Original subtitles

Now here's something for you folks

to think about.

Toutes Neiges, Toutes Montagnes.

Any Snow, Any Mountain means many things to many people.

It means a telepherique in Zermatt

and a snowstorm in Japan.

It means the Red Onion in Aspen

and powder snow in these bowls at Sun Valley.

It means snow and mountains like this.

But what does it mean to you?

Well, you've skied nine years

and you have a pair of $200 skis on.

You've invested about $2,000 in ski lessons

from some of the world's best teachers.

You've already had your fourth trip to Europe,

three trips to the Bugaboos.

The helicopter that got you up here in the morning

costs $600.

That powder snow is delicious,

but most important,

you've been trying for the last three years

to be in a Warren Miller ski film.

This is your big moment.

One by one, the other skiers have started down,

but Warren's asked you to wait

and help create a perfect set of figure eights

as you ski down.

Now it's your turn.

You're nervous, but you have to get ready.

Let's see, better sit back a bit

'cause that powder's at least two feet deep.

It's your turn to be immortalized on film.

Check your hat, that's okay.

Goggles okay, poles okay.

Remember to sit back.

Then the countdown begins to make those figure eights.

One final check of your skis, your poles, your bindings.

Oops, the adjustment screw

has fallen out of your safety binding.

That was last winter when you were here at Sun Valley

and you watched while your friends cut up this slope,

but this winter it will be different.

This winter we'll find that perfect snow

on that perfect mountain once again.

We'll really get it together, you and I.

We'll feel those giggly butterflies in our stomach

when we can look back up that hill

and say, "Wow, that run only cost $843.71."

There are other days too,

like this one as we started climbing a long ridge

at Squaw Valley, California.

This is the same ridge that other men climbed a decade ago.

They climbed to get to the start of the Olympic downhill,

but we were climbing for another reason.

We were climbing for some good powder snow.

We skied with several ski instructors,

one of which was Lito Flores.

Lito is a world-famous mountain climber

with numerous first ascents to his credit.

He's a great photographer, a talented ski teacher,

and a philosopher with a deep sense

of man's relationship to snow and mountains.

While skiing, a man is alone with his thoughts.

Lito's thoughts are worth sharing.

At Squaw Valley, actually we have

a very definite mystique

about skiing, about our snow, about our slopes,

and why we like them,

why we come back to Squaw Valley year after year

to be here and to work here.

And it's not the outermost peak

because things are so perfect.

It's the steep and challenging slopes

combined with the typically difficult snow conditions

that we get.

We get bad snow in Squaw Valley

because of the low altitude.

So we start here at 6,000 feet,

and this year, where we are just as likely to get

a tropical storm from Hawaii as a cold storm from Alaska,

we spent half of our time skiing quite varied,

really varied, really difficult snow conditions.

In a way, we come back to Squaw Valley

because things are so terrible here.

On any given day, no matter how bad the snow is

or how challenging or how difficult,

breakable crust, soft, deep, heavy,

Sierra cement, as we call it,

you still go out and ski,

and not only ski, you ski well and you love it.

We tend to go out and look for bad snow conditions

and look for steep slopes,

and when the two coincide,

we're very happy as long as we can turn.

When you can't turn, it's very frustrating.

You slog up these long ridges and you get up there,

and, of course, you face the problem of skiing down.

That's where the excitement begins.

'Cause you really, you walked up all this thing.

You're not gonna be, it's gonna be ignominy to walk down.

And you peek over the edge and it's extremely steep.

In fact, it's so steep, sometimes you have to

mess around a bit on the edge

in order to get your courage up to go over.

With every edge set, with every turn,

with even a simple action of traversing,

you slice off a layer four or five inches deep of snow,

which will have a little cascading

psychological avalanche with you.

Obviously not big enough to sweep you off your feet,

but just enough to give you a little sense of vertigo,

as another reason is the slope you're skiing on

isn't really a solid slope.

It's a moving slope.

It sort of tends to unnerve you

and you lose your attack a little bit,

so you have to jump extra hard or leap around.

And on these very steep slopes,

where instead of doing the traditional turns,

sometimes referred to as MG turns,

first you move them and then you groove them,

on a steep slope, you do L&L turns, leap and land.

And that's about it, you know,

because you just don't have enough time

to mess around in the fall line.

Some of the steepest slopes are on the Rockpile,

the north face of Squaw Creek,

or the north fork of Squaw Creek,

which is called, in local parlance, Blow Your Mind Bowl.

Often you find hard crust on one side

where the snow hasn't got,

the sun hasn't got to the snow,

so you cross to the other side.

You're sinking in deep yet breakable crust or heavy slop,

and you have to jump your skis on one side,

and the other side you feel like a real smoothie,

a regular champion,

and your skis are just wailing around in the snow

fast as you know what to do with them,

and they hit and turn by themselves.

You go 30 feet to the side,

and you have to make an enormous effort,

physical, spiritual, and everything else,

to get your skis out and turn.

