Skiing Mountain Quotes

Just so you know, this is the last time I ever trust you," I say. "But you're so cute all covered in snow." "Shut up and help me find my ski." We search through the powder for a while, but don't locate my missing ski. After ten fruitless minutes I'm convinced that the mountain has eaten it.

The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.

At the end of the day, no amount of investing, no amount of clean electrons, no amount of energy efficiency will save the natural world if we are not paying attention to it - if we are not paying attention to all the things that nature give us for free: clean air, clean water, breathtaking vistas, mountains for skiing, rivers for fishing, oceans for sailing, sunsets for poets, and landscapes for painters. What good is it to have wind-powered lights to brighten the night if you can't see anything green during the day? Just because we can't sell shares in nature doesn't mean it has no value.

The simple fact is this: when you goto Alaska, you get your ass kicked.

Ultimately, I wanted to own a big truck, exercise my second Amendment rights, listen to hardcore music, and let my congressman know how poorly he represents me. None of this could occur in France.

At Last It's a perfect winter day. No wind. No Arctic freeze. Cloudless azure sky. A day to fly. Snow drapes the mountain like ermine, fabulous feather- light powder coaxing me to flee the confines of my room, brave the mostly plowed road up to the closest ski resort. To run from the cloying silence connected Mom and Dad, into encompassing stillness far away from city dirt and noise Far above suburban gridlock. Far beyond the grasp of home.

Crested Butte is for spectators; Chamonix is for participants.

If the demand for self-knowledge is willed by fate and is refused, this negative attitude may end in real death. The demand would not have come to this person had he still been able to strike out on some promising by-path. But he is caught in a blind alley from which only self-knowledge can extricate him. If he refuses this then no other way is left open to him. Usually he is not conscious of his situation, either, and the more unconscious he is the more he is at the mercy of unforeseen dangers: he cannot get out of the way of a car quickly enough, in climbing a mountain he misses his foothold somewhere, out skiing he thinks he can negotiate a tricky slope, and in an illness he suddenly loses the courage to live. The unconscious has a thousand ways of snuffing out a meaningless existence with surprising swiftness.

He was tired of having to move so carefully, of having to be so careful. He wanted to be able to skip, for God’s sake. He wanted to be Ichigo. He wanted to surf, and ski, and parasail, and fly, and scale mountains and buildings. He wanted to die a million deaths like Ichigo, and no matter what damage was inflicted on his body during the day, he’d wake up tomorrow, new and whole. He wanted Ichigo’s life, a lifetime of endless, immaculate tomorrows, free of mistakes and the evidence of having lived.

That big glorious mountain. For one transitory moment, I think I may have actually seen it”. For one flash, the Mommy had seen the mountain without thinking of logging and ski resorts and avalanches, managed wildlife, plate tectonic geology, microclimates, rain shadow, or yin-yang locations. She’d seen the mountain without the framework of language. Without the cage of associations. She’d seen it without looking through the lens of everything she knew was true about mountains. What she’d seen in that flash wasn’t even a “mountain”. It wasn’t a natural resource. It had no name. “That’s the big goal”, she said. “To find a cure for knowledge”. For education. For living in our heads. Ever since the story of Adam and Eve in the bible, humanity had been a little too smart for its own good, the Mommy said. Ever since eating that apple. Her goal was to find, if not a cure, then at least a treatment that would give people back their innocence. “The cerebral cortex, the cerebellum”, she said, “that’s where your problem is”. If she could just get down to using only her brain stem, she’d be cured. This would be somewhere beyond happiness and sadness. You don’t see fish agonized by wild mood swings. Sponges never have a bad day.

Life is a cosmic grab-bag. At this moment, somewhere in the world, someone is losing a child, skiing down a mountain, having an orgasm, getting a haircut, lying on a bed of pain, singing on a stage, drowning, getting married, starving in a gutter. In the end, aren't we all that same person? An aeon is a thousand million years, and an aeon ago every atom in our bodies was a part of a star. Pay attention to me, God. We are all a part of your universe, and if we die, part of your universe dies with us.

I remember the smell of the pines and the sleeping on the mattresses of beech leaves in the woodcutters' huts and the skiing through the forest following the tracks of hares and of foxes. In the high mountains above the tree line I remember following the track of a fox until I came in sight of him and watching him stand with his right forefoot raised and then go carefully to stop and then pounce, and the whiteness and the clutter of a ptarmigan bursting out of the snow and flying away and over the ridge.

What sadist had invented the concept of skiing? Kira wondered. Who was the first person to decide it would be fun to rocket shakily down an icy mountain on two pieces of metal with wind attacking your face and snow spraying into your eyes and people whipping all around, waving spiky poles like gladiators closing in for a kill? She was shocked lawyers hadn't shut down the sport yet; the potential for catastrophe was rampant.

The Anorexic Eats a Salad Mountains rise, fall, rise again. Stars complete their slow trek into oblivion. A snail tours the length of China’s Great Wall twice. All those pesky cancers—cured. Somewhere in Lower Manhattan, a barista finally smiles. Roundworms evolve into ovals. Flatworms get chesty. Molasses, a tortoise, and sedimentation run the fifty-yard dash. Results pending. Temps plunge in hell. The devil waxes his skis. She has almost made it through her first bite.

in a vale of cocaine and innocence, ski hut across the mountain, sad-eyed youths yodel for a lost danny boy

he hates skiing but he loves the mountains and like that with everything.

From the mountains to the sea, this world is sacred.

Ski-ing, indeed! What on earth does the fellow want to ski for? Isn't there enough sadness in life without going out of your way to fasten long planks to your feet and jump off mountains?

The name Kyirong means “the village of happiness,” and it really deserves the name. I shall never cease thinking of this place with yearning, and if I can choose where to pass the evening of my life, it will be in Kyirong. There I would build myself a house of red cedar wood and have one of the rushing mountain streams running through my garden, in which every kind of fruit would grow, for though its altitude is over 9,000 feet, Kyirong lies on the twenty-eighth parallel. When we arrived in January the temperature was just below freezing it seldom falls below -10 degrees Centigrade. The seasons correspond to the Alps, but the vegetation is subtropical. Once can go skiing the whole year round, and in the summer there is a row of 20,000-footers to climb.

Athletes who overuse high-intensity training methods will usually have a low AeT because their aerobic metabolism has become detrained while the anaerobic metabolic pathway has become very powerful.

If someone says, "You can make it!" down a vertical mountain when you don't ski very well, think about it before launching. This can be a turning point in your life. It sure was in mine when I slammed into the mountain. I wish I'd said, "F'getabout it, sucka," and gone to the Kiddie Corral. Would have saved a lot of pain and surgery. Think about this. What are you really up for? Is the thrill worth the cost?

Slide, turn, slide. I smile as we’re snowboarding, knowing that Bob and the kids are hanging back to watch me, knowing that Bob is probably smiling, too. I’m at the top of Rabbit Lane instead of the summit, and I’m on a handicapped snowboard instead of skis, but nothing about this experience feels less than 100 percent, less than perfect. I’m on the mountain with my family. I’m here. Slide, turn, slide, Smile...

