High life | 5 March 2011

Sitting in my study, whose windows are covered in icicles, one feels cocooned from the elements, as if in a prison cell with the doors unlocked. The snows have finally come, the horizons are totally white, clouds and snowy peaks intermingling in a rhapsody of white, green and blue, the last two provided by pine and sky.

Some 35 years ago, I took a ski-plane up the Jungfrau, landed on an upward slope and skied down to Kleine Scheidegg, a vertiginous trip that had one of our fellow skiers being sick while small avalanches hissed past us. Two people quit halfway down and asked for a chopper to pick them up. One was pregnant, but unaware of it, the mother of my children. The other was an Italian male friend, who pretended to accompany the lady in distress but in reality had had enough. Two stayed with the guide, Roman Polanski and yours truly.

Roman did complain a hell of a lot on the way down, but he’s a strong skier and just the right size for the dangerous terrain. It took us close to three hours but we arrived safely looking very green. Our guide was kind and full of praise for our endurance. The only thing I said was that, however tough the trip, it beat the foehn anytime.

The foehn winds of the Bernese Oberland can generate stunning power. They are said to contain a number of positive ions that can drive people nuts. When they blow, the suicide rate goes up, and it used to be said that the Swiss courts would take the winds into consideration for crimes committed during the foehn period. It is a dry, warm wind that makes one feel achy and bad-tempered, and I suppose it is nature’s revenge for the horrors we inflict on her mountains each and every day.