In certain places and certain runs

where the snow is very heavy, very bad,

there's no way in the world that the average bloke,

even the average really good skier,

can make perfect turns in bad snow.

But the feeling of accomplishment perhaps

to turn at all in certain types of snow,

to turn in steep slopes,

to turn with rocks directly below you,

not worrying about them

because you know you're not gonna fall over these cliffs,

just to make your turns and to feel at home in the mountains

in these upsetting, difficult,

potentially hazardous circumstance,

which only skill and calm relaxation

could turn into safe circumstances

from the potentially very dangerous ones,

that's a big satisfaction as well.

Basic reason for skiing is self-discovery.

As you know yourself better and better

as a person and as a skier,

you have to push the situations to further extremes

in order to discover new things about both yourself

and the mountains and the skis you're using.

Your final goal, you might say, is intuitive self-knowledge

in harmony with the mountains.

This mystique about bad snow and skiing all conditions,

we have a French ski school,

and we tend to adopt it as a goal in our skiing.

A little French phrase, toutes neiges, tous terrains,

any snow, any terrain.

These mountains of the west extend north

virtually uninterrupted for thousands of miles.

In Canada, the mountains jump right up out of the ocean

and form a sort of a Saint Moritz by the sea,

Vancouver, British Columbia.

Just north of Vancouver is Garibaldi and Whistler Mountain

and its great surrounding glaciers.

On the Overlord glacier,

our guide was Ski School director Jim McConkey.

Garibaldi was the site of Canada's bid

for the Winter Olympics.

After skiing here

and enjoying their wonderful Canadian hospitality,

I'm sure glad Whistler didn't get that Olympic fit.

Can you imagine high-rise hotels and hotdog stands

in country like this?

This is that perfect run you always dream about.

You're alone in 50,000 acres of untracked powder snow.

You own it all and you own your own helicopter too.

Skiers everywhere dream like this.

The Japanese people dream as well.

It's difficult though

because they have a big population problem.

In Japan they have a saying,

"Shall we walk or do we have time to take a cab?"

Many of them wear natural shoulder pajamas.

They're great at miniaturizing radios

and maximizing light bulbs.

I don't know what they're selling but I bought 34 of them.

Japan is very matriarchal.

Sometimes three generations will live in the same house.

Japan is very religious too,

but here Sunday is not set aside as a day of worship,

which reminds me of some religious philosophy

a learned monk told me while there.

When God's Son returned from his long journey,

God said unto him, "Jesus, will you get your hair cut?"

Japan is the host for the 11th Winter Olympics

with all the events being held on the north island

in the town of Sapporo.

It's a town of a million people with three radio stations,

5 television stations,

6 newspapers, 21 colleges,

and a very efficient snow machine they can't shut off.

This is Sapporo's rehearsal of all the Olympic events,

including 17 feet of snow that fell in four days.

One Olympic event the Japanese are quite good at

is cross country running.

Cross country equipment is quite different

from downhill equipment.

The skis are much narrower

and made of laminated balsa wood with light hardwood edges,

bindings of aluminum

and boots of the lightest leather obtainable.

Altogether, a good set of boots, bindings, skis, and poles

weighs less than one downhill racing ski.

To be a good cross country runner,

you have to have great stamina,

for, you see, the courses are as long as 26 miles.

You'll have to have a thorough knowledge of ski wax.

If you mix it properly and apply it exactly right,

the snow crystals will stick to your skis as you run uphill,

and then they'll slide off as you run across the flat

or as you coast downhill.

A mixture of soft wax works for warm snow

and hard wax for cold snow.

The ski poles are made of bamboo,

very light and very springy.

If you're in shape and you use the right mixture of wax,

that 26-mile race should take

a little less than two and a half hours.

If you choose the wrong wax, it might take as long as,

oh, maybe three, maybe even four days.

The record for a cross country race

was set by Russian Vladimir Kuvasenko

He covered the 26 miles in just under one hour.

His ski pole got stuck on the bumper of a passing truck.

Matsumoto Shigehara ran the whole 26 miles

except for the last 15 feet.

The small neighborhoods in and around Sapporo

are just like the small villages of Europe.

They're a great place to be an orthodontist.

The kids have teeth problems because Japanese hot dogs

are made out of French-fried ball bearings.

Now let's hear it for the inventor of the Japanese ski lift.

He's the same guy that invented

the four-inch Japanese television screen.

Japan has as many skiers as we have in America,

yet they ski in a country the size of California.

It's a bit crowded.

It's about like you're at your favorite resort

on a big holiday weekend,

and all the lifts are broken except one.

In Japan you can't read the signs

except for the one on the left, which translated means,

Confucius was a blabbermouth.

So that we could stimulate travel to Japan

and show skiing on uncrowded slopes,

the tourist office rented us this whole slope for the day.

Matsumoto is skiing in a forest of miniature bonsai trees.

Really hard to show how small the trees are

since Matsumoto is only seven inches tall.

