Early December of 1949 in Squaw Valley a group of us were getting checked out by our new boss Emile Allais on understanding the concept of his French ski technique.
The four of us that Emile had hired were just getting to know each other and trying to show off our ability to copy Emile’s style. The snow was scarce so we had to ride down on the chairlift from tower 20. On what became our last run of the day we were heading down into a flat spot that was called Mud Lake. In the summer it occupied an acre or so of prime Squaw Valley real estate and was a 10-minute slog in the flat to the loading and unloading platform at tower 10. There were probably only a couple of inches of snow on top of the ice-covered pond when Emile made some turns and then glided across the flat to the other side of the lake. He was followed by Dodie Post, then Charlie Cole, Alfred Hauser and then it was my turn.
Apparently, I outweighed the other instructors enough that when I was supposed to be gliding across the center of the lake the ice all around me was breaking under the added weight. Fortunately for me the water was only knee deep, but there I stood in the mud on the bottom of Mud Lake with the broken ice swirling around my knees and the shock of the cold water making me want to get out of there as quick as I could.
As I tried to get a ski up on the ice and get out of the cold water, the ice broke under that ski as soon as I put weight on it. Emile and the other instructors were laughing so hard they weren’t able to help me in anyway. I was probably six or eight ski lengths from the edge of Mud Lake and wearing long thongs to hold my boots in my toe irons, so bending down and plunging my hands and arms into the icy cold water was out of the question.
Finally I was able to crack the ice in front of my knees so that I was able to shove pieces of it aside and make my way toward the edge of the lake. The sun had gone down behind Squaw Peak a couple of hours before, so I was fighting the cold.We’ve all had an ice cream headache where your brain seems to freeze from eating too much ice cream too fast. I had an ice cream leg ache from too much freezing cold water around the lower half of my legs.
The entire event probably had me in knee-deep water for 10 minutes, but it seemed like it was going to be for the rest of my life as I got into ever-shallower water. Now all I had to do was stagger to the loading platform with sopping wet ski boots and ice-covered skis. By the time I side-stepped up the ramp to get on the chair, the ice and snow covering me from just below the knees was worth a lot of laughs to the other people standing in line to ride down on the chair.
I had just enough adrenaline left to untie my leather long thongs and somehow break the ice that had my boots frozen into my bindings. I left my skis right where I finally got out of them and headed for the barracks at the ski school I was living in.
I finally got into my room and got out of the boots and the rest of my mud-covered clothes and into a hot shower. I stood under the hot shower as long as I could and still get to dinner before they stopped serving.
When I got back to my room later the melting ice and mud had dripped on the heater vent and the entire dormitory smelled like low tide in a swamp. It was a week or so before I got the smell of thawed-out Mud Lake out of my ski boots. My worst memory of the entire Mud Lake traverse was how much Emile laughed on the way down on the chair lift. I did learn a good lesson, however, and that was never to expect sympathy from a Frenchman for your stupidity of executing the Mud Lake traverse.