Snowed In—But Not Under

HANOVER is a dot on the map of New England. It is a cluster of ostrich-plume elms on the head of a hill. It is a village with an unused railroad station and with communication by bus or taxi from a railroad junction lying beside a couple of rivers six miles away. It is a few white and red brick buildings seen in a flash by motorists speeding on Route 10 to the White Mountains. It is a couple of dozen streets of Dutch colonial homes whose owners in winter require chains on their cars to get to the main street. It is a community with suburbs composed of Outing Club cabins with front lawns of unmown wildernesses of hemlock and spruce.

Not entirely satisfied with such genial simplifications, the Administration and the Faculty like to suggest that Hanover is the seat of Dartmouth College, an institution of higher learning. The undergraduates emphasize that it is also a skiing center.

Snow falls. Instead of relaxing into a winter's sleep beneath white blankets of oblivion, Hanover rushes out of doors. From the outside men and women head joyously for the big world of the village and after a week end return regretfully to the sticks of New York.

But the village does not become cosmopolitan in a minute. The larger vision is achieved gradually. One development might begin with a freshman from Texas, who, having been bucked off a steer once, fears no inanimate object and is willing to try the big ski jump the first time he clamps down his Kandahars. With a freshman from California in a dormitory room in Lord, he listens to a pair of sophomore Outing Clubbers from Minnesota and Vermont warming up about equipment. Skis are not just a pair of boards; and even if a snow bunny looks too freshly lacquered up, a man is no jack rabbit with long ears if his pride considers soberly the right kind of equipment. There is no sense in looking like a hick. Secondhand skis are about as satisfactory as a secondhand plane—the owner is riding for a fall.

From the small world of the dormitory room, the freshmen emerge into the larger and more sophisticated world of the sports stores, the Dartmouth Co-Op, Campion's, and Art Bennett's, where they pick up information about what is new in skis. They hear about skis made entirely of aluminum alloy with removable footplates, with built-in, shatterproof camber, and with strong cutting edges for ice; skis done in bright colors with a baked enamel finish, bright brown, royal blue, briar rose, and pale green; skis of birch, instead of the usual hickory, constructed of many thin layers and impregnated with resin glue for lasting camber; hinged skis, which can be folded up in small space for the benefit of those using taxis, railway stations, and trains; and skis with plastic running surfaces called Temporite.

IN SHOPPING AROUND, the freshmen fall under the spell of questions and answers bandied back and forth between salesmen and upperclassmen. Can lacquer and wax be applied at the same time? Can a man with lungs and heart compete successfully if he turns his back on all the different waxes for cold and warm, dry and wet, corn and powder, freezing and melting, soft and crusty snow? Well, for five years Dartmouth could not win a crosscountry race until Bob Meservey, head coach after Walter Prager left in 1942 to go with the Mountain Troops, did a lot of experimenting with different waxes and snow conditions, and then his team won.

What will it be: Kempe's base lacquers, base waxes, and top waxes? Victor Sohm's Red, Blue, Orange, Goldglister, and Paraphite? Hiilimann's Swiss waxes, A-21, A-24, A-27, A-Skare, and A-X? Faski in plastic tubes with an aqua-green for base and a plasticized parafin for spring snow? Kiva preparations from Finland? Otto Schniebs' S-50 Ski-Lac, a plastic in liquid form that is too flexible to crack? Skiglissen that takes two weeks to dry?

And what about boots, gentlemen? Will you settle for the well known American names of Bass with the exclusive Bass V strap or of Sportmaster with the specially fabricated wood worked in between the inner sole and the outer? Or will it be a work of art done by hand in a little Swiss valley where the women have goitre, or this jewel from Norway that is out of this world?

And now bindings. The Anderson and Thompson quick release safety cable, self adjustable, designed to cut down by three-fourths the accidents caused by lateral twists? But have a look at this new Nefracta (that's Swiss for "Cannot Break Your Knee") safety binding from Switzerland, which has a built-in footplate that releases under improper pressure from extra bad spills? Hjalmar Hvam's Saf-Ski or Tavi Automatic with no kneeling required?