Trichloroethane. All my extensive testing has shown this to be the best treatment for a dangerous excess of human knowledge... For one flash, mommy had seen the mountain without thinking of logging and ski resorts and avalanches, managed wildlife, plate tectonic geology, microclimates, rain shadow, or yin-yang locations. She'd seen the mountain without the framework of language. Without the cage of associations. She'd seen it without looking through the lens of everything she knew was true about mountains. What shed seen wasn't even a "mountain." It wasn't a natural resource. It had no name. "that's the big goal. To find a cure for knowledge.

I remember the smell of the pines and the sleeping on the mattresses of beech leaves in the woodcutters’ huts and the skiing through the forest following the tracks of hares and of foxes. In the high mountains above the tree line I remember following the track of a fox until I came in sight of him and watching him stand with his forefoot raised and then go on carefully to stop and then pounce, and the whiteness and the clutter of a ptarmigan bursting out of the snow and flying away and over the ridge.

Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious, activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow. Learning to ski is one of the most humiliating experiences an adult can undergo (that is one reason to start young). After all, an adult has been walking for a long time; he knows where his feet are; he knows how to put one foot in front of the other in order to get somewhere. But as soon as he puts skis on his feet, it is as though he had to learn to walk all over again. He slips and slides, falls down, has trouble getting up, gets his skis crossed, tumbles again, and generally looks- and feels- like a fool. Even the best instructor seems at first to be of no help. The ease with which the instructor performs actions that he says are simple but that the student secretly believes are impossible is almost insulting. How can you remember everything the instructors says you have to remember? Bend your knees. Look down the hill Keep your weight on the downhill ski. Keep your back straight, but nevertheless lean forward. The admonitions seem endless-how can you think about all that and still ski? The point about skiing, of course, is that you should not be thinking about the separate acts that, together, make a smooth turn or series of linked turns- instead, you should merely be looking ahead of you down the hill, anticipating bumps and other skiers, enjoying the feel of the cold wind on your cheeks, smiling with pleasure at the fluid grace of your body as you speed down the mountain. In other words, you must learn to forget the separate acts in order to perform all of them, and indeed any of them, well. But in order to forget them as separate acts, you have to learn them first as separate acts. only then can you put them together to become a good skier.

on the mountain, a crazy, creative, and explosive skier is never completely without hope. There is always a different route—a new movement, adaption, a full commitment jump-turn, or a “when in doubt, air it out” move to be made, something unique and raw and daring to be thought of and then done.

We’d arrived on the outskirts of a little ski town nestled in the mountains. The sign said WELCOME TO CLOUDCROFT, NEW MEXICO. The air was cold and thin. The roofs of the cabins were heaped with snow, and dirty mounds of it were piled up on the sides of the streets. Tall pine trees loomed over the valley, casting pitch-black shadows, though the morning was sunny.

Jason grins. “I’d never miss your birthday. Remember last year?” “Ugh! I thought I’d never thaw out after we went skiing in a blizzard. We were stranded for three days in that cabin we found in the woods.” “Aw, come on, you didn’t even get frostbite. I took care of you.” “At least I didn’t end up with any broken limbs. That time.” “I still can’t believe we went snow-boarding on East Pillar Mountain Loop. That’s a tough trail, and then you broke your arm slipping in the parking lot on the way to the truck.” My muscles were exhausted, and carrying my board on my shoulder, I wasn’t watching where I was going. I didn’t see the patch of ice. “Remember when you took me spelunking?” “I had no idea that bear was in there.” “I can’t remember ever being that scared.” “But it was fun! Come on. We can’t break tradition.

...Following the bird you lay into a deep turn in the steepening descent. It [the snow] is super soft, bottomless and amazingly light, yet supportive. It feels like something in between floating on top, and within the top of a deep-pile carpet as you link turn after turn down the open glacier. Each side of you are fellow riders, though not too close, whooping with exhilaration and flying down, down towards the valley below. The pitch gets steeper and the slope widens out, with seemingly endless space to the sides and an untracked oblivion ahead and beneath you. Each turn is delicious softness; you can almost feel every snow crystal reacting with the base of your skis. Those skis feel like extensions of your feet, and you connect with the mountain through a portal link created by the snowpack, as the spray from the turn hangs in the air behind you...

The interior voice nagging me not to be a fool - to save my skin and take off my skis and walk down, camouflaged by the scrub pines bordering the slope - fled like a disconsolate mosquito. The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower...I aimed straight down...A small, answering point in my own body flew towrds it [the sun]. I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery - air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy." I plummeted down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts, through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromised, into my own past. People and trees receded on either hand like the dark sides of a tunnel as I hurtled on to the still, bring point at the end of it, the pebble at the bottom of the well, the white sweet baby cradled in its mother's belly.

To those who have struggled with them, the mountains reveal beauties that they will not disclose to those who make no effort. That is the reward the mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love the mountains and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who stand upon their summits.—Sir Francis Younghusband

He wanted to be Ichigo. He wanted to surf, and ski, and parasail, and fly, and scale mountains and buildings. He wanted to die a million deaths like Ichigo, and no matter what damage was inflicted on his body during the day, he’d wake up tomorrow, new and whole. He wanted Ichigo’s life, a lifetime of endless, immaculate tomorrows, free of mistakes and the evidence of having lived. Or if he couldn’t be Ichigo, at least he could be back at the apartment, with Sadie and Marx, making Ichigo.

Think of the future, she whispers. Jumbled images in primary colours. White and red swastika flags waving in the wind; gleaming rockets flying into the air; skyscrapers rise above the Danube, the Thames, the Volga and the Rhine, blond children play under a bright African sun, their uniforms ironed to perfection by their servant-slaves nearby, modern women work at factories assembling Volkswagens, in the mountains in a wood cabin Maria and Erich and their three children go on a skiing holiday, laughing, holding hands…

Psychologists have found that the most significant common trait among people who are pulled to the mountains is something called sensation seeking. “Neuroscience calls it novelty, it’s the willingness to take risks for the sake of rewards,” says Cynthia Thomson, a health researcher who looks at behavioral genetics. “Compared to people who don’t ski, skiers are higher on the sensation-seeking scale. They have a low threshold for boredom, and tend to look for more exciting experiences, even if there are dangers associated with them.

There's mountain snow. And polar snow. And ski-snow, and deep snow, and snow in flutters like tiny moths, and snow in flurries like moths in a hurry, and snow in flakes like someone (it?) is grating the sky. And show sharp as insect bites and snow as soft as lather and wet snow that doesn't stick and dry snow that does, and wraps the world like an installation to the point in the night where you wake up and the sound is gone, to the point in the night where you turn deeper into the bed, to the point in the night where there's snow in your sleep and your sleep is deep as snow.

He was tired of his body, of his unreliable foot, which couldn’t even handle the slightest expression of joy. He was tired of having to move so carefully, of having to be so careful. He wanted to be able to skip, for God’s sake. He wanted to be Ichigo. He wanted to surf, and ski, and parasail, and fly, and scale mountains and buildings. He wanted to die a million deaths like Ichigo, and no matter what damage was inflicted on his body during the day, he’d wake up tomorrow, new and whole. He wanted Ichigo’s life, a lifetime of endless, immaculate tomorrows, free of mistakes and the evidence of having lived.