He's a little taller in his elevator ski boots.

The character of any town changes

as soon as they get the Olympic bid.

Take a look at Lake Placid,

Squaw Valley, Saint Moritz, Cortina.

Sapporo is no exception.

Here too they're building a lot of new high-rise buildings.

That way, you'll have a lobby to sleep in when you get here.

Taxis are a problem too.

By the time she loaded up all my camera gear, I walked.

The ski slopes of Sapporo are excellent.

They have good exposure and lots of snow.

They're a great deal like the ski resorts in Vermont,

but the weather rivals that of the North Pole.

Sapporo's right on the ocean, right on the Sea of Japan.

That's the ocean in the background.

You can easily set your watch every day

by the arrival of the 11 o'clock wind.

At 11:30, clouds show up.

By 12 o'clock, it's snowing.

By 12:30, it's snowing hard enough

to hold an Olympic ski event.

Instead of taking your skis to the Olympics,

you better take a shovel and a handbook on Arctic survival.

Better still, stay in your hotel,

watch the events on television, and drink sake.

The Japanese are great at building miniature cameras.

Eat a thing called sushi,

which is fish and rice rolled in seaweed and dried.

Kind of a culinary harakiri.

As soon as my Japanese camera crew clears the course,

we can get down to some serious racing.

What about Japanese racers?

How do they stack up in world competition?

They are fantastic ski jumpers,

but in alpine events like downhill and slalom,

well, that's another story.

With the exception of Chika Gaya

who won an FIS medal 15 years ago,

no one from Japan has ever placed in the first 10

in World Cup competition.

However, something you must consider

when you discuss the Olympics

is the fact that these racers will be competing at home,

and a fierce national pride should stimulate them.

Sort of a getting it up for the Olympics.

If this happens, you might just see a surprise winner.

Then, too, don't discount all the bad weather training

they'll have for the alpine events.

Can you imagine spending the first 20 years of your life

training for an Olympic event,

only to race in fog and wind so bad,

no one will see you except the gatekeepers,

and their goggles will be fogged up?

To win an Olympic medal takes many years of training

and hard work and attention to detail,

tens of thousands of hours of practice.

We always remember the winners,

men like Hilley and Eriksen and Sailer,

but what of the hopefuls, the ones who never quite make it?

How will they ever make any money

endorsing Lincoln-Mercurys?

Here's a guy who never made it.

Let's look in on Ruedi the Racer

as he goes up to practice for yet another race.

In downhill racing, the starts are of the utmost important.

Ruedi gets $16 for every steam shovel he sells.

Toutes Neiges, Toutes Montagnes.

Bear Valley's uncrowded slopes and steep pitches

are one of the best kept secrets in skiing today.

Bear Valley's only about an hour's drive

from towns like Stanislaus and Copperopolis,

Jenny Lind and Calaveras.

Here at Bear Valley, California,

it's a short but a painful run from the lodge to the lift.

Here, too, charming ski instructors in $90 stretch pants

are available to help you up,

providing you don't outweigh them.

The winter sports director is one of only two American men

to ever win an Olympic medal in skiing,

Jimmie Heuga.

Jimmie reflects on present and past ski accomplishments.

You know, when I first quit ski racing,

I was just fed up with it, really fed up with it,

and I wanted to first get away,

as far away from ski racing as I possibly could.

And so I didn't care, really care what I was doing

as long as it, you know, I didn't have to go through gates.

Now, after about two years out of ski racing

and sort of fooling around

in different aspects of life, you might say,

you know, I got to thinking about teaching,

and this is when I first had a ski school.

And you know, I just thought, "God, I don't know.

I don't know how to start beginning skiers."

So I really had to sit down and analyze it,

and I picked up every book I could find.

So I learned to, you know, be patient and work with people.

I don't even remember when I was a beginner.

I don't even remember learning how to ski.

You know, I never went through the fears

that an average person would go through

because I started at two years old,

and by the time I was five and six,

I was in the competition,

and from there I competed the rest of my life.

This is when I first met Jimmie

almost two decades ago.

Back in those days, Jimmie was skiing

on longer skis than he does today.

At 10 years old, he was only four foot, three inches tall

and skied on seven-foot skis.

At 15, he earned a berth on the American Olympic team,

but the official said he couldn't be on that team

because he was too young.

Skiing is really a unique sport,

and it's a way of life.

It's a way to express yourself and set your own goals,

and it's personally very rewarding

because each person has his own little goals.

For me, my goals are a lot different than someone else's

because I'm more proficient in the sport.

And then my daughter was very rewarding.

'Course, she didn't have the fears of my wife

or anything like that.

So it was really easy working with her.

I can honestly tell you that, you know,

she's further along than I was when I was six years old.

I always push her, you know, just a little bit.

I know that she has a tremendous amount of ability

in a lot of things,

but she has a tremendous amount of ability

in that she has great concentration,

tremendous concentration.

As far as skiing goes, the concentration is very important.

