Often in the first decade in which someone learns to ski, they want to do it all year. As a result, a lot of summer skiing ideas have come and gone since I tried to do it in the 40s and 50s.
A lot of ski resorts and small hills close to a large population have tried a lot of different summer substitutes for skiing.
For example, in Orange County in Southern California, an entrepreneur sprayed Gunite on a 200-foot high, local hill and put up a couple of rope tows and then attached plastic bristle brushes of some kind all over the small hill so skis would slide and edges would grip. The resort was a success for a few weeks until a group of motorcycle riders did wheelies up the hill and ripped grooves in the plastic brushes and the investors declared bankruptcy.
Mount Baldy is 10,000 feet high and less than 50 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The operators promoted weekend skiing on straw for several years. They also offered Austrian folk dancing lessons, Bratwurst and ski jumping onto straw from a ramp that was 3-feet high. You had to buy a $5, single-ride lift ticket to get from the parking lot to the top of the straw-covered ski slopes. It is hard to enjoy making turns on straw when the thermometer is in the 90s and a thick layer of ugly, brown smog is at the bottom of the chairlift.
Over the years, quite a few resorts have installed Alpine slides. This is a plastic trough that resembles a bobsled run, but without the high speed and danger, plus you are sitting down while you are doing it. These slides, of course, are removable for the winter season.
But, after dad gets nicked for a bunch of $5 or $10 rides for each of his kids and their friends, they spend their summer vacation somewhere else that doesn’t have such a cash-drain for dad.
One year in my film, my son, Scott, filmed roller skis for me. Imagine roller blades with 6-inch wide wheels that stay on top of the dirt. He chose the knee high, spring-green grass near San Francisco and the roller skiers looked just as though they were skiing in deep, green snow.
Unfortunately, the roller skis crush and kill the grass so land owners are not too keen on letting the roller skis wreck their hilly pastures.
In the last two decades, mountain biking has replaced the thrill of downhill skiing for a lot of younger people. The chairlift will haul you and your bicycle to the top of the mountain, but the costumes of some riders speak of the danger of doing it. I think I’m too old on a hot, summer day to put on ice hockey hip pads, football shoulder pads, a motorcycle crash helmet with a chin guard, and go racing down a narrow, rock-covered, wooded trail just for the fun of it.
I was lucky because I lived not too far from the ocean and discovered the total involvement that surfing can wrap around you in the summer, and I found this out at a young age. I built my first surfboard in the seventh grade in wood shop in 1937, and my summers were completely booked up for the rest of my life, until surfing got too crowded because of the invention of the light surfboard, then I went on to catamaran sailing and then, eventually, windsurfing.
In the summer of 1937, there was a ski resort on Cahuenga Pass only 2 miles from Hollywood and Vine.
Sepp Benedicter had hauled a lot of pine needles down from the San Bernardino Mountains and covered a hill where Studio City is today. He attached one end of a rope tow to an oak tree and the other end ran around the rear wheels of his truck. On a good weekend, when it was not too hot, Sepp might have as many as 50 people riding his rope tow and taking ski lessons from him. There were a lot of dedicated Austrian skiers who were smart enough to get out of Austria before Hitler marched into their country. They led the ski schools at most of the major ski resorts in America until 1960. Some of them would spend the summer traveling and promoting skiing, and a few of them even had a ski movie to show.
In 1940, Sun Valley had Dick Durrance make a ski movie and they gave a copy of the movie, a railroad ticket and a movie projector to ski instructors to excite potential visitors during the next winter. And, during those years, beginning ski clubs began to build their own Nordic ski jumping hills, as well as ski club houses that they could sleep in during the winter, which are still in use by the next generations of members today.
When I got back from the South Pacific in July of 1945, I put my redwood surfboard in the back of the old Buick and went surfing at Santa Cruz. Stashed alongside my surfboard were my skis and boots. From Santa Cruz I drove east to Yosemite, picked up a friend and drove to the top of Tioga Pass where there was still some snow. We managed at least half a dozen runs each and enjoyed every one of them, including the climb to get them.
As the saying goes, “Been there and done that.” In between then and now, I have managed to get enough skiing in during the winter and a lot more than most people. I’ve been pretty lucky.
There is no substitute for a clear, blue sky on a January morning when it is just above zero and there are 8 inches of untracked powder and you are the first in the lift line waiting for it to start.
Warren Miller is history’s most prolific and enduring ski filmmaker. Visit warrenmiller.net or visit his Facebook page at facebook.com/warrenmiller.