AUTHOR’S NOTE Dear reader: This story was inspired by an event that happened when I was eight years old. At the time, I was living in upstate New York. It was winter, and my dad and his best friend, “Uncle Bob,” decided to take my older brother, me, and Uncle Bob’s two boys for a hike in the Adirondacks. When we left that morning, the weather was crisp and clear, but somewhere near the top of the trail, the temperature dropped abruptly, the sky opened, and we found ourselves caught in a torrential, freezing blizzard. My dad and Uncle Bob were worried we wouldn’t make it down. We weren’t dressed for that kind of cold, and we were hours from the base. Using a rock, Uncle Bob broke the window of an abandoned hunting cabin to get us out of the storm. My dad volunteered to run down for help, leaving my brother Jeff and me to wait with Uncle Bob and his boys. My recollection of the hours we spent waiting for help to arrive is somewhat vague except for my visceral memory of the cold: my body shivering uncontrollably and my mind unable to think straight. The four of us kids sat on a wooden bench that stretched the length of the small cabin, and Uncle Bob knelt on the floor in front of us. I remember his boys being scared and crying and Uncle Bob talking a lot, telling them it was going to be okay and that “Uncle Jerry” would be back soon. As he soothed their fear, he moved back and forth between them, removing their gloves and boots and rubbing each of their hands and feet in turn. Jeff and I sat beside them, silent. I took my cue from my brother. He didn’t complain, so neither did I. Perhaps this is why Uncle Bob never thought to rub our fingers and toes. Perhaps he didn’t realize we, too, were suffering. It’s a generous view, one that as an adult with children of my own I have a hard time accepting. Had the situation been reversed, my dad never would have ignored Uncle Bob’s sons. He might even have tended to them more than he did his own kids, knowing how scared they would have been being there without their parents. Near dusk, a rescue jeep arrived, and we were shuttled down the mountain to waiting paramedics. Uncle Bob’s boys were fine—cold and exhausted, hungry and thirsty, but otherwise unharmed. I was diagnosed with frostnip on my fingers, which it turned out was not so bad. It hurt as my hands were warmed back to life, but as soon as the circulation was restored, I was fine. Jeff, on the other hand, had first-degree frostbite. His gloves needed to be cut from his fingers, and the skin beneath was chafed, white, and blistered. It was horrible to see, and I remember thinking how much it must have hurt, the damage so much worse than my own. No one, including my parents, ever asked Jeff or me what happened in the cabin or questioned why we were injured and Uncle Bob’s boys were not, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen continued to be my parents’ best friends. This past winter, I went skiing with my two children, and as we rode the chairlift, my memory of that day returned. I was struck by how callous and uncaring Uncle Bob, a man I’d known my whole life and who I believed loved us, had been and also how unashamed he was after. I remember him laughing with the sheriff, like the whole thing was this great big adventure that had fortunately turned out okay. I think he even viewed himself as sort of a hero, boasting about how he’d broken the window and about his smart thinking to lead us to the cabin in the first place. When he got home, he probably told Karen about rubbing their sons’ hands and feet and about how he’d consoled them and never let them get scared. I looked at my own children beside me, and a shudder ran down my spine as I thought about all the times I had entrusted them to other people in the same way my dad had entrusted us to Uncle Bob, counting on the same naive presumption that a tacit agreement existed for my children to be cared for equally to their own.

Sassy had worked in El Paso, Texas as a waitress in a small café, a toll-booth cashier in Houston, Texas, posed nude for magazine photos in Reno, Nevada and even was a ski instructor in Granby, Colorado for a few years. Sassy was always looking. She was looking for something that she couldn’t find. Sassy wanted to go where the road led. She walked past other people’s dreams and security and followed the twisting snake through deserts and mountains, big cities and cow towns. Sassy was on a quest and she didn’t even know it. She would take her small earnings and saddle-up, following fate or hope or desire into new horizons with new promises--a skinny green-eyed girl carrying a backpack full of her life, down the roads of America.

Throughout high school, Ben strove to be as colorless as his room. He chose to blend in with the crowd, a popular white-bread crewneck group, with parents who summered in Nantucket and owned ski houses near mountains in Vermont. One Saturday night after returning from a movie with the happy-go-lucky girl he’d been seeing on and off, he told Harvey and me, in the family room reading newspapers, that he was going to come out in college. Neither of us was astonished, or even surprised. It was a relief to both of us. We had wondered for a long time. When we took Ben to college in Middletown, we watched the gay and lesbian groups chalk messages on the sidewalks at the top of the hill: Say hi to a bi. Give us a year and you’ll be queer. Have you told a parent you’re gay today? Ben was smiling. Ben and Harvey moved the station wagon out of a load zone, and I waited on a creaking swing in front of a building with the school flag, the American flag, and the state flag waving on top. Peace washed over me as though I had taken a pill for it. I wanted chalk. I had something important to say on the sidewalk: Have you told your son you’re happy for him today?

We were on a family holiday to Cyprus to visit my aunt and uncle. My uncle Andrew was then the brigadier to all the British forces on the island, and as such a senior military figure I am sure he must have dreaded us coming to town. After a few days holed up in the garrison my uncle innocently suggested that maybe we would enjoy a trip to the mountains. He already knew the answer that my father and I would give. We were in. The Troodos Mountains are a small range of snowy peaks in the center of the island, and the soldiers posted to Cyprus use them to ski and train in. There are a couple of ski runs, but the majority of the peaks in winter are wild and unspoiled. In other words, they are ripe for an adventure. Dad and I borrowed two sets of army skis and boots from the garrison up in the hills and spent a great afternoon together skiing down the couple of designated runs. But designated runs can also be quite boring. We both looked at each other and suggested a quick off-piste detour. It was all game…age eleven. It wasn’t very far into this between-the-trees deep-powder detour that the weather, dramatically, and very suddenly, took a turn for the worse. A mountain mist rolled in, reducing visibility to almost zero. We stopped to try and get, or guess, our directions back to the piste, but our guess was wrong, and very soon we both realized we were lost. (Or temporarily geographically challenged, as I have learned to call it.) Dad and I made the mistake that so many do in that situation, and plowed on blind, in the vain hope that the miraculous would occur. We had no map, no compass, no food, no water, no mobile telephone (they hadn’t even been invented yet), and in truth, no likelihood of finding our way. We were perfect candidates for a disaster.

