The Lonely Skier

by Innes Hammond

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 snowman. 'It's coming on thick,' he said as I came up to 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 skier than myself. And skiing across fresh snow is not the same as skiing 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 skiing as the Christiana turn and, if Mayne could Christi, I wandered 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.