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Road to Mandalay 12/22/2019 2:40:06 AM
On day five of the Christmas roundup of my books the title is a bit of as tease, because the action goes all over the place before ending on...'The Road to Mandalay'. This is really about the cyber wars that now decide the fate of nations. And may start on a ski slope....read on, below: FRENCH ALPS. MARCH.
We should never have been on that slope. It was off-piste and very steep. With the sun only now reaching the valley floor and no sign of a snowflake for ages, conditions were rock hard. I’d spent the last six seasons in the snow, most of the time at Val Fornet, where I reckoned to recognise every dip and mogul: something of a local expert. I knew we should not have been there. But we were.
Had I been by myself, it might have been forgivable: actually, not even then, because one should never ski off-piste alone. As it was, I had a companion, Alexei, some sort of financial wunderkind, always strapped for time. So I had weakened: agreed to take her for a quick spin round the slopes before the resort woke up and became a white version of rush hour London.
In my defence it should be said that Alexei was a very competent skier, who devoted the same intensity to sliding down mountains as she reportedly gave to making money. She was an acquaintance rather than a friend, one of the high rollers from the square mile who periodically managed to squeeze in a few days skiing between the serious business of making the next million.
We had set off early up the La Bisque téléphérique, the mountain where Val Fornet had been born as a ski resort in the 1930s. The original cable car, shown in old photos as a quaint little red job, had long since been replaced by one that whisked us up three times faster and with four times the number of punters.
La Bisque top station gave access to a magnificent amphitheatre of snow, served by two chair lifts and five drags. Over to the left was the Col de Fornet, where some historians thought Hannibal and his elephants might have crossed the Alps in 218BC on their way to defeating the Romans. Elephants on skis: an enticing image.
La Bisque was really intermediates’ territory, with ‘motorway’ glacier skiing at the top and never that difficult further down: mostly blue runs, with a few red. In another half hour the École de Ski Française (ESF) would be out in force with their crocodiles of wobbly beginners, but we were ahead of the game. And not heading for any beginners’ slopes.
Alexei followed me onto the right hand chair lift, which deposited us on the lip of the amphitheatre at an altitude of over 2,800 metres. It was a ‘travel brochure’ morning, cloudless but still cold. Like every other day for the past two weeks. And therein lay the problem. We skiers demand the impossible: sunny weather and ideal skiing conditions. Unless the Good Lord grants us snowfalls only after dark, this can’t happen. Pistes need the odd blizzard to freshen them up.
With the whole of Val Fornet ‘skied out’, I was trying to sniff out somewhere that might still have some untouched snow. The standard run back to the resort was classified as red, second in difficulty after black, and not much fun at the best of times. The bottom half would now be horrible, a mix of ice and bare rock before lunch, turning to rock and slush as the sun got to work. Many of the ESF classes would be ending their lesson with a ‘run’ back to the valley in the cable car.
There was also a black run, the most difficult grade, but I’d skied that one yesterday and the moguls were mini mountains. This early in the day they would also be like concrete. Surely I could find something better?
I glanced across at my companion, togged out in a silver one-piece ski suit and bobble-hat pulled down over her ears. Snub nose and red lips made up about half of what was visible. The other half told its own story: skin that was nearly office-white. Alexei had not managed much alpine relaxation so far this season.
My job was running a string of chalets for ‘Snow Supreme’, which had started life some twenty years earlier in Val Fornet, before expanding to Les Arcs, La Plagne and The Three Valleys in France. Next had come Verbier in Switzerland. And more recently Zermatt and The Arlberg, although there it was space in hotels.
Because Val Fornet was where Snow Supreme had been born, that was my base. A crisis might see me whizzing across ice-bound Europe to sort things out, but most days I could manage a couple of hours skiing. The previous evening I’d been checking out a minor problem at our Chalet Escale and got talking to Alexei, who was keen to make the most of her short time here. I’d skied with her occasionally in previous years, when she’d been with a boyfriend, and knew she could cope with just about anything. So here we were.