That's Branton, Michigan, by the way. Don't try to find it on a map - you'd need a microscope. It's one of a dozen dinky towns north of Lansing, one of the few that doesn't sound like it was named by a French explorer. Branton, Michigan. Population: Not a Lot and Yet Still Too Many I Don't Particularly Care For. We have a shopping mall with a JCPenny and an Asian fusion place that everyone says they are dying to try even though it’s been there for three years now. Most of our other restaurants are attached to gas stations, the kind that serve rubbery purple hot dogs and sodas in buckets. There’s a statue of Francis B. Stockbridge in the center of town. He’s a Michigan state senator from prehistoric times with a beard that belongs on Rapunzel’s twin brother. He wasn’t born in Branton, of course – nobody important was ever born in Branton – but we needed a statue for the front of the courthouse and the name Stockbridge looks good on a copper plate. It’s all for show. Branton’s the kind of place that tries to pretend it’s better than it really is. It’s really the kind of place with more bars than bookstores and more churches than either, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s a place where teenagers still sometimes take baseball bats to mailboxes and wearing the wrong brand of shoes gets you at least a dirty look. It snows a lot in Branton. Like avalanches dumped from the sky. Like heaps to hills to mountains, the plows carving their paths through our neighborhood, creating alpine ranges nearly tall enough to ski down. Some of the snow mounds are so big you can build houses inside them, complete with entryways and coat closets. Restrooms are down the hall on your right. Just look for the steaming yellow hole. There’s nothing like that first Branton snow, though. Soft as a cat scruff and bleach white, so bright you can almost see your reflection in it. Then the plows come and churn up the earth underneath. The dirt and the boot tracks and the car exhaust mix together to make it all ash gray, almost black, and it sickens your stomach just to look at it. It happens everywhere, not just Branton, but here it’s something you can count on.

pedal cars, so it went quickly. I was at my Order′s new chapter house on our mission farm at Drumheller, and I carried it on snowshoes and skis over the mountain passes and down to Barony Vernon in the Okanogan country. Then by horse and rail to the Columbia and Portland. I came all the way myself rather than handing

Lily Thomas lay in bed when the alarm went off on a snowy January morning in Squaw Valley. She opened her eyes for just an instant and saw the thick snow swirling beyond the windows of the house her father had rented, and for a fraction of an instant, she wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. She could hear the dynamite blasts in the distance to prevent avalanches, and just from a glance, she knew what kind of day it was. You could hardly see past the windows in the heavy blizzard, and she knew that if the mountain was open, it wouldn’t be for long. But she loved the challenge of skiing in heavy snow. It would be a good workout, and she didn’t want to miss a single day with one of her favorite instructors, Jason Yee.

filled with all kinds of fun stuff: golf clubs, jet skis, mountain bikes, you name it. For many of them, “fun” has become an addiction. But as with most addictive substances, people build up a tolerance. So despite all the “fun” things people do, they’re still not having fun. What’s really missing is a sense of joy. People find that they no longer feel an authentic joyfulness in living, despite all the fun stuff they have or do. And this is the case whether they’re male or female, young or old, rich or poor, or at any stage of life. What’s happened to people is that they’ve lost a delicate, but critical, component of aliveness and well-being—they’ve lost their eccentricities. It happens to many of us as we grow up and make our way in the world. We fit in. We see how other people survive and we copy their style—same as everyone else. Swept along by the myriad demands of day-to-day living, we stop making choices of our own. Or even realizing that we have choices to make. We lose the wonderful weird edges that define us. We cover up the eccentricities that make us unique. Alfred Adler, the great 20th century psychologist and educator, considered these eccentricities a vital part of a happy and fulfilling lifestyle. Ironically, 14 Repacking Your Bags

I started on the bunny hill with the kids and on the second day got a little too over confident.  I also misinterpreted the symbols on the trail marks for the degree of difficulty and managed to find myself at the top of the mountain and the beginning of a double Black Diamond run.   I had no idea until I discovered the only way down was to ski, and that the double Black Diamond meant “For Experts Only.”      Marguerite had gotten off at a rest area, found a nice table outside, got a cup of hot tea and rented a telescope so she could watch me ski down the mountain.       She got a ski show all right; about 200 yards down the slope I lost complete control.  I saw the sky and ground so many times as I tumbled I lost count and when I did come to rest it was at the bottom of the run and I was minus a ski.  A nice Swiss couple had retrieved it for me and it wasn’t until they gave it back that I realized just how lethal a runaway downhill ski could be, I was damned lucky it didn’t go through somebody down the mountain.      I realized I was over matched and stuck with the bunny hill for the rest of the day.

The Ozarks are mountains in the Deep South sense of the word, not pyramidal peaks or potential ski slopes or alpine crags, but irregular elevations, a succession of low, deep green ridges, a sea of long, lumpy hills to the horizon in a dramatic panorama. That there is an identifiable and sundown-framed horizon in their midst gives the Ozarks their uniqueness: mountains that allow a great, gaudy, and effulgent sunset. No single Ozarkian topographical feature is apparent, but the whole of it – the broad shifting vista of elongated hills – appears like flattened and thickly forested mesas. And the view is especially moving because it seems unpeopled, the isolated communities hidden in hollows and behind the slopes, some of which are bunchy with old-growth trees, still remote and beautiful.

He was simply undeveloped compared to teammates who had grown up in the American West, linking 60 mph carved turns at Sun Valley or Crystal Mountain.

In Japan: The shortage of wives for farmers became a rural crisis. In one village in the late 1980s, of unmarried persons between ages 25 and 39, 120 were men and only 31 were women, a ratio of 4:1. Some Japanese villages organized to find wives for their bachelors. One mountain village placed newspaper ads, promising free winter skiing vacations to all young women who visited and agreed to meet its men. Over a fiveyear period, 300 women responded, but none became wives of a village man. In another mountain village of 7,000, there were three bachelors for every unmarried woman, so the local government became a marriage agent. It brought in 22 women from the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and other Asian countries to marry its men, many in their 40s and 50s. Some marriages endured, but others ended in divorce because of the labor demands of farm life, the burden wives bore in caring for their husband’s elderly parents, and cultural differences. Small businesses developed that offered counseling services for bicultural couples and served as marriage brokers to match Japanese men with foreign women. Even today, many Japanese farm men remain bachelors. Farming in Japan is now primarily a part-time occupation—farmers find off-season jobs in construction or other tasks, unable to make an acceptable living even with government subsidies. And farming is now largely performed by older persons. For example, in one important rice-growing area, between 1980 and 2003, the number of people making most of their money from farming fell by 56 percent, and the number of people between ages 15 and 59 fell by 83 percent. There was one increase, though: there were 600 more farmers older than 70 in 2003 than in 1980.

She was not alone. “There’s a definite panic on the hip scene in Cambridge,” wrote student radical Raymond Mungo that year, “people going to uncommonly arduous lengths (debt, sacrifice, the prospect of cold toes and brown rice forever) to get away while there’s still time.” And it wasn’t just Cambridge. All over the nation at the dawn of the 1970s, young people were suddenly feeling an urge to get away, to leave the city behind for a new way of life in the country. Some, like Mungo, filled an elderly New England farmhouse with a tangle of comrades. Others sought out mountain-side hermitages in New Mexico or remote single-family Edens in Tennessee. Hilltop Maoists traversed their fields with horse-drawn plows. Graduate students who had never before held a hammer overhauled tobacco barns and flipped through the Whole Earth Catalog by the light of kerosene lamps. Vietnam vets hand-mixed adobe bricks. Born-and-bred Brooklynites felled cedar in Oregon. Former debutants milked goats in Humboldt County and weeded strawberry beds with their babies strapped to their backs. Famous musicians forked organic compost into upstate gardens. College professors committed themselves to winter commutes that required swapping high heels for cross-country skis. Computer programmers turned the last page of Scott and Helen Nearing’s Living the Good Life and packed their families into the car the next day. Most had no farming or carpentry experience, but no matter. To go back to the land, it seemed, all that was necessary was an ardent belief that life in Middle America was corrupt and hollow, that consumer goods were burdensome and unnecessary, that protest was better lived than shouted, and that the best response to a broken culture was to simply reinvent it from scratch.

