Look, Mom--No Boat!

A mirage? There in the sand-blown, baking desert near Colton, Calif., it looked as though people were splashing and slaloming around on water skis without a motorboat to tow them. But when some 8,000 people drove up to stop and stare one day last week, they saw that it was really happening.

M. W. ("Slim") Maxwell, 52, who opened the desert water-skiing center last week, got the idea one hot afternoon when he saw a pickup truck towing an indomitable water skier along a 6-ft.-wide irrigation ditch. He was working on a commercial adaptation of boatless skiing when a friend wrote to him about one that had already been developed by a Swiss trolley-car company, and Maxwell wrote at once to get the first U.S. franchise, which may soon put water skiing on a nationwide basis.

Near the Colton airport, which he operates, Maxwell and two contractor partners dug a 17-acre lake in the shape of a hollow rectangle and lined it with plastic to keep the water from draining away into the sand (TIME, Oct. 12, 1962). In the center is a 4 1/2-acre park with a swimming pool, paddle-tennis courts, refreshment stands and palm trees. The 250-ft.-wide ski course runs beneath four towers that support an overhead steel cable, powered by a 74-h.p. diesel engine. At ten-second intervals it carries 77-ft. tow ropes past a carpeted dock, from which the skier launches himself to whoosh around the rectangular track at about 25 m.p.h. (for experts the speed can be upped to 38 m.p.h.).

The 90DEG turns are arm-wrenching--especially if the skier comes into one from the inside of the channel--and the fixed route may seem a bit monotonous to those accustomed to figure-eighting ad lib in the great wet open spaces. But for beginners, there are certain advantages in water skiing desert-style. It is relatively cheap; Maxwell sells three turns around the slightly more than half-mile course for 50-c-, versus about $15 an hour for a motorboat and driver. There is no speedboat wake to cope with. And after a spill it is only a short wade to shore in a mere five feet of water.

Trudging a quarter of a mile back to the starting dock, barefoot on the hot pebbly sand, can be a bit painful. But Slim Maxwell is about to install a rescue operation by using a golf cart.

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