How Conan Doyle pioneered skiing... in a tweed suit and 8ft-long wooden skis

As the great and the good gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting last week, they could have done with a planet-brained Sherlock Holmes to sort out the biggest financial crisis in 80 years.



Failing that, they could have done with his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wasn’t so dozy himself.



Not only did he create the world’s greatest detective — whose recent incarnation on television, as played by Benedict Cumberbatch, has been a big hit. He was also responsible for introducing skiing to Switzerland, and for popularising it in Britain.



And he did it all in Davos.



In 1893, aged 34, he headed there with his two young children, Mary, four, and Arthur, one, and his wife, Louisa. Suffering from tuberculosis, she had been prescribed a high-altitude cure. It was the mountain air, Conan Doyle maintained, that kept his wife alive until 1906 — long after doctors had predicted she would survive.

Great skiing mystery: Conan Doyle in the Alps in 1894, demonstrating a novice turning

Year after year, until her death, the Conan Doyles returned to Davos; and it was in 1895 that he developed what he called ‘ski-running’.



There is evidence of skiing going back to prehistoric times — in Norway, 5,000-year-old carvings survive, showing a skier with a single ski.

But the sport, as we now recognise it, was first developed in 1850 in the Telemark region of Norway, where the first light, thin, modern skis and flexible bindings attaching the foot to the ski were invented.



The pursuit only spread to the Alps in the 1890s — so Conan Doyle was one of the first to try skiing outside Scandinavia. By 1896, the modern basics of skiing — the snowplough braking manoeuvre and the parallel turn — were being taught in Austria.



Still, it was only in the 20th century that the popular idea of the skiing holiday in designated Alpine resorts really took off. When Conan Doyle first took to his skis, the sport was almost unheard of in Britain.



In 1894, he wrote an article in the Strand Magazine — where his Sherlock Holmes stories appeared — laughing off the dangers of skiing, and explaining the basics to a British audience. He wrote: ‘You have to shuffle along the level, to zigzag, or move crab fashion, up the hills, to slide down without losing your balance, and above all to turn with facility.’



The new TV production of Sherlock Holmes for the BBC with Benedict Cumberbatch has been a huge success

Although Conan Doyle played down his athletic abilities in the article, he was, in fact, quite the sportsman. He played cricket for the MCC and was a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club. At golf, he played off a handicap of ten. One year, while in Davos, he even laid out a golf course, made a little trickier ‘by the curious trick the cows had of chewing up the red flags’.



But it was skiing that really gripped his mind in the winter of 1895. Inspired by the recent exploits of the Norwegian polar explorer and champion skier Fridtjof Nansen, Conan Doyle asked Tobias Brangger, a sledge-builder in Davos, to get a pair of 8ft-long skis from Norway.



To begin with, Conan Doyle was flummoxed by the great long elm planks strapped to his feet. ‘You put them on and you turn with a smile to see whether your friends are looking at you,’ he said of his first skiing attempts.



‘And then, the next moment, you are boring your head madly into a snow bank, and kicking frantically with both feet, and half-rising, only to butt viciously into that snow bank again, and your friends are getting more entertainment than they had ever thought you capable of giving.'

For weeks, the Swiss were enthralled, and amused, by the distinguished creator of Sherlock Holmes and his ‘awkward movements and complex tumbles’. For Conan Doyle was already well-known in Switzerland for his famous detective.



Indeed, he chose the Reichenbach Falls, near the central Swiss town of Meiringen, as the spot where Holmes was pushed to his death by Professor Moriarty. The instalment in the Strand Magazine recounting Holmes’s death appeared while Conan Doyle was in Davos perfecting his skiing.

Conan Doyle originally went to Davos because doctors had prescribed a high altitude cure for his wife's tuberculosis

After a month of falling down the slopes, the technique clicked. Conan Doyle then tramped to the top of a 7,700ft mountain called the Jacobshorn, two miles south-west of Davos, carrying his skis on his back — there were no lifts then.



Launching himself down the mountain, Conan Doyle was the first Englishman to document the thrill of skiing. ‘You let yourself go,’ he said, ‘gliding delightfully over the gentle slopes, flying down the steeper ones, taking an occasional cropper, but getting as near to flying as any earthbound man can. In that glorious air it is a delightful experience.’



Encouraged by this first run, Conan Doyle embarked on an even more ambitious trip, carrying his skis up the 8,000ft pass, the Maienfelder Furka, that separated Davos from the neighbouring town of Arosa.



For generations, the only way to get from one town to another had been by a long round-about route. Conan Doyle was to be the first to take the direct route across the pass using skis.

The leaders meeting at the World Economic Forum last week could have done with Holmes' brain, or Doyle's foresight as they attempted to address the economic crisis

Accompanied by ‘two gallant Switzers’ — Tobias Brangger and his brother — he made it up the near impassable slope without any ropes, occasionally plunging into snowdrifts up to his waist.



Then came the magic moment when they reached the highest point and could strap on their skis. ‘For a third of a mile, we shot along over gently dipping curves, skimming down into the valley without a motion of our feet,’ said Conan Doyle.



‘In that great untrodden waste, with snowfields bounding our vision and no marks of life save the tracks of chamois (the European antelope) and of foxes, it was glorious to whiz along.



‘A short zigzag at the bottom of the slope brought us, at half-past nine, into the mouth of the pass; and we could see the little toy hotels of Arosa, away down among the fir woods, thousands of feet beneath.’



But then the three men came to a black run that was too steep for their primitive skis to negotiate, so the Swiss brothers came up with an ingenious solution. They took off their skis, tied them together and then sat, toboggan-style, on top of them. It worked like a dream, as they rocketed down the hill.



But Conan Doyle wasn’t so successful. His skis slipped from under him and vanished in a huge snowdrift. His only answer was to hurl himself down the mountain to retrieve them, a human toboggan rolling over and over again.

Doyle correctly predicted that in the future Englishmen would come to Swizerland for the 'skiing season'. Seen here with a party of friends on a winter holiday

Conan Doyle later recalled: ‘My tailor tells me that Harris tweed cannot wear out. This is a mere theory and will not stand a thorough scientific test. He will find samples of his wares on view from the Furka Pass to Arosa.’



However inelegant their seven-hour journey had been, Conan Doyle and his friends had established the usefulness, and pleasure, of skiing.



Secret Sportsman: Conan Doyle is remembered today for Sherlock Holmes, a character much beloved by so many, and few realise his essential part in the creation of one of the most popular sports of all time

The residents of Arosa — astonished the men had made the trip so quickly — gathered at the foot of the mountain to see the legendary writer schussing into town. Even today, few locals are happy to follow in Conan Doyle’s footsteps, so great is the risk of avalanche.



That evening, Tobias Brangger signed Conan Doyle into their Arosa hotel. In the register, Brangger wrote the word ‘sportesmann’ for Conan Doyle’s profession. The writer was delighted at both the compliment and what he had done to create a new sport in Switzerland.



‘These and other excursions of ours first demonstrated their possibilities to the people of the country, and have certainly sent a good deal many thousands of pounds since then into Switzerland.’ He later wrote: ‘I am convinced that there will come a time when hundreds of Englishmen will come to Switzerland for the “skiing” season.’



Conan Doyle wasn’t wrong. He planned many trips for his friends, and helped Norwegian manufacturers to market their skis. But even he couldn’t predict what a huge impact his first expeditions would have on Davos.

