In 1968 I boarded a cheap steamer from NYC to Rotterdam to attend the University of Grenoble. The romance of life in France wore thin after a month. I was dirt poor, swept floors at a department store 6PM to midnight to eat and crash on a spare bed in a professor’s home. One night a letter was on my ratty pillow, a job offer to ski at the world class ski resort L’Alpe D’Huez. I jumped at the chance, passed the interview, and skied my heart out for four months. College? Who needs it when you can bomb down majestic peaks with fresh powder every morning?
I remember the first descent with a local who had adopted me like he’d found a lost dog. The lift operators turned a blind eye as we made an unauthorized ascent. We changed cable cars three times to reach the summit; in the early morning it was a frozen polar region. We ate the last of our food we’d filched from the cafeteria kitchen, finishing with a bar of rich dark chocolate. We locked into our skis in the cold blue shadows and started down the north face of Pic Blanc (3330m), the highest point of the ski area. Trying to describe the breathtaking views of the Alps including Mont Blanc, Mont Cervin, and the Meij don’t come close to the awe of feeling on top of the world. The cold air hurt my nose, I lingered a few more seconds, taking another look at jagged peaks of white majesty, and pushed off the landing area.
Jean Patrice was already 200 yards ahead. Never a racer, I had always been happy to just get down the icy Vermont black diamonds intact; I hustled to catch up. My edges sprayed the frost on last night’s two-inch snowfall, crunching a track on the virgin snow, nearly parallel to my ski mate. I tucked into a crouch, digging my edges into a turn, the cold stinging my eyes, the thrill overcoming any complaints. I crossed a steep patch of moguls, looked for Jean Patrice—but he’d vanished. We’d been skidding down a glacier covered with fresh snow. I slowed to wipe the tears streaming across my face, frozen in my eyelashes. His ski tracks disappeared into the mountainside. I snowplowed to a halt, my long, narrow skis forming a barely controlled V as I came to a tunnel drilled into the massive rock. Snow had been piled onto a wooden sled six by four feet with steel runners and a pair of handles for a pisteur to shovel three hundred pounds of fresh snow on it like a horse wagon carrying dirt. The pisteur monitoring this site had to harvest hundreds of pounds of snow every day to build up a skiable path as the tunnel carried skiers to the south-facing snowfield on the other side of the peak.
The so-called tunnel slope was notorious, I learned first-hand. Many skiers slipped on the frozen snow as they entered it at high speed. I crouched low, fearing to hit my head on the rock overhead, then carefully got back upright when it seemed safe, and in a few minutes shot out the tunnel connecting the glacier with the southern slope of the Pic Blanc. Jean Patrice was flying, getting air on a steep slope that took altitude differences I’d never seen. And we didn’t stop. I chased him until I was sure my burning thighs would collapse. We were on the world’s longest run at 16 kilometers (10 miles). We maneuvered down the ridiculously steep Cheminees du Mascle couloirs, the open powder field of Le Grand Sablat, the Couloir Fleur, and the Perrins bowl. We flew like birds, our ski tracks making art in the fresh powder on our 2200 m of vertical descent. We finally arrived at the valley floor and I was dead tired after skiing full bore for one-and-a-half hours without using ski lifts.
“Jean Patrice, I can’t walk, my legs are like rubber.”
“Ecoutez, if you want the pisteur job, you make this run every day for training.”
We released the frosted bindings on our skis, and I limped behind him as we walked a few meters to a café where I had a double espresso and a steaming croissant flaking in my fingers. I could have spent the day licking my wounds, waiting for my thighs to come back to life, but Jean Patrice would have none of it.
“Allez, Rico. Back to the station before we are missed.’ “Can’t we rest a few more minutes? My legs are shot.”
He pulled a face only the French are capable of, adding a harrumph for good measure. I staggered to the ski rack, put the long Rossignols over my shoulder as we hiked to the twelve-passenger ski bus that drove us from the valley floor back up the hairpin winding road to the base station. I slept soundly all the way.
Now I am a 75-year-old with an unhappy knee replacement, a severe asthmatic, and boast an emergency rebuilt heart with five new coronary arteries. The Sierras are currently buried in 30 feet of snow, my new French Rossignols are waxed ready to tear down the slopes, and my 81-year-old ski buddy is bugging me to buy a lift ticket like we have done religiously for 25 years.
But the heart of wisdom has finally penetrated. The titanium knee is not flexing in the cold air, the two shoulder replacements protest when I do yoga to warm up my daily workout, and I never leave home without an asthma inhaler to suck on when my breath gets ragged.
So, these old bones are done with the extreme downhill jaunts. I put the sweetest skis I ever owned on Craigslist for sale. There’s a pang of regret now and again when I check the webcams at Tahoe. Yet the steady advance of aging is upon me; the surrender of the madcap adventures of my youth does not go willingly. Just this morning I read a quote which has made the pilgrimage of growing old somehow more digestible:
Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop. RUMI
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
Great piece Rico!! Give up acupuncture and write Write WRITE some more!