schilthorn, switzerland
If you like Bond films and skiing, you’ll be in double-oh-seventh heaven
‘Just a stiffness coming on …inthe shoulder. Due to the altitude, no doubt.’ One of the cornier lines from On Her Majesty’s Secret
Service, delivered deadpan by the flash-in-thepan George Lazenby in his sole outing as 007, while a guest at Blofeld’s mountain-top clinic. Destination for an Aston DB9 road trip in
Octane 155, Blofeld’s clinic is now a revolving restaurant called Piz Gloria, perched on the very tip of the Schilthorn mountain. Besides being able to eat and drink while you take in a breathtaking 360o view, you can also visit the Bond World interactive exhibition and watch scenes from OHMSS on a huge cinema screen.
It’s nearly a vertical mile from the village of Mürren, on the lower slopes of Schilthorn, to Piz Gloria at the top, and the only way to reach it is by cable car. You can go back down the same way – or you can strap on some skis and experience the longest downhill course in the world. The Inferno.
At around 15km in length, the Inferno has a vertical drop of 2000m, but length is not the only thing that sets the Inferno apart. It also has thigh-burning uphill sections and, as a public race for all-comers, it gives amateur racers the chance to confront their demons and fulfil their downhill fantasies. It’s worth seeking out the video on YouTube of when Land Rover helicoptered a Discovery Sport to the start line so that Top Gear’s ‘The Stig’ could try to match the skiers’ times downhill.
There’s more to the Inferno than one helter-skelter descent, however. The Inferno Combination takes place over four days, beginning with a mad dash three times around the snow-covered streets of Mürren on crosscountry skis, and reaching a climax with the famous downhill on Saturday. After nightfall on the eve of the main event, a torchlit procession through the village carries an effigy of the devil, which is then set on fire.
The Inferno was a very different affair in 1928 when a small group of ski-crazy Brits came up with a hare-brained idea to climb the Schilthorn and then race each other down by whatever route they could devise. They were members of the Kandahar Ski Club, which the tour operator and alpinist Arnold Lunn had founded in Mürren four years earlier to promote the new sport of downhill racing. Lunn met fierce opposition from the Nordic-dominated skiing establishment, which considered cross-country racing and jumping the only forms of ski competition worthy of recognition.
In answer to that prejudice, 17 Kandahar members set out on the morning of 29 January 1928 with a plan to start their race from a col below the Schilthorn’s steep final ascent, where the Inferno starts now. A few diehards insisted on going to the very top, however. ‘The Inferno must be as infernal as possible,’ declared Lunn.
Today well over 2000 skiers, from teenagers to pensioners, apply each year for the 1850 places available. The Inferno after-party starts at about 9.10 on Saturday morning, when the first racers come through the finish, then builds through the day and goes on all through the night, to the thump of a band playing hardcore rock in Mürren’s cavernous sports centre.
By Sunday, the little village has returned to tranquillity, with only the sound of clock bells to wake those slumbering. Until next year…