climb an ice staircase hacked out of the slope. Every so often a pony would slip, and you had to bale out smartly before your beast rolled on top of you.
At the top of the run the pony went down to pick up the next man (there were several ponies in the chain, of course). IIRC, the pony-wallah got As2 per trip, which was nothing to you, but would mean that he would gross As4 per hour. Reckoning a six-hour day, this was Rs1 As8 per day, or Rs45 per month. His beast got well fed for the first time in its life; the rest was an absolute fortune to the owner in an area where normally there was nothing coming in during the winter at all. In summer they herded their goats and tilled the tiny terraced fields, and of course there was the "tourist trade" of chaps on leave and a few civilians. But in winter they lived on their fat - until we came along.
There is no point in going into detail about the techniques taught on our descent, and in any case I've forgotten. Wisely, the "instructors" made sure that our cable bindings weren't screwed up too tight (was there a little turnbuckle ? - can't remember). Then when disaster struck (as it always did before long), the heel could rise a few inches before the safety strap at the back pulled the cable spring out of the boot groove and released the ski. This would be on the end of a bit of line attached to you to prevent it from escaping and reaching Mach unity on its lonely way down.
There was a sunny, sheltered spot somewhere at the bottom where you were pretty well on the direct line of the final schuss. Warmed with a mug of chai in a deck chair, you watched in growing amusement as a stick figure appeared from the trees at the the top of the last slope, and was now accelerating to the finish line. Body language can be interpreted from afar. Even foreshortened, you could see confidence melt into uncertainty, then doubt followed by apprehension, then the inevitable disaster, with arms, legs and skis flailing round in a cloud of snow and ice fragments.
Last part to follow. Goodnight, chaps,
Danny42C.
Many are cold, but few are frozen.