Page 58 - Flathead Beacon // 1.22.13

58 | JANUARY 22, 2014
SPORTS
FLATHEADBEACON.COM

LURCHING FROM ONE
NEAR DISASTER TO ANOTHER. Warren Miller
Inside a Deep Freeze

W
HEN WE ARRIVED IN repeat any of that.
mid-December, after our I know that I have a 15 or 20 years left

semi-annual migration, we at the keyboard of a computer in order to
had to unload the big trailer and I had inish all of the stuf I still have stacked
to start taking my altitude medicine so I up on my desk, both here in Montana
can breathe my way through the winter.
and on Orcas Island. And that doesn’t in-
But no skiing today. The wind is clude my autobiography, which is nearly
screaming and howling and the snow is inished except for sorting through all of
driving horizontally. And unfortunate- the photographs of those years of making

ly, I won’t be carving turns in the wind- movies. While sorting through them the
blown powder snow tomorrow. When I other day I discovered the irst ski pho-
broke my back three years ago I tried to tograph that I had ever taken on Jan. 24,
get started again, but because of the fear 1940. I used a 39-cent Bakelite (plastic)
factor that hovered in my brain, it was Univex camera. It was on a small wind-
just not any fun for me. I crashed badly blown patch of snow high above Hemet,
three or four times. One crash was an Calif., in the San Jacinto Mountains.
out-of-control, near-miss with a lift tow- The skier was in my Boy Scout troop

er before hitting a snow fence.
and wearing knee-high leather hiking
It was then that I realized that during boots with a small pocket on the side of
73 years of skiing, I hadn’t fallen very of- one of them for a knife in case of a rat-
ten. Probably because most of the time I tlesnake bite. He also wore Levi Strauss
was making transportation turns with 30 pants and was riding on my Spalding,
pounds of camera gear in my rucksack. I non-laminated pine skis without edges
took lots of long climbing traverses to get and semi-adjustable leather toe strap

to that special place for the right camera bindings.
angles. When I irst started making ski Three hours after the ski photo was
movies, my small leather rucksack held taken we were all in a jumbled heap up-
a simple, hand-wind Bell and Howell side down when the car we were riding in
16mm camera with three lenses and that lipped over and landed upside down in a
rucksack could only hold an additional ditch. I broke my arm and dislocated my
six rolls of color ilm and my passport.
wrist. We got home very late from that
Twenty years later a much bigger Boy Scout trip to a day in the snow.

canvas rucksack contained an Arrilex But the enjoyment of any experience
with a heavy 24 to 240mm lens, 20 rolls is hard to reduce to the printed page. In
of ilm and a battery belt. This rucksack twelve hours it will be 2014. This winter
Did you know that
approached 40 pounds and that did not has been brutal. There is a ship is stuck
include my tripod.
during in Antarctic ice pack during the
most businesses When I fell and broke my back, my height of summer there. That ice is so
spend more than sense of balance abandoned me. When I thick and hard that that an ice breaker
took the lift up to the top for lunch I pon-
they should on has temporarily given up and the passen-
dered what would happen if I had anoth- gers are being evacuated by helicopter.
telecommunications er major spill while skiing and Laurie had When 16-foot thick sea ice is buck-
to push me around in a wheelchair for all ling and bobbing around in 20- to 30-foot
up to 35% more?
of the years I have left. That last spill cost ground swells, I certainly don’t want to
me 17 days in the hospital and more than be anywhere around that kind of brutal
a month of using a walker. I don’t want to
summer weather.
OUR CONCEPT IS SIMPLE.

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telecommunications book page at facebook.com/warrenmiller. For information on his Foundation, please
systems and needs.
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