THRILL OF THE SKI

NZ Truth, Issue 1210, 7 February 1929, Page 16

THRILL OF THE SKI

At Mount /"3&usi]pefoti

Swiss-ss-ssh ! — you're away— and m the space of five seconds the Wings of Mercury seem «to bedashing you clean off the earth.

f\R is it that those miles and miles of field and forest m tne hazy beyond — the rugged peaks nearer at hand and below — are the contours of a new planet towards which downward you are speeding on eagle-wing? Either of these — momentary^ panic or rapture unbounded — must be your first fluttering sensation as you let yourself go from a height of over 9000 feet to embark upon the finest, safest and longest snow-slide m New Zealand known as "Gliding- Gladys," which is one of the trailing: folds of Mt. Ruapehu's glittering-white shawl. , The thrill of it!— hurling through the air — : and God's own air it is," too — at a bi-eathless speed on a shimmering carpet of snow. Like the sparkling foam i-ound the plunging bows of a speed-boat, a suntinselled crest of snov/ breaks away

before the headlong', path of your mercurial -mat (a chaff -sack!). Down, down — one, two; three thousand feet before the decreasing' slope and softer snow steadies' the pace, when the "glissader" starts handpaddling m the snow .m a vain eivdeavor to make "Gladys" give up a- few more yards of this utierly gorgeous gambol. Alas,, how few New Zealanders know the thrills of "glissading," liiucn less the existence or locality ,-'. of "Gliding- Gladys?" , How few know — or would bother their heads about it if. they did — of the wondrous nine-mile track through the most beauteous forest m the worid, which gives access to the Mt. Ruapeiiu I accommodation hut' on the "Gliding 1 Gladys" side? 33ut that is another story; ■