On the way down hill, it hung loosely over a half dozen automobile wheels bolted to a convenient tree. As it dragged through the snow on the way up it absorbed moisture, and since it was made of hemp, it could absorb a lot of water, so much that it took a strong person to hold onto the rope as he or she rode up the hill.

To ride a rope tow up hill, you stood with your hand out and grasped the rope, gradually increasing your grip until you started moving up the hill at the same rate of speed as the rope. To get up to that velocity your hand usually squeezed out a quart or more of water from the wet hemp; the water could only land on your pants and drip down your parka sleeves.

The rope slowly became twisted as it made its way through the sheaves on its down hill trip. If you, going up hill, wore a sweater and held the rope next to your body, it automatically wrapped up your sweater in the rope. There were no safety devices on rope tows until sometime in the 1950's. Thus, when you got to the top and the rope began to climb high up into the shack where the automobile engine was running, a large part of your sweater would continue on with the rope and you would fall to the ground, half-naked and scared for your life.

Despite all of this, you could ride a rope tow all day for just a couple of dollars. By dark you where exhausted. You fell asleep in the back of your car or wherever you stayed.

Most of the rope-tow resorts were built and run by men who had vision. Dave McCoy was the king of the rope tow for a lot of years. Dave used to start his rope tows at eight in the morning and run them until it was too dark to make turns. I used to drive over seven hundred miles round trip, on a two lane road, from Manhattan Beach, CA to Mammoth, to spend the day hanging onto one of his two rope tows. At night I slept in my truck.

The friends that rode along with me bought the gas and an oil change, and they had to sleep outside in the campground. If it was snowing they slept under the picnic tables. And if it wasn't, they slept under the stars.

The cost of building a rope tow was the cost of an automobile engine from a wrecked car out of a junk yard, eight or ten automobile wheels, and several thousand feet of hemp rope. Hemp rope in those days was army surplus and cost ten to fifteen cents a foot, or a couple of hundred dollars in total. Discounting labor, the cost of building a rope tow was less than a thousand dollars.

Then the entrepreneurs used rope tow ticket earnings to eventually go into unbelievable debt so they could order their first chairlift.

This led to people not being tired because they could ride up the hill instead of hanging onto the rope. So the people waiting in long chairlift lines used their excess energy to complain about how far they had to drive to stand there.

Time has forced a lot of changes in the ski industry, as it has in all industries, but I know that rope tows sure offered many opportunities for me to make funny movies of people trying to hang onto them. I even know one guy who broke his leg going UP the rope tow.

The rope tows also allowed me, and many others, a chance to learn how to ski at a price I could afford while I was still in high school in 1939 and earning just three dollars a week delivering newspapers.


Editor's Note: This is one in a Tahoetopia series written by Warren Miller, legendary ski cinematographer. For other columns by Warren, click on Warren Miller.