Spring is the time to contemplate an issue like “when was the last time you did something for the first time?” I am here in my studio on a mountainside in Montana; I am looking at a sequence in an old ski movie of mine. It is about the children in a small village in India, which is tucked up against the border of Tibet, high in the mountains. The underlying subject is: Fun is where you make it.

The villagers lived in the village that is near a summer resort called Manali. It is a place where the English used to go during the summer to get away from the 130-degree heat of New Delhi. The village is called Solang, which is located above 9,000 feet and surrounded by apple and walnut orchards.

The average family income here is between two and three dollars a month. However, it is a village without poverty, and is also a village where they have fun skiing. However, none of the villagers have ever seen a rope tow, much less a chairlift.

The local skiing coach there told our camera crew that the kids sometimes climb as high as 15,000 feet and then ski down in great powder snow. At that altitude, these small kids are getting less than half of the amount of oxygen that you and I get at sea level.

Their ski equipment had to be seen to be believed. Their skis were between thirty and forty inches long, an inch and a half to two inches thick, and two to three inches wide, made out of a single piece of heavy walnut. That’s right, walnut. It was the only wood available locally and strong enough for skis. Apple wood is too brittle, and a pair of thirty-five-inch long skis is about as flexible as a bar of steel of the same dimensions.

The skiing coach had somehow been able to get the worn out, band-saw blades from a lumber mill to use as metal edges for the skiis. The cut up pieces of band-saw blades were a little wider than the skis and about five inches longer. The extra five inches was turned up in front and became the tip for the skis. The kids had to be careful because once the length of the ski and the band-saw blade were matched up, the blade was screwed to the bottom of the walnut ski. One edge of the skis was quite smooth and the other edge was simply the teeth of the band-saw blade.

Their ski boots were 12-inch high rubber galoshes, and their bindings were made out of vines that they threaded through a hole in the ski and then are wrapped several times around the galoshes. This gave the kids some extra support, and at the same time, more edge control while skiing. However, the children had to be extra careful making turns on the saw tooth edge side of the skis.

Ski poles were just that, poles. The kids cut off a straight sapling, trimmed off the branches, and used them without baskets or handles. There was not a single pair of gloves of any kind amongst the almost hundred kids who skied for my cameraman, Brian Sissleman. Their jackets were all the same color and the same size. It was as though all of the unsold, 1958 Nehru-style jackets had wound up in Solang!

The many young boys and the one girl who was allowed to ski with them, jumped off of the roofs of houses, made credible wedeln turns, and every week they had a mass-start, downhill, which was a sight to behold. The first prize in the weekly downhill was a used, bicycle inner tube. It was quite a valuable prize because the winner could cut it up and make better, more modern bindings than those made of dried vines.

The most impressive part of the group of young skiers was the size of their smiles.

The next time we complain about a two minute wait in the lift-line, or have to stand in line at the mountain-top restaurant, let's think about the size of the smiles of those simply skiing in Solang, India.

There were no words in the Manali dialect for chairlifts, snow grooming, man-made snow, or plastic boots, but there were at least a dozen words that all translated to the same, simple, three-letter word, FUN.

As you search for an exotic ski vacation location for next winter and read websites and brochures about skis, boots, bindings, snowboards, clothing, cost of accommodations, etc, think about the kids in Manali, India. Make sure you have as much fun as my young, spring-skiing friends in India.


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.