It had been a long, tough, hard-working day for my four skiers, my cameraman Don Brolin, Ricky Andenmatten, one of our two guides and me. The four skiers were John Reveal, an American ski instructor and one of the first Americans to be certified in the French Ecole de Ski in Chamonix, Bob Hamilton and Jim Stelling, who were both waiters in the Ore House in Sun Valley, Idaho, and Pat Bauman, who worked hard all summer in Sun Valley so he could ski every day all winter.
It was near the end of April in 1970 and we caught the early morning cable railway that was full of employees for the hotel and restaurant at the summit of the Gornergrat. With typical Swiss precision, our helicopter that had been furnished by the Swiss national tourist office landed within five minutes of when we climbed off of the train. From there a 10 minute helicopter ride took the place of at least 10 hours of climbing on skis. We landed in the saddle between two peaks called Castor and Pollex.
I always played it safe when filming in this type of glacial terrain that was crisscrossed by crevasses, many of which were concealed by windblown cornices that had merged and formed ice bridges. I didn’t want to lose any of my skiers or Don Brolin in one of those crevasses. I felt it was cheap insurance to hire another guide to bring up the rear. That way, no one had to climb back up in a hurry if an accident of any kind happened.
Don Brolin had brought along a heavy, high-speed camera that was capable of taking 1,000 pictures a second. When taking pictures at that high speed, it takes 20 seconds to show one second of real-time action.
The long ski descent had been routinely incredible, if you consider miles of deep, dry and untracked powder snow routine. For our two cameras, it was just another standard day in paradise while taking our time and making each camera set up count. “Traverse over there.” “Climb up there and jump off that ice block.” “Climb back up and jump again so we can get a different camera angle with the high-speed camera.” It didn’t matter whether we were getting long shots, medium shots, or close-ups, every single one of them was a keeper because of the incredible background of the glacier.
Stopping for lunch was out of the question for two reasons:
1. We didn’t bring any lunch.
2. Even more important, all of us were so excited about the scenery and what we were getting on film, being hungry was the least of our concerns. We were in awesome terrain and in the company of incredible skiers. It seemed as though only a few minutes had passed when our guide Ricky told us we would have to hurry to catch the last gondola down to Zermatt. To do that we would have to stay high in a long left traverse for about three miles. The 45 pounds of camera gear in my rucksack was getting very heavy and the tripod was, as usual, incredibly awkward and I was slowly dropping behind the guides and the skiers.
Almost directly in my line of sight was the Matterhorn, the most beautiful mountain in the world. To the left was the Theodal Pass to Italy. I was traversing in the tracks laid down by the four skiers, the guides and Don. Soon I was about five minutes behind them when I again glanced over at the pass to Italy and this time I saw two back lit skiers who were making long figure eights, which looked like black pencil lines being drawn on a piece of white paper. I quickly put down my rucksack, set up my tripod and mounted my camera. I was about to push the button to get one more beautiful shot to go with the many others that Don and I had gotten that day.
Suddenly I thought, “Wait a minute, I have spent the last 20 years taking pictures of everything that has moved on skis above 6,000 feet during the winter.” I selfishly decided to save this incredible scene of the Matterhorn and the skiers just for myself. No one in the world except me will ever know how beautiful that scene really was.
I regret that for the rest of the world, but it still winds through my mind’s eye … beautiful.