On the big Island of Hawaii, there is an observatory at 14,000 feet above sea level. For a short time during the winter there is a fairly good-sized snowfield.
Years ago, I was invited to show my ski film in Honolulu and was sponsored by a local ski shop in downtown.
The showing of the film was not one of my better evenings since it was put on in a geometry classroom at the local high school. Early the next morning, most of us got on the all-inclusive ski Hawaii tour, flew to the big Island and drove from sea level to that 14,000-foot altitude of Mona Kea where with each faltering step up the hill I’ve never walked or climbed slower.
There were surfer dudes in Hawaiian shirts and surfing shorts and mainland transplants in 20-year-old Norwegian sweaters, baggy stretch pants and 10- and 15-year-old skis.
If my memory serves me correctly, that snowfield had about 200 vertical feet from top to bottom. It was good, corn snow, loud and crinkly.
I did return one more time to the volcano to produce a film about a new design for a pair of skis that only sold about 30 pairs because they looked so weird and didn’t work.
And, I do remember showing in a geometry class somewhere else. It happened in Boise, Idaho. The sponsor of the movie owned a small ranch nearby. We had dinner at his house before going to the show and he had to give some pills to a heifer. I had no idea how one feds pills to a heifer so I ended up with heifer gunk all over my tweed suit and red polka dot necktie and had to try to clean up in the school’s bathroom.
I think there were about 25 or less people watching the film at $1 each. After the show, I bedded down in my bright, red panel truck before driving to the next venue.
My show sizes varied hugely and I’d never really know what to expect until I made it to the theater, It all depended upon the promotional abilities of the ski club putting on the show.
Just as I did the showing in Honolulu by narrating it live, I did that for every show for the first 14 years I was in business. One of the main reasons I did them that way was that I had no idea how to put my voice onto the film and put it in the mail and go surfing while it was being shown somewhere else.
I have no idea and I don’t have a record going back to when this whole process of producing a ski film with sound started. I do know that I never had a bad day in all those years of traveling and showing. I had a few bad days traveling from one town to the next, speeding, getting lost and almost every problem that can be connected to an automobile I had borrowed or rented in those years, but the showing each night was always new and exciting. I was lucky to have people want to come see and hear the film and me.
Riding down from that snowfield on the big island of Hawaii after a day of making turns and seeing the Pacific stretched out below me, I had no idea I would later spend 12 years living on the north/weather shore of nearby Maui and windsurfing all summer and living in Vail, Colo., those same years and skiing all winter.
As we bounced down the dirt road finally reaching an altitude where I could again breathe freely and since this was an all-inclusive Hawaiian island ski tour, it included a luau in the suburbs of Hilo. The luau was held at the Kon Tiki bar and bowling alley and the less said about the party the better.
The next day, I flew to Honolulu and then on to Los Angeles to quickly get started at the editing bench for another sequence for the next year’s film.
It’s been a nutso life.
Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski filmmaker. Visit warrenmiller.net or visit his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller.