She's able to do what I tell her,

you know, plant your pole, drive your hand,

pick up your ski, and things like this.

You know, if there's a little fear that you have,

you want to put it off as much as you can.

And I try to push her into it and to overcome it,

and I'd like her to just have a,

just a bite.

I don't like her to take on the whole thing,

but I push her.

Every, you know, when I'm with her, I'm always pushing her,

but I'm not asking the impossible of her.

When she completes something,

she's really proud of it, you know.

Sometimes she complained a little bit,

but then, you know, she was really proud to have done it

and to have found something out about herself,

that she had the ability to do it,

and she's willing to go back.

Jimmie's method is one way

of teaching your kids to ski.

I taught my three kids a little differently.

I didn't put them on skis till they were six years old.

By that time, they'd logged

a couple of hundred thousand miles

asleep in the back of my station wagon.

I imagine they probably made at least two million snowballs

before they ever made their first turn on a pair of skis.

A man with yet another philosophy about teaching children

is Roger Staub, nine times Swiss national champion.

I am still a child when it comes to play.

No matter what it is, on skis or,

you know, I like to play games.

I like to play games with a friend or something like that.

And we do that a lot.

Yuri and I, we play a lot together,

you know, run around the apartment,

and we do all kinds of games together,

and he is very, very fond of that.

You know, he loves to play.

The reason I had him mountain ski

is to give him another toy.

I'm a very strong believer

that ski is for children.

They should be toys.

It shouldn't be something they have to learn on it.

Now, for you, it could be a ball,

but it just happens that he has a pair of little tiny skis.

He plays with them.

And there it shows.

You know, it's not always when you start.

It's probably more the question how you start.

A very good way to get started skiing

is with Stan Tomlinson,

co-director of the Ski School at Squaw Valley.

Stan learned his trade many years ago

when he worked for Emile Allais.

I taught skiing for Emile in those days too,

and while teaching, I produced my first ski film.

That was 1949.

Since then, a lot of changes have taken place

in ski techniques,

up down stem, don't stem, swing, don't swing,

side slip, snowplow,

and now emerging on to the ski scene

is what we have all been waiting for,

the French wide track stance.

It's a good easy way to learn.

After you learn straight running,

next is a natural stop in a feet apart manner.

This is fundamental to the whole French philosophy.

Keep the feet apart.

This is the stem assist to a natural bow-legged stop.

This is used as an aid to people

who just can't learn it any other way.

Still the upper body is kind of just there.

The position of the upper body is of no consequence.

As a matter of fact,

you're supposed to ski slightly bow-legged

and steer the turn with the inside ski.

Be sure and keep your feet apart.

Next we introduce the wide track top,

kind of a French bow-legged thing for the younger group.

I think the ski instructors have finally gotten with it.

For the last 50 years,

they've been trying to make all of us look like all of them.

Now they're finally starting to look like us.

The simple traverse and side slip.

Here, all you have to do is relax, keep your feet apart.

What a glorious revelation this must be to you folks

who are unable to understand any of what I'm saying.

Now the elementary linked French wide track turns.

You're bent at the waist,

kind of like you're trying to locate the keyhole

when it's 4:00 in the morning.

Maybe Stan Tomlinson can explain it a little better.

Here's one of Stan's super secrets.

What I like to do with somebody,

if they're having that problem,

is to take them on bumps and stand still on top of a bump

with your feet right on the crest with your feet apart.

Reach down the hill, plant your pole, turn your knee,

both knees towards the pole,

and you go into a turn.

Of course, it's very important to turn both knees.

If you just turn one, you're stepping,

but if you turn both,

you make a parallel turn from a standstill.

Now that you've mastered

the French wide track technique,

let's watch Stan on his lunch hour.

But he's doing it quite differently, isn't he?

He'll teach you this way too if you like,

but only in private lessons at $12.50 an hour.

Now that you've mastered the French wide track

and can handle any snow on any mountain,

it's your turn to be the instructor.

Here's how to teach your neighbors

as you take them on their first ski trip

up to Painful Pines.

Here's some things to look out for.

First, make sure they have good warm clothes.

Be sure they wear a scarf

so it can wrap around the rope tow.

Properly adjusted safety bindings are a must.

Make them good and tight so they'll never fall off.

You've bought all of them the new magnetic safety bindings.

Your boots are stuck electrically to your skis.

But your skis stick to everyone else's keys.

You're teaching your girlfriend, right?

But she'll never go skiing with you again

because she's already better than you are.

If you're going to take your family skiing,

remember that old German saying,

the family that skis together each other.

Come on, get up and enjoy yourself already.

The only ski technique you'll really know

is what you learn from the bartender,

words like Aspen and telepherique and exhibition,

Sun Valley and Gallo Glacier,

important stuff like that.

Once you start down though, just remember

that all the money you spent

for those French wide track lessons

is going to pay off as you ski gracefully towards the valley

far, far below,

and all the time, you know you should have bought

that matching colored crash helmet.

Instead, I'd suggest a knee brace.

