After an accident on the snow left him paralyzed from the waist down, skier Josh Dueck made his comeback with a sit ski. A year later he was dominating the sport, and now he’s taken his sit ski into the backcountry. The Freedom Chair is a short film that finds inspiration in a guy charging down the hairiest backcountry lines you can find on one ski. Hopefully it’ll be fully released on the web after making the rounds at film festivals.
Jay Peak in Vermont has agreed to pay an $80,000 fine for filing in wetlands with debris from construction of a golf course from 2004 to 2008. The current Jay Peak owner says that the two acres of destroyed wetland and streams happened before he came on board. Ugh, the only thing worse than playing golf is golfing on filled in wetland. Couldn’t they have built the golf course on an old toxic waste site? If you haven’t bought your season pass to Jay Peak yet this year, might I suggest taking up backcountry skiing? I know a place where you can get some great gear, and I haven’t filled in any marshes or streams with debris for several years.
Despite the ebb and flow of the stock market and concerns over our future ability to employ ourselves ski resorts are reporting strong bookings for this coming ski season. Early bookings are up about 17% according to the Denver-based Mountain Travel Research Program. It remains to be seen how quickly the backcountry will get tracked out, but strong sales of backcountry gear means trailheads may be more crowded than usual.
Over the summer Andreas Fransson made the first ski descent of Denali’s South Face, and he did it solo. The news broke awhile back, but now the video is available. The camera work might make you sick, but then again maybe it’s the adventure that’s stomach churning. “Life can’t be more cool than this.”
via Teton AT
Tomorrow the tour of Teton Gravity Research’s One for the Road kicks off in, you guessed it, Teton Village, Wyoming. If you’re interested in seeing it in person on the big screen and possibly even heckling some of the riders in person instead of in the comment section on blogs, check out the tour schedule. Hopefully they bring the Sam-Elliot-sounding-guy who narrates the trailer.
