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Authors: Francine Mathews
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still sat in the vestibule of his old farmhouse on the ridge just beyond Courchevel 1850, the highest of the ski area’s four main bases.
She had hesitated when he invited her for dinner the previous night, and he knew that she was longing for a hot bath and an early bed. He had spared her nothing in the previous seventy-two hours: the relentless drops down the steeps of La Vizelle, the circuitous passage through the woods of Courchevel 1550; the nail-biting jumps from outcropping to outcropping in the rugged Grand Couloir; the moguls on La Combe de la Saulire. He had taken her into bowls far above tree line, so junked with crud they tore the skis out from under the best of amateurs. She was equal to everything but his pace.
That first morning they had stood together in the sharp, cold, early light on the knife-edge of Saulire’s ridge, the far-flung Alps unrolling toward Switzerland. They were alone in a cruel and beautiful world of glacial ice. Wordlessly, he handed her the water bottle from his ski jacket. She tipped it to her lips and then said, “Follow me.”
Before he could speak or move she was airborne over the cornice, eyes searching for landfall. She moved with a sort of reckless instinct he had not expected and found dangerously intoxicating. He threw himself after her, following precisely the turns she traced on the head-wall’s face. When at last she slashed to a stop and looked back over her shoulder, waiting for him, the two sets of tracks ran unbroken for nearly twelve hundred feet. A single clean run without pause or hesitation.
“You’ve skied this before?” he asked her curtly.
“Never.”
“Your skis could be shorter, and they’re all wrong for your center of gravity.”
“I just got them last year.”
“We’ll switch them tomorrow. I can fit you from the stock in my studio.”
“But I like my equipment!”
“You’ll like mine better.”
Did he intend to challenge her, that early in the morning on their first day? He wasn’t sure. Max had skied with many women in his professional life—women from the U.S. Ski Team, and girls down the length of his long apprenticeship on a thousand mountains around the world. He was used to the tenacity, the aggressiveness, the naked competition of such women; he was used to precision and skill. What he recognized in this woman was a more elusive quality: joy. It showed in every line of her body when she turned downhill.
“Where do we go next?” she asked.
“You told me to follow you.” Another challenge. She thrust her poles into the snow and went.
There are more than three hundred and twenty miles of marked runs in Les Trois Vallées, the three valleys of St. Bon, Les Allues and Belleville; to ski them all would require an entire season, but she made a game attempt.Each day she ascended from Le Praz to Courchevel 1850, met Max at the foot of the Verdons gondola and from there decreed their course: toward the villages of Méribel, Val Thorens or Mottaret. They skied hard and by unspoken agreement never referred to the business that had brought her to France. When they talked at all, in the spaces between runs as they climbed back toward the summit on a multitude of lifts, it was of the food or the sun or the terrain they had just conquered.
“Where do you ski in the States?” he asked her once; and abruptly, as though she did not like to think about it, she replied: “Utah.”
“Deer Valley?”
She turned and gazed at him, her dark eyes unreadable behind her sunglasses. “Deer Valley. Is it so obvious?”
She wore a headband of carved and dyed mink, the glossy curls springing back like a wild fringe from her forehead. Her nose was red from exposure. Her jacket, incredibly, was of Italian doeskin the color of caramel and the texture of satin. Her ski pants were the same. “It saves time,” she had explained, “après-ski. I’m already dressed for a party.”
“You have the skill for Snowbird and Alta,” he commented,
She had hesitated when he invited her for dinner the previous night, and he knew that she was longing for a hot bath and an early bed. He had spared her nothing in the previous seventy-two hours: the relentless drops down the steeps of La Vizelle, the circuitous passage through the woods of Courchevel 1550; the nail-biting jumps from outcropping to outcropping in the rugged Grand Couloir; the moguls on La Combe de la Saulire. He had taken her into bowls far above tree line, so junked with crud they tore the skis out from under the best of amateurs. She was equal to everything but his pace.
That first morning they had stood together in the sharp, cold, early light on the knife-edge of Saulire’s ridge, the far-flung Alps unrolling toward Switzerland. They were alone in a cruel and beautiful world of glacial ice. Wordlessly, he handed her the water bottle from his ski jacket. She tipped it to her lips and then said, “Follow me.”
Before he could speak or move she was airborne over the cornice, eyes searching for landfall. She moved with a sort of reckless instinct he had not expected and found dangerously intoxicating. He threw himself after her, following precisely the turns she traced on the head-wall’s face. When at last she slashed to a stop and looked back over her shoulder, waiting for him, the two sets of tracks ran unbroken for nearly twelve hundred feet. A single clean run without pause or hesitation.
“You’ve skied this before?” he asked her curtly.
“Never.”
“Your skis could be shorter, and they’re all wrong for your center of gravity.”
“I just got them last year.”
“We’ll switch them tomorrow. I can fit you from the stock in my studio.”
“But I like my equipment!”
“You’ll like mine better.”
Did he intend to challenge her, that early in the morning on their first day? He wasn’t sure. Max had skied with many women in his professional life—women from the U.S. Ski Team, and girls down the length of his long apprenticeship on a thousand mountains around the world. He was used to the tenacity, the aggressiveness, the naked competition of such women; he was used to precision and skill. What he recognized in this woman was a more elusive quality: joy. It showed in every line of her body when she turned downhill.
“Where do we go next?” she asked.
“You told me to follow you.” Another challenge. She thrust her poles into the snow and went.
There are more than three hundred and twenty miles of marked runs in Les Trois Vallées, the three valleys of St. Bon, Les Allues and Belleville; to ski them all would require an entire season, but she made a game attempt.Each day she ascended from Le Praz to Courchevel 1850, met Max at the foot of the Verdons gondola and from there decreed their course: toward the villages of Méribel, Val Thorens or Mottaret. They skied hard and by unspoken agreement never referred to the business that had brought her to France. When they talked at all, in the spaces between runs as they climbed back toward the summit on a multitude of lifts, it was of the food or the sun or the terrain they had just conquered.
“Where do you ski in the States?” he asked her once; and abruptly, as though she did not like to think about it, she replied: “Utah.”
“Deer Valley?”
She turned and gazed at him, her dark eyes unreadable behind her sunglasses. “Deer Valley. Is it so obvious?”
She wore a headband of carved and dyed mink, the glossy curls springing back like a wild fringe from her forehead. Her nose was red from exposure. Her jacket, incredibly, was of Italian doeskin the color of caramel and the texture of satin. Her ski pants were the same. “It saves time,” she had explained, “après-ski. I’m already dressed for a party.”
“You have the skill for Snowbird and Alta,” he commented,
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