“Let’s head away from all this,” I said. La Bisque’s amphitheatre was already starting to get busy. “See what we can find.”
Did I say that I knew ‘every dip and mogul’ in Val Fornet? I was telling a fib. ‘Espace Savoie’, which linked Val Fornet with a couple of neighbouring resorts, claimed to be the world’s largest ski area. If Three Valleys and others disputed this, it was academic. The amount of snow available without taking off one’s skis was mind-boggling. We were about to explore a part which had so far escaped me.
“Thinking of the black run?” asked Alexei. She clearly knew the area well.
“We may end up there,” I replied. “But first let’s cast our net a little wider.”
I led the way, heading south, almost across the mountain face, but with enough down gradient to coast without using sticks. It was the sort of morning you dream of, at this altitude the snow still in good shape; not powder of course, the sun had seen to that, but not crust either. I hated crust. Here even ESF beginners could have enjoyed themselves.
When I judged we had gone far enough, I stopped. Alexei joined me with a dainty show-off twirl.
“Doesn’t get much better than this,” she said, her face now glowing, her eyes alive.
I nodded. The resort lay over to our right, with an offshoot valley below. The massif facing us lay roasting in the morning sun, little ant-humans already busy, twisting and turning down their runs. Seen from afar, I was always amazed that mankind had found ways to ski such steep slopes with comparative ease.
“We’re off-piste, so stay behind me,” I said. “Ready to roll?”
She nodded, excitedly.
We skied down in big lazy swoops, often stopping to admire the view. We were not in a race. Alexei was right. It didn’t get much better than this.
We were probably two thirds of the way down when I came to an abrupt halt. Put up a warning hand. Alexei stopped beside me. Followed my gaze down.
“What to do now?” she asked.
What indeed! Below us was not quite a precipice, but it was very steep. Much steeper than the slope we were on. Worse still, we were now so low down that the sun had burned the snow off the lip of the escarpment, reducing it to bare rock. Although this strip was quite narrow, I didn’t fancy trying to step over it to reach the almost vertical snow below: one stumble and we would inevitably plunge hundreds of feet down to the valley floor.
“Val Fornet is over there,” I said, pointing to the right. “So somewhere in that direction must be the black run. Let’s find it.”
The bare strip ran due north and more or less level, so we were faced with a tedious traverse on the remnants of snow above. I hoped Alexei was not prone to vertigo, because a couple of feet to our left the ground dropped away dramatically. She made no comment, just slotted in behind me.
Ski-walking on the level is not much fun and we were soon pretty hot. Headgear went into bumbags, skisuits opened up for airconditioning. In the event it only took about fifteen minutes before the escarpment suddenly vanished and ahead of us lay the promised land: the black run back to Val Fornet.
“Isn’t that a lovely sight.” Alexei stopped beside me, grinning.
The piste was steep and occupied a wide gulley. Previous traffic had sculptured a series of huge moguls, but we didn’t care. This was ski-able territory.
We stood there for some moments, enjoying the view. The place to ourselves. Still too early for any competition. Which was strange, because by now it wasn’t that early.
Our heads must have turned in the same instant. Realised we were not alone. Because way up to our right, on the skyline, there was movement. It took a microsecond to grasp what it was. Then we watched mesmerised, as a figure in blue tumbled down the slope in front of us. A rag doll. With no skis, just arms and legs frantically trying to regain control of a situation long since lost.
I was reminded of the man who jumped from the top of a skyscraper: didn’t hurt at all until he hit the sidewalk. It was the same here. Had the black run been nice and smooth, with a flattening slope at the bottom, the rag doll might have escaped with little more than a fright. But it wasn’t like that at all. This piste was a series of massive humps that threw the rag doll several feet into the air whenever it hit one. Its trajectory became an aerial journey from one mogul to the next, every landing like hitting the sidewalk. Hard.
We watched appalled as the rag doll continued its deadly descent, eventually coming to rest near the bottom of the valley.
