The Lonely Skier

The slope reared up a thousand feet or more to the Crepedel of Faloria, a narrow ridge which is marked as dangerous on the maps. The slope seemed nearly sheer at the end. And out of the sheer part of the slope, a mighty avalanche of snow had tumbled. It lay, spilled and disordered, across half the mountainside. And out of the lowest reaches of it, two faint lines ran parallel and close together, as though drawn with a ruler in the snow, straight to the rock outcrop by which we were standing.

Joe had his camera working again. When he had taken the picture, he said, ‘He must have been a marvellous skier, Neil. He did the impossible. He rode that avalanche on skis and came out of it alive. And then he had to hit these rocks. See — he fell before he reached the worst of the outcrop. But he didn’t see that little chap half-hidden in the snow. That’s what did the damage.’

I nodded. I was past speaking. It seemed such irony for him to escape that avalanche, only to injure himself fatally on this outcrop.

I was gazing up at the slope, fascinated, when my own eyes suddenly picked out a dark object lying on the snow just below the final spill of the avalanche. It was well to the left of Engles’ ski tracks, towards the gap, and it looked like the body of a man.

I pointed it out to Joe. ‘Is it the body of a man, or am I seeing things?’ I asked him.

He squinted up the slope. ‘My God — yes,’ he said. Then he looked at me. ‘Keramikos?’ he asked.

‘Must be,’ I replied.

I looked along the ridge, trying to reconstruct the scene. And then I noticed that, away to the right, the avalanche became indistinct as though fresh snow had fallen on it. ‘I think I know what happened,’ I said.

He looked at me enquiringly.

‘Engles had only eighty-five seconds’ start on Keramikos at Col da Varda,’ I said. ‘I timed it by my watch. The fact that he was a brilliant skier would only help him on the down slopes. Going uphill it would be a matter of endurance; and Keramikos, as likely as not, was in better condition. He couldn’t have been far behind Engles when they began to side-step up the slope from that gap over there. Keramikos would gain a bit at the bottom of that climb. And then, when he!

started along the track that runs under the crest there, Engles found his progress blocked by an avalanche. That’s an old one at the end of the crest there to the right. He couldn’t go back. Keramikos was close behind him and he had a gun. And he couldn’t go forward because of the avalanche. There would have been only one thing to do — and he did it. He came straight down the avalanche slope. He was a good enough skier to try it.’

‘And in doing so, he started an avalanche that brought Keramikos down too?’ Joe finished for me. He looked up at the slope again, running his eyes along the ridge. Then he nodded. That’s about the size of it,’ he said. ‘Could he still be alive?’ He nodded in the direction of the body, lying like a black smut on the white shirt-front of the mountain.

‘We’d better go and see,’ I said. ‘Can we make it, do you think?’

‘We can try,’ he replied.

It was a precipitous climb. The snow was soft and as soon as we had made any height, we had to pack it down with our skis at each step in order to get a grip on the slope. And each time we trampled it solid, I thought the whole slope would slide away from under our feet.

But at last we reached the body. It was huddled in an untidy heap, its face buried in the snow, one arm broken and twisted unnaturally behind its back. We turned it over. It was Keramikos all right. He was stiff and cold. Only his head was unaffected by rigor. The neck was broken. I took off my gloves and searched through his clothing, which was frozen hard. He had no gun on him. But in his breast pocket I found his wallet. It contained nothing of interest except the statement by Korporal Holtz. This I put in my pocket.

We managed to slide the body down to the rock outcrop at the bottom. There we left it to be collected later, and made our way back to Tre Croci. It was beginning to snow again by the time we reached the hotel.

And that was how Engles and Keramikos died. And that was how we finished the film, up there on the cold slopes of the Tondi di Faloria.

Before I left Cortina, I made one trip up to Col da Varda. The hut, where so much of it had happened, was a gaunt, tumbled heap of blackened beams, already covered with a light crust of snow. The burnt-out ruins had spilled right over the concrete housing of the slittovia plant. Mayne, who had bought the place, left no will, and I fancy the place has reverted to the Italian Government.

Nearly a year has passed now since the night of the fire. But I am told that the ruins of the hut still lie sprawled over the concrete machine-room, and that the slittovia is not used any more.