The eastern city limits of Pasadena rise abruptly up to Mount Wilson where there is a 100-inch telescope that was a state-of-the-art telescope until sometime in the 30s or 40s. Driving by Mount Wilson on a winding, narrow road will get you to Mount Waterman. There in the late 1930s, Lynn Newcomb and his son built the second chairlift in California.
In 1937 this is where I made my first wobbly attempt at traversing across a ski slope. My pine skis were 3 or 4 feet long, with leather toe strap bindings that when the heels of my boots would go out into a snow plow position, they hung out over the skis, while my skis remained side-by-side going straight ahead until I ran out on the gravel on the far side of the small patch of snow.
The early chairlift was by today’s standards rickety and fragile. The season of 1942-43 was a long time ago and, if my memory serves me correctly, the parking was only alongside the narrow two-lane road with no convenient place to make a U-turn, there was no restaurant and meager bathroom facilities. However, the snow was white, it was on the side of a hill completely full of giant bumps, the tops of which were good corn snow and the faces of which were hard ice. Offset edges were unheard of back then and ski boots that gave lateral support did not appear for almost a decade.
Several times near the end of my ski photography career, I’ve put 1942 equipment on current really hot skiers and they could barely make them turn. However, the front end of the ski was turned up, they had metal but dull edges, almost no camber or side cut, but including bindings they were the best ski that $15.95 could buy.
During that winter of 1942-43, I probably made six weekend trips to Mount Waterman using my sister’s Buick, loaded with five passengers and all of our skis, poles and peanut butter sandwiches necessary.
We did not want to waste time sitting down to eat, so we stopped by the car and got our peanut butter sandwiches and in the 30- to 40-minute wait for a single chair were able to finish lunch.
At the top of Mount Waterman, there was a small rope tow on the only nearly flat part of the world. Once I found out how to ride the rope tow, I realized that I could make four or five turns and grab the rope and go right back up.
The first time I rode the rope tow at the top of the mountain, it was too late in the afternoon so I ended up with the worst ski run in my memory. The steep face of Waterman had frozen in the late afternoon sun and it was a question of traversing as slow as I could go until I got to a tree I could grab and do kick turn and go back across virtually the same set of bumps. I distinctly remember a couple of traverses where I wound up 10 feet higher than when I started the traverse.
I think everybody that learned to ski after the age of 5 can remember those first timid traverses, the equipment, tired muscles, sunburned faces and wet gloves and clothes from hanging onto the rope tow.
That first winter on Mount Waterman I can only remember two or three good skiers. One of which had come south from Seattle to work at Lockheed in the war effort.
The skis of that era had almost no torsional rigidity and when you tried to make the tips hang onto the hard-packed snow your only recourse was to lean as far forward as possible from the ankles to push the tips harder into the snow. Needless to say, this did not work well, but neither did we.
The safety binding, or release binding, as it is called today, had not yet been invented. Among all of my friends who I skied with, not one of us ever broke anything except our bank account.
One weekend we had gone to Malibu to go surfing and the waves were only inches high so we decided to go to Mount Waterman on Sunday and while we’re at it, why not take a couple of dates along? We knew that neither one of them skied but they could take a ride up and down on the chairlift while my friend and I were riding up and skiing down. The four of us ate peanut butter sandwiches at the top of the mountain and we decided to try to show off in front of our dates. As they got on the chairlift, we figured that we could ski underneath the chairlift and they could watch us ski from top to bottom.
As I said before, the chairlift was very slow, however, it was a great deal faster than we could ski and they were waiting at the bottom when we finally got there.
I can’t recall ever having a bad day on a pair skis, however there were few challenges along the way.
Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski filmmaker. Visit warrenmiller.net or his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller. Read more of Warren’s stories at TheTahoeWeekly.com.
