Page 59 - Flathead Beacon // 7.20.16

WARREN’S WORLD WARREN MILLER ON A VOLCANO
IWITH KILLY
impending eruption and so it became di cult keep the camera steady. It was already 3 p.m., 30 minutes before the anticipated eruption.
The helicopter pilot reluctantly took us back to the crater for one more frun. The crater was a lot louder and some ash was now coming out in a steady volume but the shots of Killy and LaCroix against the smoke and ashes were really great.
Killy and LaCroix did not stop where we wanted them to but skied right on down to where the helicopter was wait- ing with its engine running and blades already turning. By the time Don and I had our cameras put away into our ruck- sacks, the helicopter had taken o for the 10-inute ride back to the hotel. That meant that Don and I had to wait 20 min- utes before it would be our turn to load up and escape the eruption.
The pilot in his tweed suit, necktie and saddle shoes set the helicopter down within 20 feet of where we were standing and it was the quickest helicopter loading of my lming career. Don and I climbed in and as we were fastening our seat belts the engine revved up, the tail lifted up and as we gathered speed and altitude, we slowly turned left, headed for the hotel and looked out the windshield to the left. We watched Narahoe erupt.
Later in our studio in Hermosa Beach, I got to preview the show for the sponsors. The word that came down from the suits in the agency made us take out any refer- ence to the volcano because they said no one would believe anyone would be that stupid to do what we had documented on Kodachrome lm.
Amazing footage like that languishes, I presume, in the lm company’s vault today.
This column was originally published in 2013.
DON’T MISS THIS!
Lowest priced green fees in the valley!
T HAD BEEN RAINING NONSTOP for 13 days and our 12-man lm crew had been unable to get a single action
shot of 1968 Olympic gold medal winner Jean-Claude Killy during that September in New Zealand. The meter was running and we were already way over budget. The volcano Ruapehu just would not let us go to work. However, the nearby vol- cano of Narahoe stood bright and shiny only six miles away in the New Zealand winter sun.
We stood in the rain and watched it blow up four days in a row. My beginning geology course in college told me that it took twenty-four hours for this semi-ac- tive volcano to build up enough pressure to erupt once again.
If I planned it properly we could hire a helicopter and y Killy, my cameraman Don Brolin, Leo LaCroix and myself to the summit and get a lot of pictures of skiing on this active volcano and leave by the afternoon and have one of the 13 episodes of “Killy Skis the World” nally in the can.
Brolin and I loaded up our camera gear and skis and in 10minutes we were looking down into a smoking, roaring crater of a volcano building up pressure. We quickly got some good shots of the smoke and sur- rounding snow as we waited for Killy and his teammate Leo LaCroix to come back in the helicopter.
Filming them shoving o from the rim of the crater with the smoke belching out in the background and skiing along the edge of the ashes and rocks was pretty spectacular. How can anyone miss get- ting good ski action of a man who had just won 17 World Cup races in one season and three gold medals in the winter Olympics.
After ve or six trips up and down the volcano, it began to get a little dicey because we were getting close to its esti- mated eruption time. On one run the mountain was really jiggling with the
WOW!
$5 off $15 off GREEN FEES ON GREEN FEES ON CAMERON 9 CHAMPIONSHIP 18
Offer expires 8/2/16. May not be combined with any other offer or discount program.
Pro Shop 756-4547 • Tee Time 756-4530 www.golfbuffalohill.com
JULY 20, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
59