This word would define the sensation of having worked and traveled hard, praying for good snow and fresh tracks, and then finding that weather, snow, timing, and camaraderie can come together into a single element.

the mountaineer’s breakfast” (coffee and aspirin).

Van Degrift’s Ski Hut in Los Angeles became Southern California’s first ski shop when it began to sell ski equipment in 1931. In 1934, Walter Mosauer, a zoology professor at the University of California–Los Angeles, considered the father of skiing here and an avid proponent of the Arlberg technique, wrote the first instructional ski book to be published in Southern California, On Skis Over Mountains. Mosauer, along with fellow German Otto Steiner, began teaching downhill skiing techniques, launching a change in focus and transition from ski jumping to alpine skiing.

I was with Hilary’s pal Lois, because Hilary hasn’t been able to ski this stuff ever since she broke her neck (not doing exercise!) seven years ago. She’s fine, but she can’t do this. Lois, forty-four, has an excellent job, an excellent husband and two fine children, but not that morning. That morning, it was his turn to stay home with the kids, and, for her, “Powder Rules Apply.” That’s the sign they put up in shop windows when they lock the door and head for the mountain. All bets are off, and appointments will not be kept. Ecstasy trumps care. Lois

Life is a cosmic grab-bag. At this moment, somewhere in the world, someone is losing a child, skiing down a mountain, having an orgasm, getting a haircut, lying on a bed of pain, singing on a stage, drowning, getting married, starving in a gutter. In the end, aren’t we all that same person? An aeon is a thousand million years, and an aeon ago every atom in our bodies was a part of a star. Pay attention to me, God. We are all a part of your universe, and if we die, part of your universe dies with us.

Always Somewhere" Somewhere in the dark is always mountains, Years in mountains, mountains silent, standing Inscrutable, big, rocky, piercing, sheer, And hills, wrinkled and rippling, calling clear Across their time, symbolic, real, and branding Reality as cities boast a downtown. Always somewhere in the air is snow Of every kind, light, drifted, melting, deep Especially, its liquid energy Released come spring stored temporarily Upon the mountains as through time they keep Faith with cold nights where the foxes bark and roam. Somewhere always is an everywhere Where the mountains and the snow grow down In time, until, in winter's deep sleep, time Grows balanced, and in quiet you can climb A mountain and the snow no one can own Because in afternoon sunshine, time's there. Always in this somewhere life was skiing, Riding on and through each, every storm As if forever in a glorious seeming Of time down mountains where the quick snow streaming Invited the world's body to perform. Could anything have ever been more freeing? So when it's taken, with our words and seeing, Let these words stand: now that was time and being.

I realized during the research of High Altitude Observatory Disease (HAOD) that the outcome would be bad for not only astronomy, but for Space, airlines, frequent fliers, sky divers, mountaineering, ski resorts, high altitude cities, military, insurance, and so on.

eggs and curried chicken salad and double fudge brownies. That was all she was good at: eating. In the summer the Castles, the Alistairs, and the Randolphs all went to the beach together. When they were younger, they would play flashlight tag, light a bonfire, and sing Beatles songs, with Mr. Randolph playing the guitar and Penny’s voice floating above everyone else’s. But at some point Demeter had stopped feeling comfortable in a bathing suit. She wore shorts and oversized T-shirts to the beach, and she wouldn’t go in the water, wouldn’t walk with Penny to look for shells, wouldn’t throw the Frisbee with Hobby and Jake. The other three kids always tried to include Demeter, which was more humiliating, somehow, than if they’d just ignored her. They were earnest in their pursuit of her attention, but Demeter suspected this was their parents’ doing. Mr. Randolph might have offered Jake a twenty-dollar bribe to be nice to Demeter because Al Castle was an old friend. Hobby and Penny were nice to her because they felt sorry for her. Or maybe Hobby and Penny and Jake all had a bet going about who would be the one to break through Demeter’s Teflon shield. She was a game to them. In the fall there were football parties at the Alistairs’ house, during which the adults and Hobby and Jake watched the Patriots, Penny listened to music on her headphones, and Demeter dug into Zoe Alistair’s white chicken chili and topped it with a double spoonful of sour cream. In the winter there were weekends at Stowe. Al and Lynne Castle owned a condo near the mountain, and Demeter had learned to ski as a child. According to her parents, she used to careen down the black-diamond trails without a moment’s hesitation. But by the time they went to Vermont with the Alistairs and the Randolphs, Demeter refused to get on skis at all. She sat in the lodge and drank hot chocolate until the rest of the gang came clomping in after their runs, rosy-cheeked and winded. And then the ski weekends, at least, had stopped happening, because Hobby had basketball and Penny and Jake were in the school musical, which meant rehearsals night and day. Demeter thought back to all those springs, summers, falls, and winters with Hobby and Penny and Jake, and she wondered how her parents could have put her through such exquisite torture. Hobby and Penny and Jake were all exceptional children, while Demeter was seventy pounds overweight, which sank her self-esteem, which led to her getting mediocre grades when she was smart enough for A’s and killed her chances of landing the part of Rizzo in Grease, even though she was a gifted actress. Hobby was in a coma. Her mother was on the phone. She kept

Everyone thinks they know how to run, but it’s really as nuanced as any other activity,” Eric told me. “Ask most people and they’ll say, ‘People just run the way they run.’ That’s ridiculous. Does everyone just swim the way they swim?” For every other sport, lessons are fundamental; you don’t go out and start slashing away with a golf club or sliding down a mountain on skis until someone takes you through the steps and teaches you proper form. If not, inefficiency is guaranteed and injury is inevitable.

A compassionate heart seems to me to be very, very important. A willingness to really look closely at human beings and their motivations and their foibles without judging them is really important. To be a novelist you have to be willing to sit there all those hours, just endure. I advise my students to get involved in an endurance sport. It’s helped me a lot. I work out. I walk, run. I used to do long-distance skiing and mountain climbing. Anything that pushes you, that makes you push yourself will help you push yourself to get a project like a novel done. That’s so much of it, the willingness to be there, to meet with it every day.

The Oxygen-Delivery System

The previous summer I’d thought that the mountains of West Virginia were impressive (although I’d been a bit too busy running for my life to fully appreciate them).

If anyone tries to kill me on the slopes, I’m going to be a sitting duck.” I sighed. “Ptarmigan,” Warren corrected. “What?” I asked. “There’s no ducks in the mountains,” Warren explained. “Whereas a ptarmigan is a bird found in cold climates like the northern tundra. So you wouldn’t be a sitting duck. You’d be a sitting ptarmigan.” “Shut up, Warren,” Chip threatened. “Or the next time I throw a pair of boxers at you, they’ll be the ones I’ve been wearing for the last sixteen hours.” Warren cringed in fear and stumbled over his suitcase once again.

I wondered if Erica was right. At the moment, the nearby slopes were full of evidence that skiing could be difficult. For every skier who came down the mountain well, there were many others coming down badly. I could see a dozen people who’d wiped out at the base of the mountain. As I watched, one poor soul shot off the run entirely and fell into Vail Creek. And things didn’t get much better once everyone had taken their skis off. Ski boots seemed to have been designed to make walking as difficult as possible. Everywhere I looked, people were wobbling about in them like toddlers taking their first steps. One person crashed to the ground right in front of us, his skis and poles flying every which way.

