Mayne pointed to the great bulk of Monte Cristallo. The sky had darkened there and the top of the mountain was gradually being obscured as though by a veil. The sun was only visible as an iridescent light. ‘Going to snow soon,” he said. ‘Better be moving. I’d like to get across the glacier before it comes on thick. Later it doesn’t matter. We’ll be in the pass. If it looks bad after lunch, we’d better come back by Lake Misurina.’
He was so confident and I was so reluctant to face the steep descent into that basin that I raised no objection to going forward. Soon we reached the glacier and put on our skis. It was very little different to the rock slopes that encompassed it, for it was covered with a blanket of snow. Only here and there was there any sign of the ice that formed the foundation for the snow. The going was much easier now. The slope was quite gentle and our skis slid easily across the snow with only an occasional thrust of our sticks. The brightness slowly dimmed and the sky became heavy and leaden. I did not like the look of it. You feel so small and unimportant up there in the mountains. And it’s not a pleasant feeling. You feel that one rumble of thunder and the elements can sweep you out of existence. One by one the peaks that surrounded the glacier in a serrated edge were blotted out.
We were barely halfway across the glacier when it began to snow. At first it was just a few flakes drifting across our path in the wind. But it grew rapidly thicker. It came in gusts, so that one moment it was barely possible to see the edges of the glacier and the next it was almost clear, so that it was possible to see the encircling crests that swept upwards to bury their peaks in the grey sky.
Mayne had increased the pace, I became very conscious of the pounding of my heart. Whether it was the continued exercise at that altitude or nervousness I do not know. Probably both. In all that world of grey and white, the only friendly thing was Mayne’s back and the slender track of his skis that seemed to link us like a rope across the snow.
At last we were across the glacier. The snow was falling steadily now, a slanting, driven fall that stung the face and clung to the eyes. The slope became steeper. We began to travel fast, zig-zagging down through tumbled slopes of soft, fresh snow. It became steeper still and the pace even faster.
I kept in the actual track of Mayne’s skis. Sometimes I lost sight of him in the snow. But always there were the ski tracks to follow. The only sounds were the steady hiss of driven snow and the friendly biting sound of my skis. I followed blindly. I had no idea where we were going. But we were going downhill and that was all I cared. How Mayne managed to keep a sense of direction in that murk I do not know.
I suddenly found him standing still, waiting for me. His face was hardly recognisable, it was so covered in snow. He looked like a snowman. ‘It’s coming on thick,’ he said as I came up to him. ‘Have to increase the pace. Is that all right with you?’
‘That’s all right,’ I said. Anything so long as we got down as quickly as possible. The smoke of our breath was whipped away by the wind.
‘Stick to my tracks,’ he said. ‘Don’t diverge or we’ll lose touch with each other.’
‘I won’t,’ I assured him.
‘It’s good, fast going now,’ he added. ‘We’ll be out of the worst of it soon.’ He stepped back into his tracks where they finished abruptly and pushed off ahead of me again.
I was a bit worried as we started off, for I did not know how much better Mayne was as a skier than myself. And skiing across fresh snow is not the same as skiing down one of the regular runs. The ski runs are flattened so that you can put a brake on your speed by snow-ploughing — pressing the skis out with the heels so that they are thrusting sideways with the points together, like a snow-plough. You can stem, too. But in fresh snow, you can’t do that. You adjust your speed by varying the steepness of the run. If a slope is too steep for you, you take it in a series of diagonals. You can only go fast and straight on clean snow if you can do a real Christi — and the Christiana turn is the most difficult of all, a jump to clear the skis from their tracks and a right angle turn in mid-air.
I mention this because it worried me at the time. I have never got as far in skiing as the Christiana turn and, if Mayne could Christi, I wandered if he would realise that I could not. I wished I had mentioned the fact to him when he suggested increasing the pace.
