Army ski training is nothing like taking ski lessons as a civilian. For one thing, the army wasn’t as concerned about how we got down a slope as it was in our getting up it. It figured we could mostly get down on our own. There were no rope tows, T-bars or chair lifts on the federal property near Mount Rainier where we were to take our instruction. There was also a lamentable absence of snow bunnies dressed in the latest tight-fitting ski attire.
Also, a civilian skier is not encumbered with a rifle, a steel helmet and a rucksack filled with 500 pounds of socks, eating utensils, ammunition and tent stakes. Nor are civilians usually required to ski across slopes littered with enough 5-feet thick logs to build 20 blocks of frame houses.
We are divided into two groups: those who have skied at least once (who were assigned to be instructors); and a much larger segment: those who think of a snowplow as a piece of road equipment. I am in the later group.
Our base camp is on a plateau some 3,000 feet high on which Army engineers have erected several large tents held up by wooden frames.
Nine miles from the base camp, at an attitude of 6,000 feet, is Coral Pass, an area with moderately gentle slopes just above timber line where we are to do most of our downhill skiing.
An army three-quarter ton truck, that bounces and shakes us like gravel in a can held by a boy jumping fences, takes us to the base camp. On the way, we engage in the traditional American practice of making fun of the military in which we serve. A Georgia boy allowed as how the army will make us do the Manual of Arms when we arrived, using ski poles instead of rifles.
We regard it amusing until just after we arrive at the base camp and are issued boots and wide, white-painted wooded skis with leather straps and cable bindings to hold our feet to the boards. Thus outfitted, we are lined up at attention and given the command: “Right shoulder skis!” |
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