Fortunately, knee braces come in pairs.

She died.

There are lots of different ski techniques.

All of them feature an animalistic urge for survival.

This girl learned from her mother.

Now you can head for the big one.

On the gondola, I met a guy

I hadn't seen for at least 15 years.

As we rode up, we talked about the old days.

He said, "Gee, Warren, I haven't seen you

since your pants were baggy and your face was smooth.

Now your pants are smooth and your face is baggy."

Toutes Neiges, Toutes Montagnes.

In Wyoming, that means

Olympic gold medal winner Pepi Stiegler.

Pepi has some advice for you folks who get to ski every day.

There's just one thing, I can't ski too much.

If I ski too much,

let's say day after day after day after day,

then I wear myself down on my desire to ski.

So if I take a little break, let's say a few days,

that does it, and I ride back there with my desire to ski.

And, of course, you're spoiled.

You have gone through so much skiing.

When it's sort of cruddy and bad, flat, light,

you don't even want to go out.

On the other hand, when it's sunshine and powder

or stormy and powder flying,

you love to go.

Nowhere is man freer than in skiing.

Here there are no scorecards, no rules,

no courts like tennis or golf.

Here, man has a sense of freedom

that can't be put into words.

And yet man, with all his desire for freedom,

instinctively becomes man the competitor

whenever two men get together.

This is clearly demonstrated by downhill and slalom

and giant slalom racing.

Each type of race demands

that you turn in a certain place at a certain time.

Now, man has finally put competition into free skiing,

but this time without a time clock.

Just turning down a wide open slope

to see which team of two skiers

can make the best set of figure eights.

First though, you have to climb

for at least two and a half hours

to get to the right color snow.

Why I don't know, but you do.

There were judges who gave them points

for symmetry, style, rhythm, grace.

I got points for missing that hole.

The losing team gets to erase all the tracks.

As you spend time on any ski slope,

you gradually become more and more familiar with it,

try and seek more challenges with each descent.

Take a mountain like Baldy at Sun Valley, for example,

a mountain with 10,000,

no, a million different routes down.

19-year-old Jeff Jobe from Seattle in his third year on skis

can make any run on Baldy seem easy with his bag of tricks.

Jeff's got some tricks that no one has even thought of yet.

Oh, it's the funnest thing I've ever done.

It's just thrilling.

Here you are, it beats flying an airplane because you,

here you are right out in the open.

You're above everything.

You're right by the trees.

You're just, you're going fast like you're snow skiing.

You make it up to around 50 miles an hour,

and you're just bombing down that hill.

And you've got all this open space

because trees and bushes,

they don't hassle you 'cause you're above all this stuff.

You just, you know, you use the trees for slalom poles.

You don't have to put in the stupid slalom poles.

You just eff down in between the trees.

It's just a gap.

The Flank, folks, is the funnest thing,

yeah, 'cause that's exciting.

You just come brushing around a bunch of trees.

You start to getting the ground effect

pushing against the ground,

and you gotta really be thinking

because you gotta know just how to,

how much turn, where you gotta position your body.

'Cause if you don't know exactly where to put your body,

you move yourself in a little bit

or you pull the nose up a little bit

and you start stalling out,

you'll be in big trouble 'cause you'll come down.

You know, so you're having to think.

You're really having to work at this thing.

You're watching and you're gonna make a turn this way,

and you really have to pay attention.

Now most of the people like it,

get to go way high, get real high,

eff on around, and come in for a smooth landing.

But that's no fun.

It's racing right above the ground that's so much fun.

Yeah, they like to, people like to see you get real high.

Ooh, look at that.

The higher you are, the safer you are off.

The closer you are to the ground, the more danger it is,

more dangerous it is.

O'Brien used to be Jeff's insurance agent.

Will you kindly leave your seat belts fastened

until the aircraft has come to a complete stop at the ramp?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to intermission.

While all these men are getting your plane ready,

think about this.

You're standing around an airport

that costs at least a hundred million dollars.

You're going on a $2,000 ski vacation to Europe,

and you can't find a dime for the men's room.

Nowhere in the world will you find any mountains

as well developed as this region of Europe.

It's a region between Courchevel, France

and Zermatt, Switzerland.

Here in this fantastic part of the ski world,

I joined up with some old friends from Sun Valley,

Pat Bauman, Bob Hamilton, Jim Stelling, and Jon Reveal.

Somehow I try to steal at least a week or two every year

for a holiday here.

Here you'll find some of the biggest

and best ski lifts in the world.

Cog railways, aerial trams, gondolas, chairlifts,

and, yes, few T-bars too.

Why, they've got one telepherique

that rises 10,000 feet in 20 minutes.

There's lots of famous runs here as well,

the Gornergrat and the Blauherd,

la Solaise and la Mer de Glace.

The mountains are big.

The Swiss have a saying,

"If you flattened out our mountains,

Switzerland would be at least twice as big as Texas."

Travel takes up a lot of my time during the winter.

