AT ST. MORITZ

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 112, 12 May 1923, Page 22

AT ST. MORITZ

THRILLS AND SPILLS IN THE '

SNOW

THE AWKWARD CRESTA RUN.

When our friends return from foreign places.that we have never been to and we ask them what those places are like, they can never tell us. At any rate, they never try to, declares Lady Diana Cooper in the "Daily Mail." If you ask a man to tell you about Pekin, he will almost certainly reply, "Oh, great fun" or "Rather boring," and if he has seen the Great "Wall of China and is asked to describe it, he will probably say that it is a "sort of big wall." Perhaps it is as well that we are told so little and are thus enabled still to experience something of the explorer's thrill in undertaking; the most ordinary journey. I had asked many people for descriptions of St. Moritz, and the majority of the replies had been "Great fun, ' with a few variations such as "Wonderful air," "Dance all night," "Good hotel," and "Can't sleep—altitude." None.of these answers had succeeded in leaving a very vivid picture on the mind. None of them had in any way prepared me for the first sight that meets the eye on emerging from St. Mor-itz-station. Sleighs! The word'had hitherto meant -fairy stories or Russian novels!-.. Santa Claus travels in a sleigh so, do the heroes and.heroines of Tolstoy.. An, outlandish word, difficult to spell, k and' about even, its pronunciation some doubt still; lingers. How does it differ from "sledge,"and has it possibly anything to do with skis? Do horses pull it, or dogs,_ or perchance reindeer? All these questions, absurd as they appear to the confirmed winter sportsman, are apt to arise in the minds of the uninitiated at the mention of the word "sleighs."

That it would be possible in Switzerland to go for a ride in a sleigh I had hoped, but I had never realised that it would be quite impossible to go for a ride in anything else. And there they all are waiting at the station—of every conceivable size and shape.' What a contrast to the dingy, battered taxi-cabs that greet you in Paris, or the dingy, more battered "flies" that await you in Rome! These remind you rather of the gondolas of Venice, and their tinkling bells break more musically than the cries of the gondoliers- on the silence that is more than Venetian. But gondolas are all of one size, one shape, and one colour, whereas sleighs vary in every particular. There are lovers' sleighs which will hold only two, and family sleighs which will hold a dozen. There are matter-of-fact sleighs like carriages without wheels; there are imaginative sleighs like the Russian ballet; there are exquisite classical sleighs like Greek vases; there are .extravagant, decadent sleighs like nightmares of Aubrey Beardsley. But.all are drawn by horses, for there are no motorsleighs, and the horaes carry plumes of many colours and tinkling bells which warn you of their approach so far more pleasantly than raucous motor-horns or rattling wheels. The danger of-being run down by a motor-car is, however, almost the only danger which the inexperienced traveller has not to face. The beginner who is determined to enter into the spirit of the winter sports has need of nerves of iron. First there is the choice to be made between ski-ing and skating—or, in other words, the choice between continually falling on snow or continually falling on ice. The latter hurts more, but the former is more frightening. When you first find yourself riveted to the ungainly skis, standing at the top of a little slope, you feel like a cathedral perched on Mount Everest about to descend into a bottomless pit.. But skiing soon has its reward. While the melancholy skater is condemned for ever to go round and round his narrow rink like a caged canary, the skier, after very brief experience, can go for distant expeditions to as many different places as he has days. These are among the greatest pleasures of the place. A happy sleigh-load on a sunny morning.—the sleigh perhaps too full and a tail of tobaggans attached to it, one person upon each; the' arrival at a little inn on the top of a hill; luncheon out of doors in the grilling sunshine; the skis are put on and the descent begins. Two or three hours, perhaps, of tumbling about in virgin snow, threading 1 a way through trees, skirting precipices, and arriving eventually at the bottom where the sleigh awaits—and tea or chocolate and delicious cakes. The drive home while the sun sinks and the white mountains turn pink, and your more aestheic friends complain that it is too like a picture postcard, and that for beauty it does not touch a London fog, which makes you realise how cold you are getting and makes you glad when it is dark to get back to tho very warm and very bright hotel. After such an exhausting day you are justified in taking the next one more easily. You rise late and stroll to the Cresta run. The spectators' stand is placed at the spot where accidents are most likely to occur. Was there ever such pandering to barbarity since the day or galdiatorial contests?' If a Victoria Cross and £100,000 a year were the rewards for going down the Cresta, the number of peo_ple who do it daily would not be surprising. But that anyone should do it for pelasure is as astonishing as the performance of an Indian fakir who voluntarily buries himself alive. Even to watch it is terrifying. A rattle and clash like the sound) of an express train, and round the corner at an angle of 45 degrees whizzes into sight a fellow-creature stretched upon a slab of iron, with anxious face uplifted* and waving feet. Before you can recognise him he is gone, and you wait anxiously for the signal that he has safely arrived at the bottom. The machine on which he travels is grimly called a skeleton.

After this too stirring spectacle, it is really a relief to turn to the curling rink. Here is the only spot in Winter-Sports-land where there is no apparent danger. And here, oddly enough, the sportsmen seem happier and more excited tnan any: where else. Their cheers of triumph, their wails of despair resound all day through the quiet air. They are a com-fortable-looking lot, who, no doubt, took risks in their day but have determined to take no more. It is impossible sometimes, as one sets out on skis to unknown perils, not to envy them their game, and even to envy the lot of their humble (and usually female) assistants who run before the advancing stone and at a word of command hurriedly brush the snow from its path.

But such safe and simple pleasures are not for the young and able-bodied. They must pass through the Alpine village; in spite of the old man's warning, they must try the mountain pass, and they must engrave upon their skates or akis, their bobs or skeletons, the strange device "Excelsior."