RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33964, 3 October 1975, Page 13

RANDOM REMINDER

SIGNS OF SNOW

Travellers’ tales, particularly about the opportunities to show courage during snowstorms, stir our imagination. Men stumbling blindly through white-outs to fall either into a crevasse or into some rudimentary shelter where they can sit and identify themselves with all the others who have stumbled through whiteouts strongly grasp our attention. In Switzerland, of course, the whole thing becomes much more civilised and great bouncy St Bernard -dogs turn up with brandy barrels around their necks. Our belief in the value of this system was only temporarily shattered while we attempted to relive the last moments of a man caught in a snowdrift and

found by a St Bernard which instead of succouring him with brandy, ate him. Meeting snowstorms in real life is another matter. All the romantic props were missing in this case. There were no snowshoes, no sleds, no dogs, not even a Snocat. There was the family station waggon, full of a family going south for the school holidays. But there was snow, snow that made it possible to see only, a few yards ahead. At first the children loved it as it swirled against the windscreen and compared the explosive affect to firecrackers. The driver did not succed well in showing that he was less enthusiastic. The snow could not be

denied. Even the general area could not be denied. It was somehwere in the Mackenzie country, probably visibility was zero. It was the road that gave the trouble. Was that flat patch of snow ahead the road or not? And if it were the road was it the right road? There was no St Bernard but there was an A_A. sign. It was blessed. It was also covered in snow. The man of the family, still frozen from having put chains on many miles back, left the car, stumbled through the snow, reached the sign, raised his arm and used what he had remembered had once been a hand to brush the snow away. He could just make out the words: “View of Mount Cook.’ 5