We travel on planes, ski lifts, automobiles,

but quite often we travel from ski resort to ski resort

in our Ford van.

Why, we logged 26,000 miles last winter alone.

Every skier knows that good weather and snow conditions

make a very enjoyable weekend.

But here's a batch of people

who had already bought that weekend special for $19.95,

lift, lessons, equipment, lunch, and a bus ride both ways.

No matter how hard it rains,

you're going to have a good time even if you drown trying.

Boreal what?

This outfit was made out of garbage can liners.

Here they teach you kind of a W and U turn,

Wet and Uncomfortable.

There's an old Austrian proverb which means,

"He who finds fault with ski resorts

goes to faulty ski resorts."

Smile, you're having fun.

Must be great to be a ski instructor.

Okay, get out there and turn,

and remember, if you're a guy that's going places,

make sure your wife's out of town.

As you ride home freezing on the bus,

remember one thing.

Bengay is hot for your body.

But sometimes the weekend weather is perfect

and you're in a better mood,

like that day we discovered Steamboat Springs, Colorado

for the first time.

Here, you'll find a nice, small, and very friendly town.

So far, they've only built a very few condominiums,

but they have several chair lifts

and a great color-coordinated gondola.

There's no feeling of just another plastic resort

here at Steamboat.

No hurry, no hustle.

Just a leisurely place for a great ski vacation.

Here, there's time to relax and play.

For a just right day like this,

my camera crews and I travel constantly all winter.

We get up early while the stars are still shining

so we can always be first on the lift

to film that perfect slope

with just the right angle to the sun.

By 8:30 in the morning, we'll be all set up

to film the Ski School director

as he makes that perfect turn in just the right place.

Then he'll spend the rest of his life

pretending it never happened.

Other times, our assignment is to cover a big race.

We'll get there early to get that shot

of a guy demonstrating how safety bindings keep you

from breaking your leg, but not your neck.

The knees on our model's pants

are now as baggy as the over-the-boot pant.

In Japan, we rented a ski instructor

so we could show you what Japanese skiing is really like.

In Canada, a perfect cornice leads to a slow forward roll.

In Japan, we rented a ski instructor and a ski slope

so we could show you what Japanese skiing is really like.

We usually film the area manager,

so we can get free lift tickets.

Last winter, we were producing a technique film

on how to handle powder snow.

It featured the slow backward roll.

Late in the day, you're running out of sun.

You tell the guys to hurry up, and they do.

We rented the whole ski resort

so we can show you what Japanese skiing is really like.

But wherever we go,

it seems like the ski slopes are getting much more crowded,

like they are here at Stratton Mountain, Vermont.

Here we ran into Vince Clark and Scott Howe.

We were trying to think of crazy things

to do on a set of skis.

We decided that we'd try to put,

mount two sets of bindings on one set of skis

and try to ski on them.

So everybody thought we were crazy, as usual.

And so we mounted them up, we went out, tried it,

and it was pretty hard the first time.

All we could do was the snowplow.

When we singly ski,

both of us are skiing on the uphill ski most of the time

or any ski that comes along.

Or with two people skiing on that set of skis,

you have to ski more technical

than you do when you're alone on a set of skis

because it just doesn't work if you don't.

You can't really make any mistakes.

Right, you gotta have it,

it's gotta be pretty exact.

Or you go down.

Just kept practicing and practicing

and worked up through like the whole ski school technique

until finally we got to Vail,

and now we can do most anything on them.

Yeah, I think that's important.

We did have to just work right up through from,

you know, the snowplow,

just like almost regular starting all over again.

Except we progressed a little faster

than the average mounted skier,

but it was kind of like starting from the beginning.

We've like been skiing together

for like 14-15 years.

We know how each other ski.

It'd be really hard for two people

who'd never seen each other ski

to, you know, coordinate themselves together to do it.

I think that you'd have to know how the other person skis

just about as well as he knows how to ski, you know,

and he has to know how you ski,

and you gotta really have it together.

Yeah, that's...

As Scott said, we do ski just about alike

even on a pair of single skis.

So it does help when you get on the dual skis.

Slope's getting too crowded for you too?

Want to get away from the treadmill

of plastic coffee cups and soggy hamburgers?

Then try Yosemite National Park.

Here, they have America's first

snow camping and weekend wilderness school,

sponsored by the Ajax snowshoe

and frostbite medicine company.

Here, for $20 a weekend,

they'll rent you 200 square feet of snow.

The only problem, the snow is four miles

from the closest road.

Here you bivouac for the night.

For years, men have returned from the Arctic

telling us that Eskimos are warmer sleeping in igloos.

Not true.

They're just warmer than Eskimos who don't sleep in igloos.

We built our roof out of plastic instead of snow.

That way, we could listen to

and see the rain on the roof at the same time.

We could also feel it as it leaked into our sleeping bags.

But camping out in the snow is not always like this.

There's good moments too.

Wayne Mary, the creator of this winter sports camp,

shows you what it's really like.

