“Several people came on the tour because they thought they were hot skiers and would wind up in my annual film. They weren’t as hot as they thought, so that never happened (except in some of the comedy sequences).”
As I stepped off the train in Kitzbühel, Austria, I had two jobs ahead of me. One was to film the European portions of my annual ski film and the second was to lead a tour of 14 skiers on a once-in-a-lifetime ski trip. I had promoted this adventure from the stage as I traveled that fall and winter, narrating my film in person.
I was in for a bit of a surprise when I went to the tourist office and discovered that the executive at Scandinavian Airlines who was to make our reservations didn’t think anybody would sign up for the tour so he didn’t bother making reservations either in Kitzbühel or any of the other resorts we would be visiting. I had my work cut out for me. We were somehow able to find a room for everyone in 14 different hotels and pensions.
I wired the people in Los Angeles that I had dealt with telling them the problem. Somebody flew down from Oslo the next day and they were followed a day later by somebody from the airline office in Los Angeles. They assured me that they would visit the rest of the resorts and make things right. Making things right consisted of finding a room in 14 different hotels rather than all in one. Since these people had paid in advance for room and board, it was extremely difficult to figure out where to eat, where to meet and where to ski.
As you can well imagine, my film was put on hold until we sorted out this incredible mess and by the time I got through complaining to the airline, I was able to get the land portion for all of these tourists refunded.
My compensation for selling these 14 round trips from New York to Zurich, Switzerland, was a free ticket and free room and board. We were scheduled to visit Kitzbühel, Zurs, Arosa, Davos and Zermatt and without a reservation at any of them. This was in March at the height of the ski season in Europe and not an easy thing to accomplish. Until they heard that their land portions of the trip were to be refunded, I had 14 angry customers and I understood their complaints.
After I showed them some of the endless runs in several of the resorts, and they started enjoying the trip, I finally got to take a few shots for my movie.
The cable railways were the highlight of the trip, especially the one in Zermatt, Switzerland. If viewing the Matterhorn in all its glory doesn’t change a person’s perspective on things, I don’t think they have a mind.
In those three weeks, between the 14 people we had good times, but I should’ve learned my lesson and never done a second one. When I stayed in Zurs that first year, I spent four nights sleeping in a small bathroom on a sheet of plywood on top of a bathtub. The good part was that I had a quilt between the plywood and my body. The bad thing was I couldn’t go to bed until after 11 at night when the bathroom was shut down and when I got dressed for skiing in the morning I had to put all of my clothes and belongings in my suitcase and it was put in a closet somewhere for the day. I think that I led three tours to Europe before I learned my lesson.
To get those European photographs of skiing in the early days, most of the skiing was on south slopes because the Swiss ski resorts had been tuberculosis sanitariums in the years before they were ski resorts. The only cure for tuberculosis in those days was sunshine and fresh, mountain air. An Englishman talked one of the hotels in Murren, Switzerland, into staying open during the winter so that he could bring people over to ski and that was the beginning of the European ski resorts.
I have a lot of memorabilia from those days, most of which is in boxes somewhere in the basement of our Orcas Island home. One thing I do have is no bad memories of those days, only good memories, such as 14 people and myself all clomping onto a Scandinavian Airlines plane in our ski boots to save excess baggage weight. We were only allowed 44 lbs. of stuff when you fly to Europe and a man from Montreal on one of my tours took his 44-lb. curling stone with him instead of a pair of skis. I found out after we got there that he put most of his clothes on under his overcoat to save weight.
Over the years, several people came on the tour because they thought they were hot skiers and would wind up in my annual film. They weren’t as hot as they thought, so that never happened (except in some of the comedy sequences).
The money I saved, of course, was spent on Kodachrome, so I could bring better movies to the audiences across America.
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.