A startling discovery awaits an American on his or her first trip into the Alps. Switching trains or filling up on diesel in some town at the junction of two rivers, one inevitably looks up to encounter a single mountain facade rising as much as 10,000 feet from the valley floor. A diversity of climates and landscapes is on vertical display: forests, vineyards, pastures, rocky talus slopes, glaciers—stacked one upon another on a steep face. The

Surely this beautiful creature couldn’t be the child who’d once licked the metal ski-chair pole at Mammoth Mountain … or the girl who’d climbed into her parents’ bed after a nightmare when she was only a year away from being a teenager. Seventeen years had passed in the blink of an eye. It was too fast. Not long enough …

At OBSS   An unexpected occurrence did come of this escapade, even though I didn’t care for the program. Andy, you may or may not be aware that Outward Bound teaches interpersonal and leadership skills, not to mention wilderness survival. The first two skillsets were not unlike our education at the Enlightened Royal Oracle Society (E.R.O.S.) or the Dale Carnegie course in which I had participated before leaving Malaya for school in England. It was the wilderness survival program I abhorred. Since I wasn’t rugged by nature (and remain that way to this day), this arduous experience was made worse by your absence. In 1970, OBSS was under the management of Singapore Ministry of Defence, and used primarily as a facility to prepare young men for compulsory ’National Service,’ commonly known as NS. All young and able 18+ Singaporean male citizens and second-generation permanent residents had to register for National Service compulsorily. They would serve either a two-year or twenty-two-month period as Full Time National Servicemen after completing the Outward Bound course. Pending on their individual physical and medical fitness, these young men would enter the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), Singapore Police Force (SPF), or the Singapore Civil Defense Force (SCDF). Father, through his extensive contacts, enrolled me into the twenty-one-day Outward Bound summer course. There were twenty boys in my class. We were divided into small units under the guidance of an instructor. During the first few days at the base camp, we trained for outdoor recreation activities such as adventure racing, backpacking, cycling, camping, canoeing, canyoning, fishing, hiking, kayaking, mountaineering, horseback riding, photography, rock climbing, running, sailing, skiing, swimming, and a variety of sporting activities.

Choosing the right tour package is truly a significant choice to make. If you are planning to spend adventure holidays in the state of Uttarakhand, you ought to not worry about where to go and what to do so that you have the maximum fun. Uttarakhand Adventure is at your service to offer you with just the things you are looking for. Our travel advisors have been exploring the adventure destination in the state for several years. They know all little detail and can advise you tips that you can use to have the time of your life while on an adventure tour to Uttarakhand. Trekking, Camping, Skiing and Water sports are the well-known adventure sports activities besides pilgrimage visit by the devotees. Bestow with glaciers and rivers like Ganga and her divisions, Yamuna, Kaliganga graceful from border of Nepal, Dev Bhoomi Uttarakhand is one of the major water adventure destination in India. Canoeing, Kayaking, White Water Rafting, Water Skiing, Boating and Fishing are the main water adventure sports experienced in Uttarakhand. If you are planning an adventure anniversary, you can get in touch our travel outfitters right away. Depending on your person travel requirements and preference, they can offer you modified adventure tours. In case you want to add more in your tour, our travel counselors are always there to help you. Whether you are a newbie in the field of venture sports or have some knowledge under your belt, Uttarakhand can satisfy the thirst of all abilities. From one corner of this northern Indian condition to the other, adventure lovers will find a diversity of option to indulge in exciting and adrenaline pumping performance. Choose to raft along the outstanding rapids of river Ganges. Go trekking from side to side green valleys and meadows and pass by hilly villages in the foothills of the Himalayas. You can enjoy a choice of other adventure actions like mountain biking, skiing, paragliding and rock climbing in the Himalayas. Angling or fishing in the rivers and streams of the upper Himalayas are as well a lot of fun. Every year tourists crowd this beautiful hill state in enormous numbers for the simple reason that it is in Uttarakhand, they find their vision of an ideal holiday being satisfied.

Except for Lisbon, Berlin is the cheapest capital in Western Europe. This despite being the capital of the Continent’s richest country. Its population is still lower than it was at the outset of the Second World War. It’s a little like a mountain town with ski bums and trustafarians cycling through. The kids come to play, not to stay.

While Gstaad is one of the wealthiest places you can set foot in, unlike many similarly upscale spots, farming is not only tolerated here but considered culturally indispensable and a most honorable profession. That’s the reason for the zoning and why cows always have the right of way. The main street through the center of downtown is rightly known as the Promenade, and it is where many newly minted locals go show off their Ferraris and Bentleys and fur coats, while shopping for jewelry, watches, and more fur coats in the boutiques. Cheese making in the Alps is largely seasonal, and like many other mountain towns in Switzerland, the cows have to pass through town when they come down from the mountains in the fall and return in the spring. Usually there is a designated day each season when the streets close to traffic for this migration, but not in Gstaad, where each farmer chooses when to move his herd, and in the fall, cows might block traffic on the Promenade for ten straight days. Each time they come through, the government sends a special cleaning crew to follow, because cheese making is that important here, not so much economically as culturally. That is why some fifty-two mountain peaks around Gstaad are privately owned, not by Russian billionaires, or ski resort operators, but rather by multigenerational farming families like the Bachs.

The theory of person-environment fit says that you might be happier and more fulfilled in certain places because of your temperament, values, and goals. That your characteristics might match up best with a landscape or a location. It’s often applied to business structure, and organizational psychology, but could just as well apply to life in the mountains.

Snow is a changing, fragile substance, which accumulates in layers: a deep puffy storm, followed by an inch of rain. Wind crust followed by cold light flakes. Avalanches are a combination of three factors: a sliding surface, a slope steep enough to slide, and a trigger. Here in Utah—and in other high, dry parts of the Rockies—more often than not, there’s a deep unbonded layer in that snowpack that could always slide, given a trigger. It seems to happen the same way almost every season. The first thin snowfall covers the mountains in a crystalized layer of sugar and anticipation. Then it stops, like climatic clockwork, for a few weeks. That layer of unbonded snow is exposed to the air, which sucks out moisture, creating slippery, faceted snow crystals called depth hoar. It forms a perfect sliding surface. When the snow starts in earnest, that surface, which avalanche forecasters call a persistent weak layer, is at the very bottom, slick and unbonded, ready to slide. That’s one of the constant hazards of skiing, you always know it’s down there. Just how big it could break is a question of what comes in on top of it.

Climbing down a mountain is a lot more dangerous than climbing up. If you’re going to get yourself killed, that’s generally when it happens. In this case, we had the added problem of exhaustion and blindness and one other little detail, my crampons. They were so-called switchblade crampons, good for technical climbing but prone to clog up in wet or sticky snow. Pretty quickly, the accumulated snow extends down beneath the blade tips and suddenly you’re better equipped for skiing than clinging to the mountainside. So here goes. I move, commit and plant my weight on what I believe to be that hill. Wrong. I step onto nothing but air and come whipping off the front of the face. The rope snaps taut, and pulls Mike right off his feet. Both of us start to slide. We take our ice axes, jam them into the hill, and both of us roll our body weight on top of them to stop the fall. We do this another two or three times before we get all the way down. Mike later described the experience as “somewhat unnerving.” Little did he guess what lay dead ahead. Except for some rips in my down suit and a whole lot of wounded pride, I was fine, and heartily relieved. We were back on the South Col—practically home free. In less than an hour of easy traverse we were going to be in those tents, in those sleeping bags, drinking hot tea and putting the long, exhausting day to bed.