THE TEXAN and Californian are out on the golf course now. They are doing a Christie and standing up. They are riding the tow in the wonderful world of Oak Hill, "L" sticks hooked about that part of their anatomy designed by benevolent nature for hooking. From the top they see the College at their feet, and they nod in agreement that they have come up in the world.

These freshmen are bright and ambitious. They have done some work on the bumps there and memorized them. Now they are headed for harder lessons at Gilbert's and Bunny's at Woodstock and are peering over the edge of the famous leg-breaker there. On one of the small hills there they fall and brush snow quickly from their pants just as good skiers do and pretend that it is their first spill and glare back at the offending snow.

Though they eventually conquer the killer-diller at Bunny's, they are authentic skiers in that they are never satisfied. They emancipate themselves from local slopes as being petty and provincial. They long to complete their New England education: the jolting terrors of the A slope at Pico or the smooth comforts of the B; the exaltation of the aerial tramway over spruces hung with new diamonds and old lace and the even greater exaltation of the generously banked Cannon Mountain trail near Franconia, "the Alpine village of New England," with views of Lafayette, Liberty, and Kinsman; Snow Valley and Big Bromley with five lifts, 27 trails, and almost as many ski instructors; Smugglers' Notch and Mt. Mansfield with the world's longest and highest aerial chair lift; Hogback with its lift taking care of 900 skiers an hour and Brattleboro; North Conway with a polyglot and kaleidoscopic crowd of 5,000 and its skimobile.

The freshmen realize that they are now real skiers emancipated from the monotony of the level and the safe. They love names suggesting the untameable and the reckless—names suggesting damnation, madness and death, like Hell's Highway, Thunderbolt, Wildcat, Death's Holiday, the Inferno, Headwall, Flying Mile, Suicide Six, and Nosedive with its Shambles Corner. They let that last one roll over their tongues and say modestly, "That's a lovely hill."

AND NOW CLEARLY the two freshmen have outgrown . their college room. The passion for new horizons leads them on to Canada: to Ste. Marguerite with its Swiss Ski School, St. Sauveur with its pleasant village and tavern, and Mont Tremblant with the new 5,000-foot chair lift and four new down-hill runs.

Has eastern prestige declined and does the future of skiing lie in the West? That is a question too important to leave unanswered. So away go the Dartmouth men from the Laurentians to Idaho to compare Ryan's Run and the Flying Mile with Sun Valley and the Sawtooth Mountains. It is an education in itself to talk with Toni Matt, formerly of North Conway, who schussed the Inferno on Washington and lived to tell the story. They discover that Ranier, if properly developed, is capable of taking care of 15,000 skiers over a week end; that Aspen, Colorado, has the longest chairlift in the world; that Utah is excessively proud of the Ogden Snow Basin, and that 80,000 persons passed through the skiing town of Alta last year; that Badger Pass in the Yosemite is good sport; and that La Madera and the sun at Albuquerque are thrills.

And now there is no stopping. The Dartmouth men's point of view is global. They are flying across the Atlantic to take in the Winter Olympics at St. Moritz with a swing around back to Hanover via Oslo and Stockholm. And it would be senseless to waste next summer when a DC6 can transport them to South America and keep their legs in condition.

Used to big spaces, the Californian and the Texan hear with a little shock a senior on the Dartmouth ski team interrupt the salesman who has been filling the air with the smoke of his opium pipe and writing down figures on a sales slip.

"Listen, you guys," the senior is saying. "I've done a little skiing myself. Skiing is O.K.—in its place. For fun. Not for a career. Oh, by the way, what do you think the Dartmouth Faculty is? A ski patrol? And, let me point out to you gentlemen, Dartmouth College is not primarily designed as an alpine lift just to give you two a glorified four-year downhill schuss into life."