Chapter 53: Speed Run on Skis

The powers that be at Sony Entertainment had decided that Wengen, Switzerland, would be the perfect place to film the outdoor ski scenes for our movie Downslope. The small town was serviced by a rack railway system. The massive Eiger rises in front of the town, a key part of the Alps. Ski slopes of all varieties left from the town, with a wide variety of transport to return to home base.

Crystal and I stood outside on the protected porch of the Luise Wengen, a holiday rental Sony had arranged for us. Crystal, Ellen, Claire, and I had been placed on the top floor of the inn in two adjoining small apartments. The rooms were comfortable but sterile.

Below us, skiers schussed by at varying rates of speed, a few pulling up to our building to dismount their skis and return to their lodgings below or nearby. We wouldn’t get any skiing in today; the afternoon was already late and the ski lifts were closing soon.

The most impressive part of our view however, was not the ski slopes, but the Eiger, which rose to over 13,000 feet in front of us – a huge and imposing mountain of granite that we read about on the journey across the Atlantic. Many climbers had lost their lives trying to scale the fearsome north face of the mountain that rose vertically several thousand feet.

Nearby, the Monch and Jungfrau punctuated the sky, a tribute to the entire Alpine chain, and the pushing together of two immense tectonic plates riding on the mantel of the earth’s core about three hundred million years earlier. The mountains were humbling, and something no man should miss seeing. Forever after you will remember the old saying, ‘Men come and men go, but earth abides.’

Our movie crew was scattered at hotels all through the close-knit mountain town of Wengen and at some of the places near Berne, down on flatter terrain. No vehicles were allowed in the town, so all our equipment had been transported up on the rack railway at least a week earlier. The Swiss film crew had been here even earlier, planning each sequence of shots so that our efforts would be efficient during our month long stay at the resort.

At least in this part of the world, Crystal and I were less likely to be identified. We took solace in that until Terry called to our attention the fact that Sony had sent out various press releases about our filming and whom the ‘great’ stars in the movie were. Crystal groaned. I tried to assure her that once she had on her snow bunny suit with ski goggles no one in the world would know who she was, not even her mother.

Our inner clocks were all messed up because of jet lag; so, I couldn’t get to sleep. Crystal and Claire on the other hand seemed to zone right out, but then I’d slept on the airplane going to Switzerland, and they’d read and watched a movie.

Ellen had also slept, so she and I found each other in the common room of the inn we were at. We talked for a bit, and then Ellen made me an offer I couldn’t refuse – wonderful gratuitous sex. We went up to the room she shared with Claire, snuck into the room to the tune of Claire’s heavy breathing, stripped our clothes off, and crawled into Ellen’s double bed. The room was cold so we mutually agreed that all activities would be conducted beneath the covers.

Ellen and I stroked and smoothed each other’s bodies for a little, with me paying particular attention to her full breasts.

Ellen whispered, “I haven’t had you all to myself in ages. This is such a treat. I hope you’ll sleep with me tonight after we make love.”

I pledged that I would, and we then started our under-the-covers intercourse. In no time at all, we were overheated and fucking on top of the covers, relishing the cool air on our sexed-up bodies. I briefly thought of the outdoor fuck I’d had with Lauren a few days earlier on her back deck as the snow fell around us.

Ellen hadn’t noticed, but a shaft of light from outside the inn dimly lit Claire’s bed. I saw that Claire was awake and watching us. She’d pulled the covers away from her nude body, and had started to masturbate as she watched us. I got harder just watching her over Ellen’s shoulder. We were in part of the room with more light coming in the windows so she had a good view of our lovemaking.

Ellen and I took turns being on top of each other. We started in missionary, went to cowgirl, came back to missionary but with her legs over my shoulders, went to reverse cowgirl, sixty-nined for a bit, and back to cowgirl – Ellen’s favorite position because she can control the speed and intensity of the fuck, and that night she wanted fast and furious.

“Cum in me. Pump me full of your cum,” Ellen gasped out in a whisper as her hips made wild oscillations back and forth over my cock. Even in the dim light, I could see how her pussy ate my cock to its full extent, and then pulled off me until only the very tip of my mushroom crown touched the entrance to her vagina.

I whispered, “You want cum; you got cum.” I accelerated my up strokes into her down strokes, and used my thumb on her clit. Ellen’s head went back, but there was no cessation of speed or intensity in her passion.

I started to blast my cum into her cunt, a full load since I hadn’t had sex with anyone for over twenty-four hours. The first injection of my semen into Ellen’s pussy triggered her orgasm. She gasped, and then squeaked, partly because she wanted to be quiet and partly because she would have awoken the entire inn to our successful mating if unrestrained.

