efore I arrived, I’d been told by a tourist bureau friend that Peter Lunn still spent four weeks a winter at the Hotel Eiger, as his London-based family had for almost a century. Peter had followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a renowned ski racer and author in his own right. By this time, he was 96 years old, and I hoped to bump into him shuffling around some hotel lobby. Maybe we’d have a chat about the early days—perhaps tea in the Eiger’s lounge? So far, however, there’d been no sign of his presence. On the day before the Inferno, I’d just finished a glori-ous off-piste powder run in the resort’s amphitheater-like Sonnenberg sector when a smallish man, hunched with intense concentration, his face sprung with an ivory tuft of chin whiskers, snowplowed past me on a cat road. It was Peter being escorted under the watchful eyes of his son Stephen and his daughter-in-law. I was awestruck, but perhaps should not have been—at age 90 Peter had become the oldest person ever to ski the Inferno, a record likely to stand in perpetuity. The family pulled up at a restaurant for coffee, where I found them sitting on the sunny deck watching “speed fliers” whirl over the face of the Schilthorn. It was pure invention and mountain art, and a moment of shared awe that tied together everything I’d hoped to find here. Introduced to Peter by his son, I carefully grasped the hand that stretched slowly toward me. When I told him I had read his 1935 book High-Speed Skiing cover to cover, he became animated with delight. Not wanting to burden him unnecessarily, I asked what I thought to be a simple question: what attracted him to the sport in the first place? Peter looked up with a wan smile and distant eyes, his thoughts possibly hitching back to the apt title of one of his father’s books The Mountains of Youth . Over the years I’d found a few answers as to why people chucked everything to go skiing. Or bothered to write about it. But only that simple question could account for the sport’s constant evolution, its past, pres-ent and future, something in which Mürren—and Arnold Lunn and James Riddell—had played a significant role. “It was fun,” Peter answered, his grin widening. “Just so much fun.” B ABOVE • Air time is timeless. An early skier, equipped with wooden skis and leather boots, enjoys his winter holiday. Photo: Schilthorn Cableway Ltd. Archives RIGHT • When the mountains are this big, make sure to look around and take it all in. Emanuel Hedwall enjoys the scenery while spinning off one of Mürren’s countless features. Photo: Mattias Fredriksson 054 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume Eleven, Issue Three: Page 54