You will never maximize your endurance potential without first maximizing your basic aerobic capacity (AeT).

A – means you felt like Superman and had plenty in reserve. B – means it was a good workout. You completed the task with no problem. C – means you did the workout but felt flat or off. D – means you could not finish the planned workout or had to reduce it. F – means you could not train that day due to fatigue or illness.

A good rule of thumb is that if you have more than two Cs in a row, or a C and D within one week, you need to stop and assess what is going on.

The book The Roll Model by Jill Miller is a masterpiece on how to use the ball-rolling techniques to speed recovery and treat chronic musculoskeletal problems

in a serious way, but don’t take it too seriously. Train well, but don’t make it your whole world. It shouldn’t feel like an obligation. That’s when it starts to be a problem. I train because I enjoy it.

En casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo.” (In the blacksmith’s house, a wooden knife.)

Chapel Parking Lot Access: From Denver, drive I-70 west 80 miles to exit 195. Turn right into Copper Mountain Resort. Continue approximately 1 mile, then turn left into the chapel parking lot. Walk south and west to the Village Center Plaza in the area of the American Eagle chairlift. To intersect the CT, go about 150 yards diagonally southeast between the condos on the left and the American Eagle lift on the right, Segment 8, mile 1.6. Union Creek Ski Area Access: Instead of parking at the chapel lot, continue through Copper Mountain Village to the Union Creek drop-off parking area. (Parking is permitted here during off-ski-season months.) Cross over the covered bridge, go past the ticket office and under the elevated walkway, turn right on a gravel road, pass under a ski lift, and go about 200 yards on the road. Turn left up the road, around a green security gate, and follow the road east uphill about 400 yards to a wide area in the road. Pick up the single-track of the CT to the right, by a painted white rock, mile 2.1 of CT Segment 8. Tennessee Pass Trailhead Access: See Segment 9 on page 128.

TRAIL DESCRIPTION Begin Segment 8 on the west side of CO Hwy 91 (no parking) at mile 0.0 (9,820). Camping is prohibited the next 4 miles. The trail enters the forest southwest and follows a few switchbacks uphill as it skirts the golf course, crosses a bridge, and passes under a power line. The CT then heads northwest and traverses ski runs, goes under a ski lift, and passes nearest the Copper Mountain Resort at mile 1.6 (9,768). There are restaurants, sporting goods shops, and some grocery shopping at the base of the ski hill. The trail passes underneath the American Eagle Ski Lift and then becomes single-track at mile 2.1 (9,988), following a few roundabout switchbacks up the hill. There are two streams ahead, followed by great views of the Tenmile Range. At mile 3.4 (10,345), bear sharply to the right and leave the horse trail the CT was following. A cross-country ski trail merges from the left at mile 5.0 (10,519), but the CT continues straight ahead. At mile 5.2 (10,480), pass Jacque Creek, immediately followed by Guller Creek. There is a campsite just up the hill between the two. Continue upstream along Guller Creek following an elongated meadow to mile 6.2 (10,854) for additional camping and water. Janet’s Cabin, a popular ski hut, comes into view as the trail climbs out of the canyon.

Joshua Goeschel is a successful insurance attorney who currently works as a Claims Counsel for Safe Auto Insurance Company. Before this, he built his experience at several other notable insurance law firms in Colorado. His main interests outside of work are in the outdoors, and he spends his time hiking, skiing and fly-fishing in the mountains and parks of Colorado.

You can choose to focus your advertising within a certain mile radius of your listing and target viewer interests, such as hiking, mountain biking, and skiing. You can also target any major nearby attractions, such as national parks or wineries.

The article was about a man named Constantinos “Danny” Filippidis. As he skimmed the first few lines, Hank’s eyes opened wide with awe. This man hadn’t simply disappeared. He kept skimming, now even faster, thinking he would for sure find something suggesting that this whole article was some sort of joke. But he didn’t. It was true. Danny Filippidis, a man from Toronto, Canada, according to the article, disappeared from Whiteface Mountain in eastern New York and was found six days later, dazed and confused, in Sacramento, California, still wearing his skiing gear.

I remember some of these stories from when I lived here as a teenager. Every place has its lore, but Tahoe clings particularly tightly to the time when it was more exclusive, more glamorous; when it was more than just an overpriced weekend ski getaway for San Francisco's tribes of tech bro millionaires. I stare out the win dow at the forest flying past and think that it's nice to be in the mountains, away from the toxic bustle of urban life, the glittering lights that advertise desire. I imagine bringing my mother up here, to recover from her disease. The fresh air might be therapeutic; certainly it would be good for us both to get away from city life. And then I remember that once Lachlan and I leave here, along with Vanessa's money, we'll never be able to come back again.

You have every part of me. I love you.” I let my forehead rest against hers, and my heart seemed to slow and steady. “I know it’s love because I don’t just want you I need you, Callie. I need you more than air, or flying, or skiing, or anything else that makes me…me.” I need you to survive, and yet I will walk away if that’s what you want. I’ll do whatever makes you happy.” I picked up her hand and put it on my chest. “You just have to know that this is yours. You don’t have to want it, or need it, or accept it. It belongs to you, no matter what.

The trip had been a dream for almost two decades, relegated to the back of the line behind an ever-growing list of responsibilities. Each passing moment brought a new list of reasons for putting it off. One day, Julie realized that if she didn’t do it now, she would never do it. The rationalizations, legitimate or not, would just continue to add up and make it harder to convince herself that escape was possible. One year of preparation and one 30-day trial run with her husband later, they set sail on the trip of a lifetime. Julie realized almost as soon as the anchor lifted that, far from being a reason not to travel and seek adventure, children are perhaps the best reason of all to do both. Pre-trip, her three little boys had fought like banshees at the drop of a hat. In the process of learning to coexist in a floating bedroom, they learned patience, as much for themselves as for the sanity of their parents. Pre-trip, books were about as appealing as eating sand. Given the alternative of staring at a wall on the open sea, all three learned to love books. Pulling them out of school for one academic year and exposing them to new environments had proven to be the best investment in their education to date. Now sitting in the plane, Julie looked out at the clouds as the wing cut past them, already thinking of their next plans: to find a place in the mountains and ski all year long, using income from a sail-rigging workshop to fund the slopes and more travel. Now that she had done it once, she had the itch.

Breaking Everest by Stewart Stafford On this Everest of déjà vu, We broke up in avalanches, Rote tumbling and tedium, Dead stares at the bottom. Climbers phoning in motion, A poke for the All-Seeing Eye, Pack mules heaving baggage, Tense on the musical ski lifts. Even with three tiny travellers, That peak hosted no summits, Cast-off hairshirt strait-jackets, The wound-licking began afresh. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

WE HEADED TO Sun Valley for the holidays. Arnold and Maria Shriver had a house about the size of the mountain’s main ski lodge.