I heard a gasp and large sigh from the other bed in the room. Claire had cum with us. I looked, and her head was thrown back in the paroxysm of her own climax. Claire’s fingers were buried in her cunt, frozen in place by the pleasure she’d found at her peak.

Ellen came into my arms, and we shared several passionate minutes together. Gradually, our physiology came back to feeling the cool room, so we slipped back under the covers. As we did, Ellen said aloud, “Claire, you can come and join us if you want. It’ll be tight, but we love you and don’t want to shut you out if you want us.”

Claire’s nude body nestled next to me ten seconds later. The three of us were able to sleep.

“HE WHAT?” My exclamation echoed around the common room of our Swiss inn almost as good as a yodel in the mountains.

In a calm voice, Mark Ang explained to me a second time, “We were filming a ski run, and Jason wiped out. He broke a leg and fractured a rib. He can’t be your stunt double the rest of this movie. We’re trying to locate someone that can take his place; it might take a week or more. He was a good skier and will be hard to replace. None of the other stunt men are up to the task; besides they don’t even come close to looking like you.”

I said, “And you want me to do some of my own ‘stunts’ during the time you look for someone else? Like the run down the mountain from Piz Gloria? You’re fucking nuts!” I knew Mark Ang, our film’s director, well enough to call him names, but I restrained myself further. He was also a co-producer of the film. I stomped around in a large circle.

Jason Lake and I were nearly twins, although he was a decade younger, and hence more agile, particularly on skis. Breaking a bone was a major setback in the schedule unless I stepped up to the plate and started to do some of my ‘own’ stunts – the stunts Jason was going to take over for me when he also played my character in Downslope. If I broke a leg movie production would come to a stop; the same for Crystal and for that matter Claire who played a strong supporting role in the film. We already had hundreds of hours of film with each of us in various scenes. I knew they had filmed Jason for many scenes already, but the ‘Big Scene’ in the movie hadn’t been done yet – a ski run from Piz Gloria down a nearly vertical expert slope being chased by bad guys with machine guns and a helicopter gun ship.

I stomped around the common room at the inn where we’d been meeting with a couple of dozen other production people. “OK, I’ll do it, but I can’t ... I won’t go downhill at a hundred miles an hour the way Jason could.” Boy did I get that wrong! I forgot about gravity.

Mark said, “We can play with the film speed a little to make it go faster, plus we’re going to put small ‘U’s’ on the back of your skis so that they kick up more snow behind you; that’ll make it look like you’re going faster than you are – it was Jason’s idea.”

I asked, “Where is he?”

“He’s spending the night on painkillers in a hospital in Berne, with a cast up to his waist, I’m told. We arranged to fly him back to LA tomorrow in a medical jet. You can see him there when you return stateside.”

An hour later, I rode up the aerial cable from Stechelberg to the Schilthorn, a very tall and very steep Alp. At the top was the Piz Gloria restaurant, a monument to a 1969 James Bond film that featured scenes around the restaurant and another daring ski down the mountain – a very steep mountain. We were using the same mountain, but downplaying the use of the same scenery as the forty-plus-year-old Bond movie.

Mark and a couple of the production crew stood with me and explained what they wanted me to do. “As you push off here, you’ll see blue paint here and there on the snow. Try to overrun those benchmarks with your skis. We have cameramen hidden all the way down the slope, a few even buried in snow banks. If you stick to the blue course we’ve marked out, you’ll pass right by them and we’ll get some fabulous shots of you careening down the mountain.”

I asked, “That’s all?” I knew there had to be more. I didn’t like the word ‘careening.’

Mark grinned and said, “Of course not. Behind you will be six Ninja guys on skis and snowboards. They’ll be carrying ‘high powered rifles’ and will be shooting at you all the way down the mountain, mostly automatic weapon fire. The guns are rigged to give off high muzzle flash so it’ll show for the camera even in the daytime.

Oh, there’ll also be a helicopter shooting at you, but of course not with real bullets, and that’s why you have to stick to the path with marked with blue paint, because just off that path, we’ve got explosives set to go off in synch with your run. You’re the hero, so you’ll make it down unscathed. We can easily get rid of the blue marks on the snow during editing.”

I verified in over simplistic terms and great sarcasm, “And all I have to do is ski?”

Mark shook his head. “Didn’t you read this script fifty times? No, you occasionally have to turnaround and shoot back at the bad guys or shoot at the helicopter. We’ll figure out what shots to use later, but ultimately, you’ll be knocking off the ‘bad guys’ one by one as you ski down the hill.”

I looked over the edge of the precipice down the slope that looked to me like a near vertical drop down the mountain. I yelled at Mark, “HILL? You call this a fucking HILL? This is the steepest fucking mountain I’ve ever been on. It’s the steepest fucking mountain in the world!”

