A
long way back to the top…
Excerpt from Bro
Dick – a remembrance
I don’t know precisely
when my brother Dick discovered skiing, but I do know where. It was at Strawberry up on
Highway 50. I know this because he immediately stuck a picture postcard of
Strawberry Lodge in the corner of the mirror in his bedroom, right across from
the picture of Teresa Brewer, his ideal woman. I doubt that they still have an
operating ski lift at Strawberry, but the lodge with its gables all along the
front roofline is still there. It didn’t take long for my brother to figure out
that there were far better places to ski, resorts like the old Sierra Ski Ranch
and Sugar Bowl, or Alpine Meadows and Heavenly Valley. He was hooked.
We should have saved his first set
of skis because they would be considered antiques today. They were made of
wood—I think it was hard maple—and the bindings were a lever and cable
contraption where the cable wrapped around a deep groove in the heel of your
boot. It was amazing that anyone could ski with this equipment and not end up
with knee surgery.
As technology progressed, Dick
upgraded his equipment and spent all the time he possibly could on the ski
slopes. He once told me that when the snow was good, the weather decent, and
the crowds small, skiing was the purest form of fun. Experience taught me that
he was right.
I had my first taste of skiing on
the bunny hill at Heavenly Valley with my friend Dillon Mini. He had tried it a
few times and told me that all I had to do was bend my knees, lean forward a
little, and try not to fall down. And that’s exactly what I did, zooming from
the top of the lift to the bottom in a perfectly straight line. No one said anything
about turning.
I’ve never taken a lesson, but when
I started tagging along with Dick, he took me aside at the bottom of the hill
and gave me a few pointers on some fundamentals, like side stepping, and
snowplowing, and how to make basic turns. Then he took me up to the top of the
hill and said, “Just follow me and do what I do.” My brother was a smooth,
controlled, elegant skier. He made it look easy. It seemed like he was always
in control, and I can’t remember him taking a bad fall, though I’m sure it
happened. I did my best to keep up with him.
Our favorite place to ski was
Heavenly Valley. The hill is so massive and the view from the top of the main
lift is breathtaking. We never tried to ski the face, mainly because I wasn’t
up for it, but there were numerous trails to take from the top that provided
all the challenge we needed. The great thing about Heavenly as far as I was
concerned was that you spent most of your time on the hill and less time in
line for the lift. It could take a half hour or more to ski all the way down
from the top before you had to queue up for the lift.
I have to confess that we got into
the habit of doing something that is a no-no. We’d drop down off the groomed
ski run and blaze trails down through the trees and the virgin snow. More than
once we got ourselves way down into a canyon and had to come sidestepping back
up to the main trail. Dangerous stuff, but man was it fun.
We were skiing at Heavenly one very
clear cold day and after several runs down the mountain, we went into the
warming hut at the top of the main chairlift to thaw out for a few minutes. We
ordered cups of steaming hot chocolate and sat down at a table next to a window
on the west side of the hut. The afternoon sun was streaming through the window
and the chocolate was delicious and before I knew it, I felt my eyes growing
heavy. I looked across the table at Dick and he was nodding off too. He grinned
at me and motioned toward the door. We finished our chocolate and headed back
out to the mountain. If we’d stayed there another five minutes, we’d have been
sound asleep. That was nearly fifty years ago, and I can still see my brother
sitting across the table from me in that warming hut. It was one of the best
days ever.
Dick had a couple of dreams, all
wrapped around his love of skiing. The first was to finish his bachelor’s
degree and I think he lacked about sixty units to reach that goal. He worked
out a plan to attend the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where he could
live with our Aunt Teresa and Uncle Dude. Aunt Teresa adored my brother and was
excited to have him stay with their family. The skiing tie-in was the
magnificent powder snow at resorts nearby such as Alta. For my brother, it was
like going to school in paradise. Unfortunately, he could never convince the
good folks of Utah that he was a resident, and the out-of-state tuition was a
deal breaker. He completed one year at Utah and then returned to California.
The other dream was to have a neat
little A-frame ski cabin somewhere in the Sierras. In the mid-sixties, my
brother got really close to realizing this one. He bought a lot at a newly
developed ski resort called Bear Valley and started pouring over plans and
architectural drawings. We even took a late summer trip to Bear Valley to check
out the site. Some of Dick’s friends from work came along and we camped at a
lake near the resort. On one of the days we were there, we found ourselves
standing at the top of what would be the main chair lift and we decided to hike
all the way down the hill that would be the primary ski run. As we started down
the trail, there was a neat little sign that said, “It’s a long way back to the
top.” We just laughed and went on.
If memory serves, it took about a
half hour to get to the bottom of the hill, and about two hours to work our way
back up. The sign wasn’t kidding. When we got back to the top, Dick popped the
trunk of the car and unloaded what he liked to refer to as a skier’s lunch. He
had packed salami and crackers and two kinds of cheese. There were grapes and
plums and nectarines. There was a cooler filled with ice-cold soft drinks and
beer. And, of course, Mom had sent along homemade chocolate chip cookies. I
swear food never tasted so good.
Dreams have a way of changing. My
brother never did build that cabin and he wound up selling the lot, but it was
a sweet dream while it lasted. Our cousin Margie was an accomplished artist and
Dick asked her to paint a picture of the Bear Valley ski run from photos he had
taken. That oil-on-canvass hung on the wall of his home for many years. I’m
sure it’s still around somewhere.
We should have had Margie add that
little sign: “It’s a long way back to the top.”
_____
