The Pittsburgh Press (February 7, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
TIMBERLINE LODGE, Ore. – It would be hard to visualize, to a Floridan for instance, how deep the snow is up here. It’s even hard to believe it yourself.
For when we ski out through the trees to our practice slope, the snow is hard on top and you imagine it’s just a few inches deep, since it follows the contour of the ground.
Yet this snow we daily cross is more than six feet deep. And that’s shallower than the average depth. Usually it is 10 feet or more.
You stand beside what apparently is a small bush, not as high as your waist, and actually it is a tree much higher than your head. Most of it is down under the snow.
Often the second-story windows of the Lodge are covered up. Even now, the snow has to be pushed back from the dining room windows. And a great, heavy-beamed shed forms a tunnel from the parking grounds to the Lodge’s entrance door.
They keep the Lodge well heated. In fact when you come in from an afternoon’s skiing you are already so warm that the room usually seems too hot, and you open a window for a little while.
It gets down to zero up here. But during my visit it has been only a little below freezing. The sun has been bright and the far-off mountain panorama magnificent although you wouldn’t dare mention that in print on the day it happened, because of censorship.
Beginner tries it – once
If there are a few warmish days to melt the snow, and then cold nights to refreeze it, an ice sheet forms on top, and this spoils skiing. That’s when you get your bad falls; your skis get to sliding on the ice and you just can’t stop.
It was that way when I first went out, but being a novice it was one and the same to me. I didn’t even know skiing conditions were bad; I thought it was just bad Pyle technique.
I have a green-eyed jealousy of the people who are capable of going up on the ski lift and skiing back down. That would be an accomplishment. But it’s something that will not happen to me this trip. I can’t even grapple with our little 50-foot practice slope. And it’s actually about two miles down the Magic Mile.
They tell about a novice skier who showed up last year. The first thing he did was take the lift to the top and start back down on his skis. He got about a third of the way down and then, going like lightning, whizzed over the edge of an abyss, flew through the air for about 30 feet, struck a rest-house and smashed to the ground. He lay there all day till they found him late that afternoon. He died two months later.
Instructors ski for fun
On weekends they keep a doctor up here, and the Ski Patrol is on the prowl constantly. With 2500 people skiing all over the place, a good portion of them novices, somebody is bound to get hurt. And somebody always does. The Ski Patrol brings them in on stretchers.
I hadn’t been out an hour until here came a guy dragging himself across the snow with a broken ankle.
But perhaps I’m scaring you. I would feel practically criminal if I deterred anybody from this exhilarating sport. You may rest easy. If it’s safe enough for me, it’s safe enough for Grandpa. So get him a pair of boards and send him on up.
Skiing is indeed insidious the way it gets into people’s blood. Practically everybody who works around this great Lodge either can ski or is learning. They’re not all young, either.
The hotel manager skis, the bus driver skis, the waitresses ski, the bus-boys ski, the clerks in the ski-shop ski, the Forest Rangers ski. Even Jack Farrell, who is in charge at the top of the ski-lift, skis all the way down from work every evening, instead of riding the chairs down. And the instructors actually ski for fun in their off-hours.
The Lodge ran out of guest stationery this evening, so I went around the public writing desks trying to gather up a few scraps to write on.
At one desk I found two sheets, on which some young man had been trying to start a letter home. He apparently just gave up and left his efforts there. Here is what he left:
“Dear Folks, Dear Mom, Pop… Rah! Benson! … Mt. Hood National For… Dear Folks… Drdez… Dear Popin Folks, Po… Popin… I sure am stove in, in answering you I really… Dear Folks… There’ll always be an Eng…”
Apparently he just collapsed at that point, from being so stove in. I know just how he felt. I’m stove in too, Dear Folks. Dear England. Dear Timberline. Dear Popin. Dear Me.