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MountainTalk: Noted and Quoted in the Mountains March 5, 2003
Seen and heard on mountains around the world. Click the links to read the full story.
Mountain bikers have been driving past this mostly agricultural town for years en route to Moab, Utah, the pre-ordained Mecca of biking. What they didn't know was that locals began developing trails in Fruita in the early 1980s. Thanks to them and numerous volunteers, you can now ride miles and miles on some of the buffest, baby-butt smooth, singletrack in the U.S.
Singletrack MTB in Fruita, Colorado
"What hooked me for good was doing a month-long mountaineering expedition in the Alaska Range in 1996. The natural scenery was the most amazing I had ever seen. My senses felt sharpened, and my feelings extra vivid. I wanted to capture some slices of that world."
"I was hoping for more today but at the end of the day I must be lucky to have made it to the finish line. I skied really well in the upper part of the second run but then I had problems with my boot. I was afraid to ski out"
A two hour flight from Auckland took me to Queenstown, a small, positively humming city nestled by the shore of Lake Wakatipu, in the very shadow of a range of mountains called the Remarkables ("the Remarx" to the locals). Remember those fairy tale mountains you saw in Lord of the Rings? Those were the Remarx. In fact, part of the fun of being here is seeing how director and native son Peter Jackson utilized New Zealand's unbelievable scenery to make his fantasy movie come alive.
“I was seeing some stars, but I shook my head and it went away – there’s a reason I put a pit bull sticker here (pointing to his board). It’s my nickname, you’ve got to take hits and get back in there. I want to be the best, that's all it is and sometimes it takes a few knocks to improve - it's all part of progression.”
"In what will certainly be regarded as one of the most remarkable comebacks in the history of sports, Austrian Hermann Maier won the Super-G today at Kitzbuehel. The race was only Maier's fifth since returning to action following a motorcycle accident 18 months ago that nearly took his life and left doctors wondering if he would ever walk again."
U.S. Ski team member Caroline Lalive was released from the hospital on Monday after crashing over the weekend. (Off-site)
— Tim O'Mara, MountainZone.com correspondent
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