Mark tried to soothe his leading actor, “Jim, you’ll do fine. Now, just get ready and wait for the cue to start your run. Oh, check in with the film crew at the bottom. We have radio contact with them, and we can see whether we need a redo of the run.”

“If I make it down this suicide mission of yours alive, you aren’t getting a second run out of me!” I declared in rather firm terms. I think Mark knew that. I had my doubts about making it to the bottom in one piece.

Mark walked away to talk to the nearby camera crew and the ‘bad guys.’ I knew I’d have a twenty-second head start on them.

I got my skis on and tightened the bindings. I bounced around quite a bit to be sure the bindings would hold on the devilish run. I adjusted my ski clothing, goggles, gloves, and poles, and then waited. I spied the first three blue marks in the snow, but nothing further, partly because the slope became even steeper beyond my line of sight, plus it cut to the right slightly.

I gazed around me. This had to be one of the most beautiful winter scenes on the planet. The way down the mountain was fresh powder, but only about two inches deep on top of an eight to twelve-foot base groomed to facilitate our filming. I could look off and see the Eiger, Jungfrau, and other nearby mountains – immense monoliths of snow-covered granite that reminded any man how humble they should be in the face of the forces that made Earth.

I heard a bullhorn announcement by one of the assistants, “One minute to start. Everyone get ready.” I could hear the echo of the words down the slope into the canyons I would ski through.

“Thirty seconds.” I heard a series of squawks on various radios as the camera crews down the mountain checked in as ‘Ready’.

“OK, JIM MELLON, START YOUR SKI RUN.”

I pushed off over the forty-five-degree edge between the level ground I’d been standing on and the initial part of the ski slope. Now, when you draw a forty-five-degree angle on a piece of paper, it doesn’t look that steep, but strap a pair of well-waxed skis on your feet and start down a slope at that angle and you realize that you might just have a death wish, and then the slope gets steeper!

In seconds, I had to be doing sixty to eighty miles an hour, and I was for all intensive purposes out of control. I could see how Jason broke a leg. I wondered if I’d ever see the bottom in anything other than a gurney or coffin.

I schussed past the first two blue marks at near Mach One. I aimed slightly for the third, and that’s when I heard the automatic weapon fire over my shoulder. I had a fake pistol in my right hand as I also held the relatively useless ski pole. I aimed back for a microsecond and pretended to fire. In a month or two, some sound engineer would add the appropriate effect of a firing weapon.

I could hear the helicopter homing in on me, as I spotted the fourth and fifth blue marks in the snow and aimed for them. Another shot behind me.

Suddenly, just to my immediate right as I headed from marker five to six, the snow erupted in a series of large explosions, supposedly the result of cannon fire from the helicopter. I checked my speed slightly at a turn, trying to slow down from terminal velocity. I couldn’t slow. FUCK!

I saw marker seven coming up and nothing but space beyond it. ‘Oh, shit. Mark didn’t mention any jumps.’

I couldn’t even think about what was happening, it went by so fast. I shot past marker seven and was airborne, and not just for a few feet. I accelerated out into space and began a free fall about a hundred-feet to a lower slope just as steep. I saw more blue markers as I dropped, and as I tried to remain roughly vertical with my skis pointed downhill.

I hit hard, my ass actually sitting down on the backs of my skis for a second before my body lurched forward and I started down a near-vertical slope that slowly arched out from the mountain in a curve back to something near forty-five degrees from near vertical. I figured by then I had to be going over a hundred-twenty-miles-an-hour.

When I had a slightly stable moment, I aimed my make-believe weapon at the helicopter for a couple of seconds, and then back at my supposed pursuers. I noticed there were fewer of them.

Then, a real moment of truth arrived, I could see the blue marks and the mock cannon fire leading me into a copse of trees. Now, hitting a tree at a hundred or so is a fatal event. I tried to slow to no avail. I dug my edges in to keep to the line of blue markers, coming more frequently now to keep me online through the woods.

Suddenly, I was in the trees in a narrow trail that only allowed minimal turns or corrections. A thousand trees flashed by in five seconds. ‘Oh, shit, I am so going to die.’

I kept the mantra, ‘Follow the blue markers; follow the blue markers.’ I dug in here and there but remained on course, and very unhappy with my downhill speed. Here and there, my ski poles hit trees as I shot by them so close. Even in my most daring teenage ‘showoff’ days I’d never gone this fast, by far, and positively not through a forest. This had to be at least twice again faster than I’d ever been.

Another ten-thousand trees flashed by, and suddenly I was in the clear again. More mock cannon fire from the helicopter exploded near me. I aimed and fired at the bird. I aimed and fired behind me, not even turning to see whether I was close to where my pursuers supposedly were.