Most ski resorts shut down at the same time in April because many skiers have headed for a supposedly, warm beach somewhere. However, the ocean is still cold, so the skiers will likely spend their time huddled on the beach in the fog, while the bill is mounting on their rented surfboard and wet suit.

You can tell the affluent beach-goers because they have already spent a ton of money at their local tanning salon, and they are weeks ahead of the alabaster-white bodies of their skiing friends!

The really smart people have hung around the resort and been climbing for a run or two a day on the best corn snow in the history of the world, if they can’t take a lift. For climbing, if you are in shape and you leave early in the morning, you can climb about a thousand vertical feet an hour. After a strenuous climb and a glorious descent, part way, there is time for lunch and a bit of liquid. You can look forward to carving your skis in the one-half inch of delicious corn snow on the way to the bottom. You know enough to traverse until you find the just right, melted texture; then head down.

Some of my best memories of a seventy-three year career of making turns were carved on the south-facing bowls at Sun Valley. Usually I had already exposed enough film for my next movie, and the April day was reserved for my own memory bank.

Probably my best memory of spring snow was when we were coming down off of a glacier in Zermatt, Switzerland. The group I had been filming had gone on ahead in an effort to make the last gondola down that afternoon. With my heavy rucksack full of camera, film, lenses, batteries, and a weighty tripod, I was gliding along a four-mile traverse with the Matterhorn bisecting the scenery and rising skyward, as it easily shows why it is the most photographed mountain in the world.

To the left was the Theodel Pass, and in the late afternoon backlight of the sun, I saw a pair of skiers heading my way, while carving figure eights. I side-slipped to a stop, lowered my heavy packs to the ground, set up my tripod, got out the camera, and attached a long telephoto lens. I hooked up the heavy battery and watched for a turn or two as I composed and focused the scene in the viewfinder.

Then I thought, “Wait a minute. For the last forty years I have captured scenes such as this. I’m going to save this scene just for me.”

And I did. I can write about it forever because the old, old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words holds true, especially when the picture is as unbelievably beautiful as this one was. Maybe the next time I go to Zermatt I will turn my camera on for this special shot. In the meantime, most of the images that Don Brolin and I both gathered that day are grooved into a DVD whose name I cannot even remember.

The next morning, instead of flying to the glacier for more filming, we rode the gondola and then climbed to a special place where we could frame the Matterhorn exactly right for a very special shot. There, four skiers, together with Don and I, spent about an hour building the just right bump so that when the sun was in the center of the picture and the Matterhorn was in the right-hand side, Don could run the special 1,000 frames-per-second, high-speed camera as the skiers did tip drops in front of the sun.

That visual memory of Switzerland found a place in a short film called Free Ride that became a finalist for an Academy Award. If I had won an award, would it have changed my life? I don’t think so, because I have spent a lifetime with the absolute best career in the world--traveling the world with cameras and skis.


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.