But relaxing moments like this

are going to be rare all too soon.

Even now, the increase in cross country skiers

is tremendous.

On many weekends, Yosemite will have

as many as 200 pupils sitting around

getting checked out on their first cross country ski trip.

Why, one importer reports sales

of 15,000 pair of cross country skis last winter alone.

Proper wax on touring skis is very important.

If your kids give you a problem,

just put wax all over their hands,

tell them to stick them in their pockets,

and they won't get them out till they get home.

It's a little bit like hot bubblegum.

At Putney, Vermont, they scheduled a cross country race

for cross country racers

who had never raced cross country before.

There were no age brackets in this race.

Everyone raced on the same course.

Everyone had the same disadvantage.

Their lungs are too small,

or, as they say at Disneyland,

Pinocchio's girlfriend has a cedar chest.

The oldest skier was 70.

The youngest? Only 7.

And then the straggler started to limp in.

This guy had one ski stolen

at Howard Johnson's on Route 9.

Termites.

Kind of embarrassing to get whipped in a race

by a girl who's only nine years old,

but that's okay too

because in a field of 583 competitors,

you still finished 307.

No comment.

If you like your snow on the natural side

and your mountains on the steep side,

then Mad River Glen is the place for you.

It's a friendly kind of a family place.

Here they have a lot of ski lifts.

My favorite lift is a single chair

they built way back in 1948.

I really like single chairs

'cause you can ride up in silence.

You don't have your ear bent by some stranger

you happen to stand next to in the lift line.

Well, we find that eastern skiing

has a tendency to intimidate

some of the people from farther west,

where they're used to wide open areas.

So the real skiing

is the result of carving trails

down wooded mountain sites.

And with the wind

that is so frequent in New England,

and particularly the westerly wind,

it's almost mandatory

that you keep your trails

within a reasonable width,

or you're not going to be able to keep snow on them.

Mad River Glen management

has a very unique philosophy.

They're very friendly.

They also try to keep their skiing as natural as possible.

Well, they do have a few machine-packed slopes,

but many of their runs are impossible to get to

with snow compaction machinery.

They have a sort of a ski it like it is attitude,

rather than the now popular opinion

of pack it all out with machines and make it perfect.

One such unpackable run is Paradise.

It's hard to even find it on the hill,

much less pack it out.

Here on Paradise, the bumps get big and they stay that way.

And this does add another dimension to skiing

that probably the people who are used to skiing

in high altitudes above timberline don't get

because you have to make a turn

where the trail says you should turn.

You can't wait until you run out of speed

and perhaps make a turn

or pick a convenient place to do it.

You turn when the mountain says turn.

Eastern skiing offers

a special kind of challenge,

a challenge that you either meet or you go west to ski.

It's okay, there's ski patrolmen.

10,000 turns are sometimes made

in the same place on the same run on the same day.

There's more people skiing.

The bumps are getting closer together.

So the bump skiing is getting more highly technical.

When the bumps were a little further apart,

like, say, for instance, on flatter slopes,

you can get away with like skiing in the trough,

hitting one, clearing another.

But if you do that, say, on Exhibition or Limelight,

more chances than not,

if you hit one, clear another one,

unless you're going fairly slow,

you're gonna smash right into another one.

Just the finesse in the bumps, I think, is more challenging.

Takes more preciseness, anticipation, more forethought

when you just, like, free ski the bumps

or really go all out and hit a bunch of bumps

just as fast as you can and see what comes,

see what happens at the other end,

like stop at the other end of a big mogul patch

and look up there and say, "Wow, that was really something."

Sun Valley, Idaho's Bob Bennett.

If you're wondering about Bob's red hat,

it's full of ping pong balls.

Why, I don't know but it is.

I really feel that at some days,

it's really a game with the moguls,

that, you know, who's gonna win, you know.

Like hitting mogul

and splashing the snow off the top of it

and seeing what happens next.

Just defying the mogul itself

by hitting as hard and as fast as you can.

It's kind of like you against the mogul,

which just, which gives me great delight sometimes.

I think that's where the fun lies for me,

in the big bumps they have.

Like, I really get kind of strange feelings

when they cut the big bumps down.

I think it's kind of a loss in a way.

Like those bumps, I've went over those bumps so many times.

You know, they go and cut them all down.

It's kind of like losing some friends

because I've met them in a lot of different ways.

I still feel like the old school thought

that if you don't crash, you're not trying.

And here's some guys that are really trying.

If you really like to get it on on bumps, try Vail.

We stopped here for the first annual

Tom Leroy Memorial Beer Bottle Gelandesprung

and Demolition Derby.

Tom Leroy is a famous stunt skier.

He labored here for almost a month

to build the biggest, ugliest bump I've ever seen.

Takeoff was designed for only one thing, to kill.

Tom Leroy, who accidentally invented

the double forward somersault on skis,

tells you what it's like to fly.

