Labor Day, the first Monday in September has come and gone and this is the time of the year to dust off your skis, boots, and poles. But, first, check for mildew in your boots!

When I returned from a filming trip to Europe one spring, the snow on the last day had been really wet, spring snow. I had a lot to do when I returned to the office, so I just threw my ski boots on the shelf in the back of the garage and forgot about them. The following Christmas, when I was leaving for Sun Valley to start a new movie, I found out that I had left wet wool socks in the boots. The combination of the hot garage, plastic boots, leather and wool had merged into some fantastic, colorful form of fungus or mildew that I was afraid to touch.

September is also a time to make your first appointment at the local gym to start getting in some semblance of shape so that when you finally go skiing, you can get your money's worth on your lift ticket. Don't be surprised if the gym is filled. Just wait a month to start your exercises because it is still 120 days before the chairlifts start running and the snow level is down below 10,000 feet.

September is when ski shops start having their pre-preseason, ski discount sales. Some of them offer as much as 127% off of the suggested manufactures retail price. Every newspaper you pick up has a preseason ski and snowboard sale advertised. Pre-preseason ski sales started in 1953 when my good friend, Scott Osborne, who with Olaf Ulland, started Osborne and Ulland ski shops in Seattle, decided to have a preseason bargain sale. Ever the innovative marketer, Scott took the word bargains and spelled it backwards and called it Sniagrab. The sale has since been replicated all over the rest of the skiing world. Scott'sSniagrab sale generated such large crowds that sometimes the lines went all the way around the block.

Almost 60 years ago, Scott was simply liquidating all of his leftover merchandise from the year before. But everyone wanted to buy an advertised pair of Head skis for $10, which back then retailed for $85. Scott had bought a few pairs of Head skis at retail and then advertised them to get everybody to come to hisSniagrab sale. Some people got in line 24 hours before the doors opened, and they had their route carefully mapped out from the front door to the ski rack in the back of the store. Once the doors opened, they ran like crazy to grab one of the pairs of Head skis. (I learned later that Howard Head, who didn't allow discounting, had a handful of spies trying to find out where the skis had come from. Later, for some time, O&U was the largest dealer of Head skis. Howard had forgiven the fellows.)

In Octobers, I took my feature length ski films to towns everywhere to get people excited about the coming ski season. I have been told that showing a Warren Miller feature-length ski film in October was the same as showing a porno film on an aircraft carrier that is was one week away from port! You can watch it, but you can't do it.

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.