A Michigan man hiked to the summit of a 14,265-foot peak south of Breckenridge last week with a friend and met a group of onlookers while preparing to ski-glide down the slope. The sport involves wearing a small parachute that allows you to intermittently ski and hang glide as the terrain and wind allow.

This is the description of what happened next from the group of sightseers:

The first man successfully sailed to the bottom of the mountain along its south side.

“Victor was waiting for wind, but it never seemed to be strong enough. Meanwhile, we started going down the mountain. A couple hundred yards from the summit, we turned to watch Victor. We were concerned, since we were the only ones on the summit, and we wanted to make sure he made it off OK,” Shipman said.

At about 1:30 p.m., Shipman watched Victor take off from the summit, and saw the descent quickly go awry.

“It just seemed like he lost the wind. When he came down, he caught a ski on a rock. Both skis came off, and he went tumbling into the rocks,” Shipman said.

So the hikers ran down the mountainside and covered up the injured skier. They called 911 and it took about eight hours to extract the guy. The only thing worse than crashing your ski/parachute into the rocks is doing in front of a bunch of friendly locals who made the trip up to watch you go down. I’m surprised he didn’t stand up and pretend like he was okay.

A 39-year-old woman from Texas struck a pole and died while sledding on a 240-foot ski run at Kendall Mountain in Silverton on Christmas.

The ski area was closed but San Juan County undersheriff Kristine Burns says Woodfin and her family had seen other people sledding there and assumed it was OK.

She says it’s not clear why Woodfin hit the pole because there is plenty of room on either side.

I’ve seen a couple ski injuries, but I swear someone ends up in the emergency room every time I head out sledding at the iced-up city hill. I’ve seen a separated shoulder, a bloody nose, and a broken collarbone, and I only go sledding about once a year. You’re so low to the ground, can’t effectively turn, and you lead your head. It’s kind of surprising this doesn’t happen more often.

The documentary of the 1953 summit bid on Mount Everest is available in its entirety on YouTube. It’ll be a nice way to pass some cubicle time in the short week between Christmas and New Year’s. I heard the Gear Junkie is heading to Everest sometime soon; hopefully he can afford the 350 porters from Kathmandu to base camp each carrying 40 pounds of Hanes gear.

via Outside

It always looks farther away through your viewfinder. This guy was shooting some pics during an eastern Kazakhstan eagle hunt when the animals turned on him. Cover your eyes! Cover your eyes!

via Wend [The Daily What]

A couple of hut skiers lost their way on the seven-mile trek between shelters and had to spend the night outside. Instead of setting up camping and moving on in the morning, the two lost Hawaiians called 911 and spent a night huddled under a tree until an Army National Guard helicopter could pluck them from the wilderness the following day. Andrew at Out There points out that half the entries in the Skinner’s log are “Got lost, had to camp for the night.” Theirs could read, “Got lost, and got a free sick helicopter ride.” I wonder if it’d be bad form to ask the Army pilot to drop you at a nearby summit so you could ski down.

A ski company out of Munich wants to change the way Germans yell at you. Through a series of sensors in your boots’ insoles and a set of headphones, the onboard computer gives you real-time feedback on your skiing technique. Moticon will use pattern recognition software to let you know when you’re sitting in the back seat or noodling your legs and hips like an epileptic pasta chef. The device will debut in Europe this year, and is set to launch in the U.S. next season.

via Gear Junkie

Boing Boing sat down for an interview with the Sustainability Director of the Aspen Skiing Company in the lobby of the Little Nell resort spa. The Little Nell burned through 25,556 MMBTU of natural gas and 3,269,976kWh of electricity, generating 4,245 tons of CO2 last year. The average American house generates 8.5 tons of CO2 per year. And the Little Nell is by no means the largest energy consumer in Aspen. There are the ski lifts, snowmaking machines, the rest of the mountain village, and if you take into account all the traveling done to get to Vail, this place is like ground zero for global warming.

Basically, the editor at Boing Boing asks the Sustainability Director to justify his phony baloney job.

The question: “How do you even justify what you’re doing?” comes up all the time. I’m sorry, you’re the sustainability guy at the ski resort? You care about climate change? Why don’t you shut down the resort? Aspen flies people in from all over the world. If you look at carbon footprint, that’s 27,000 tons of CO2 a year. For your day of skiing, it’s about 30-40 lbs of CO2 for one day. Per skiier! Snowmaking uses huge energy. Shut down!

…

It’s wasteful, I see it. But The Nell is a five star hotel. The whole concept is wasteful. And unless we say we’re gonna change the whole product, we’re stuck. Skiing is absurd on its face. But we have to assume that the business itself is acceptable because presumably, no matter how radical we are as environmentalists, the community needs a base of business. There’s value to an economy and people having meaningful jobs that pay well. Otherwise to solve climate you’d have to shut the world down and go back to medieval times.

The entire interview is worth a read.

The Ski Train is what’s right with America. People hopping onto mass transit and scooting up the mountainside where they’ll pile out of the resort. It keeps down crowds in the parking lot, means less traffic on mountain roads, saves the planet a bit, and you can knock back a few drinks on the train ride home since you’re not driving.

Bad news from the Colorado Ski Train that’s slated to begin ferrying passengers from Union Station in Denver to Winter Park on the 27^th. The 13,000 people who have already booked tickets might need to have their money refunded since some issues are threatening to shutdown the train. Among those issues? Amtrack requires the train operating company to carry $200 million in insurance in case of a terrorist attack. The train operators are heading to federal court to sue Amtrack for ‘unreasonable demands’ to try to get the train back on the tracks.

Update: Ski Train is dead.

I thought this was a parody for the first 30 seconds or so. “It will do for skiing what ‘Jaws’ did for swimming,” nails it. I think one of the male actors was in that epically terrible movie, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. I didn’t see that movie, the trailer was enough. At least this guy’s career is on the rise with Frozen.

via Verte