When a racer came around the dog leg

and he saw nothing but the top of the Gore Range,

it took him 50 feet before he,

he was 50 feet out in the air

before he found out where he can land.

But taking off after the bump

and not seeing a thing till you get there,

you've got a tremendous rush going through your body.

Once you committed yourself to the last track,

which was, you know, barricaded in,

they were committed to the bump, they had to go now.

So I think any guy who had any bit of reservation at all,

he was tipped over backwards

because it takes a tremendous amount of talent

just to reach the ground.

And there was a big, long flat to travel across,

but if a guy commits himself to anything,

there's such a rush going on in the body

that he just goes all out and he'll make it.

Being in the air,

even with myself, when I started to go in the air,

it was a tremendous sense of freedom.

You know, you get up there and you say,

"Well, God didn't put me here but I'm here," you know,

and it's kind of like the Wright brothers, you know,

saw a bird, and they wanted to be like the bird.

And I think some guys are very good in the air

because they have a tremendous sense of understanding

with the air,

you know, to go 60 miles an hour

and just literally fly, you know.

There's a moment when you have nothing on your mind at all,

just taking off the bump and landing.

And that just few seconds in the air

is just a tremendous, tremendous feeling.

I think it was tremendously exciting to watch.

And I jumped it a couple times,

and I know what it took.

You know, I'm not kidding a soul.

It took a lot physical or mentally,

you know, to go down that long runway

and then just kick everything you got to get up in the air

and travel 190 feet,

and you see several thousand people on both sides of you,

and you're traveling over cameramen and still guys,

and all you're hearing is clicking

and Millikens and Mitchells running.

You know, it's exciting,

and then to land and ski away.

The amazing thing was that these guys

had to pay a $25 entry fee for the privilege of doing this.

The winner got his money back and his bus fare home.

They wear red boots so the blood doesn't show.

I think when the guy came to the edge of that bump

and he was committed,

he went hellbent for election, you know,

went all the way.

But I think if he had any reservations at all, he fell.

If the guys get any second thought

about, "Gee, I hope I don't fall," he's gonna fall.

'Cause I don't think it's a hill that you can be lucky on.

God was right.

We weren't meant to fly.

Here, we flew and skied with Ted Johnson

and Ken Hoopingarner.

Ted spent a decade and a half planning and executing

what promises to be an all-time ski resort

only 45 minutes from the jet airport at Salt Lake City.

We're building a plaza area,

that's the heart of the village.

And there'll be,

oh, roughly 50 or 60,000 square feet of commercial space,

which would be your ski shops, boutiques,

delicatessens, everything that you need, and restaurants

to make a village, a full operating village.

And within a two-year period,

why, we hope to have somewhere around a thousand beds.

In our first phase, we'll have the Snowbird tramway.

We'll have three double chair lifts.

If you stay at Snowbird,

you'll be able to leave your hotel room,

ride down in an elevator, walk 150 feet,

and get onto a gondola and ride to the summit.

There, you'll step off the gondola

to ski on slopes like these.

We have a real glaciated valley type of skiing

that makes a lot of undulating terrain.

But that can be exciting.

I mean, every time you come around a turn,

you've got a different view to look at,

and you're looking down into the main valley here.

Quite often, when you come around the corner,

you get a different shot at the valley,

and it really is exciting

'cause you're never sort of looking at the same thing

when you're skiing down.

I get a real charge out of just being by myself

and going out,

and especially in soft, the soft perfect snow

when you're out and you just hear your skis, you know,

and you've got,

you're all sewn up with your own thoughts

about the way it affects you.

And a lot of times, you just, you know,

you have those runs when you just want to be by yourself,

or having, you know, going into some place

and you get so crossed up,

and all of a sudden, you're on one ski,

but you make it.

You know, you pull it out.

And you may not look good to somebody else,

but, man, you get turned on.

I think mountains have always been exciting to people.

And to be able to go up on the top of one of these mountains

and scoot down at high speeds in great snow,

it's an exhilarating thing

that sort of takes you away from anything else.

I mean, when you're skiing,

you don't think about anything else.

I think powder snow is probably the turn on.

There's nothing that can get you stoked to ski in,

big hill that's steep, that's soft.

Because it's just like the mountain's a part of you.

Man, that snow is going up over your head

and into your nose and your ears,

and it gets, phew, and you get turned on seeing that stuff.

Or when it's really so deep

that you come down and you're turning,

and every once in a while,

you catch a glimpse of the bottom of the mountain,

and that's what it's all about.

Yes, Any Snow, Any Mountain means many things

to many people.

It means Sapporo and Zermatt

and Sun Valley and Vail.

It means jumping and speed and action.

It means new resorts and old ones,

good runs and bad ones.

But this winter, we all know what it will mean.

This winter we'll find that perfect snow

on that perfect mountain,

and then we'll really get it together, you and I.

We'll feel those giggly butterflies in our stomach

when we finish that run,

and we too can say Toutes Neiges, Toutes Montagnes,

Any Snow, Any Mountain.