Army veteran Semyon Zolotaryov wore two hats, a scarf, a short-sleeved shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a black cotton sweater, a flannel jacket, a sheepskin fur vest, long johns, two pairs of pants, ski pants, woolen socks, and burkas, or warm leather shoes—in other words, the guy didn’t die from the cold.

…fresh, bottomless powder is the Holy Grail, but pow is elusive. True enlightenment can be found in things like soft corduroy on a 27-degree bluebird day. It's times like these when the perfect wax, sharp edges, and strong legs can make you feel part of the mountain, allow you to create carves as organic as the snowmelt streams that'll rush downhill in April.

One beautiful winter morning when Utah’s deep powder snow was perfect for experienced skiers, he and Elder W. Craig Zwick headed to a nearby resort for a day on the slopes. As they hopped on the four-person chairlift for their umpteenth ride up the mountain, a young man skied up and got on with them. They remarked how wonderful it was that Monday morning to be out in the fresh Utah snow, and the young man responded, “Yes, but my life is in a shambles.” Elder Zwick remembered, “I felt like saying, ‘This is your lucky day,’ and about then the man realized he was on the chairlift with President Nelson and gasped. “In about four minutes,” Elder Zwick related, “President Nelson taught that young man the importance of the Book of Mormon and promised that if he would read it every day, his problems wouldn’t go away but they would be alleviated. That is how clearly he taught” (Church News/KSL Interview, January 5, 2018).

While genetic gifts play the dominant role in preselecting who is going to be good at power and speed sports, perseverance and the ability to suffer are the hallmarks of the successful endurance athlete. No wonder endurance sports appeal to the type A personalities for whom more equates to better. A question we often get is, “Just how much is enough?” That is an impossible one to answer. What might not even count as much of a warm-up for Kílian, something he would do before breakfast on a recovery day, might overload others. It all depends on your capacity for this type of work.

Last night's harsh phone call seemed to be a distant memory as we spent the day in the snow with my new fake friends, going for one last turn on the mountain while I drank boiled wine at the bottom of the ski lift at the hutte. I honestly told Anette in the ski lift during the day what Sabrina had told me on the phone the night before, but she remained silent and didn't seem surprised for some reason. I didn't think Anette would conspire with Betty to test me or win me. I didn’t think they would conspire with Sabrina but perhaps I didn’t know her well enough to assume what she was capable of when jealous, mad, sad, confused or in love. Perhaps they did not. Everything I don't know. I try to write here all that I know and have managed to figure out, taking a long time. I try to share what I have been through because I am sure that others will find it useful to learn from my mistakes, faults, sins, virtues, and so on. Perhaps only my luck, good or bad, I don't know. I could not have figured out what happened if I had not written down exactly how things unfolded in order to be able to see through it all and comprehend what really happened since I bought that Roberto Saviano book and met Sabrina. Perhaps the women had been conspiring for one reason or another; perhaps they had not. Nonetheless, it was odd. „Water is wet, the sky is blue, women have secrets. Who gives a f..k?” – Joe Hallenbeck Do all men have to be natural-born and supernatural detectives like Bruce Willis in all his movies, or in The Last Boy Scout? I'm not sure how many coincidences can fit so strangely into reality by chance, or is it all manipulation? Is it all because of the story of Eve and the snake and the apple?

A FEW MONTHS later, all of them as cool and gray-skied as ever, in a grove of birch trees on the edge of her woodland, Dusha spoke to me. “There are places on this Earth that are sacred—hills, mountains, groves of trees like this one. They are called svetiye mesta, wells of spiritual energy where earth magic is at its strongest.

A woman’s voice came wailing on the wind. Norman looked up and spotted Sandra high up on an even steeper funnel of snow and ice. She was crying: ‘Your father is dead. What are we going to do?’ One of her shoulders was hanging weirdly. There was a bloody wound on her forehead, matted with hair. Then he saw his dad, still in his seat but slumped awkwardly forward. Norman turned around on the steep slope and inched over towards him, sneakers pathetically trying to hold an edge. He slipped and almost plummeted like a bobsleigh down the mountain. He caught a hold. Then he started crawling back up. It took him thirty minutes to climb 6 m (20 ft). His dad was doubled over. ‘DAD!’ No response. Snow was falling on his father’s curly hair. Above him, Sandra sounded delirious. By the time he was four, Norman had skied every black run at Mammoth. On his first birthday, his dad had him strapped to his back in a canvas papoose and took him surfing. Reckless, perhaps, but it had given the boy an indomitable spirit. Eleven-year-old Norman hugged his dad for the last time then tracked back across the slope to see what he could salvage from the wreckage. There were no ice axes or tools, but he did find a rug. He took it and scrabbled back to Sandra. She couldn’t move. Somehow he got her under the ragged remains of the plane’s wing and they wrapped themselves in the rug and fell into an exhausted sleep. Norman was woken around noon by a helicopter. He leapt up, trying to catch the crew’s attention. They came very, very close but somehow didn’t see him. They were going to have to get off this mountain themselves. A brief lull in the storm gave them a sudden view. The slope continued beneath their feet, sickeningly sheer, for hundreds of feet. Then lower down there were woods and the gully levelled a little before a massive ridgeline rose again. Beyond that lay a flatter meadow of snow and, at the edge of the world, a cabin. Sandra wanted to stay put. She was ranting about waiting for the rescuers. For a moment Norman nearly lay down beside her and drifted off to sleep. The

Mountains. The U.S. government has dozens of extremely critical facilities there: the headquarters for North American Aerospace Defense, Strategic Missile Command, the Air Force Academy. . . .” “The Central Food and Seed Reserve,” Alexander suggested helpfully. Cyrus frowned disdainfully at this, but he didn’t discount it, either. “Shang could be targeting any one of them. Or something else entirely. It is imperative that we find out what—and that we do it quickly. Which is why you need to get close to Jessica Shang, Benjamin.” “How am I supposed to do that?” I asked, unable to hide how daunted I felt. “I won’t even be able to get into her hotel.” “You’ll be attending ski school with her,” Alexander explained. “Leo Shang originally enrolled her in private lessons—but those were recently changed to group lessons. We’re not sure why, but we assume that was Jessica’s doing.

Have you ever skied?” “You mean strap boards on my feet and jump off the side of a mountain?

Yes. They’re quite flavorful, although they don’t taste much like other oysters….” “That’s because they’re bull testicles,” Erica told him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Alexander chided. “They wouldn’t make something like that at a restaurant like this!” Erica handed him the menu and pointed to the small print he’d overlooked that indicated exactly what Rocky Mountain oysters were.

The best way to decide how much emphasis you still need to place on basic aerobic fitness versus adding more high-intensity endurance training is to refer back to the Ten Percent Test (see page 91). If the difference between your AeT and LT (in terms of heart rate) is 10 percent or less, you should include up to two weekly high-intensity aerobic endurance sessions in your Base Period. If your AeT-to-LT spread is greater than 10 percent, delay the introduction of Zone 3 workouts and limit the higher-intensity workouts to no more than once a week.

Strength is largely a neurologic quality while endurance is largely a metabolic quality. Restating this: Strength depends on the brain’s ability to recruit the greatest number of muscle fibers for a task. Endurance depends on the rate of metabolic turnover of ATP molecules. We use the modifier largely above because these two qualities overlap and are interdependent in endurance sports.