Ski resorts go renewable

U.S. ski resorts tap renewable energy sources to combat climate change

By Jesse Huffman | ESPN Action Sports

Courtesy photoSummer and winter alternate views of Park City's wind and solar installation, which is located at the top of their Silverlode chairlift.

As the volatility of the 2011-12 season made clear, the stake ski resort's have in resolving climate change is a big one. Over the past three years, resorts like Bolton, Burke, Jiminy Peak and Grouse Mountain have installed wind turbines, while others have pursued efficiency updates, in an effort to responsibly produce, and reduce, the power and heat involved in swinging chairs and heating lodges all winter long. Now, four more areas, from local ski hills in the Northeast to major resorts in the Rockies, have installed or invested in renewable power sources ranging from solar to biomass to coalmine methane.

Smuggler's Notch closed early this winter after a spring meltdown saw the highest March temperatures in Vermont's history. The same solar energy that drove skiers and riders batty as it took away their snow is now being put to use by an array of 35 solar trackers, which collectively produce 205,000 kWh per year -- around five percent of Smuggler's total electrical use. The array provides enough juice for most of the resort's Village Lodge.

Dan Maxon, Smuggler's Notch Solar Installation Project Manager, toured me through the installation on a recent morning, when the GPS-enabled trackers, manufactured by a Vermont company called ALLEarth Renewables, were tilted east to catch the a.m. sun.

"We believe it is important not only for ski resorts, but for all energy users to take some responsibility for their energy consumption," Maxon told me. "There was a good confluence of energy and desire that made this project come together -- we'd been looking at various renewable projects for six-seven years, but couldn't pull them off. This one we could."

[+] Enlarge

Courtesy photoSmuggler's solar tracker array with Madonna Mountain in the background.

The array would normally have cost a million dollars to install, but Smuggler's engaged in an innovative leasing program from AllEarth, and in five years it will have the option to buy the equipment outright at a reduced price. Smuggler's is adding this solar project to existing efforts to outfit new condominium units with solar hot water heaters.

As for further renewable projects, Maxon says that Smuggler's will be focusing on efficiency at the resort and in the snow making system next. I asked Maxon if he thought that ski resort's high-elevation locations made them especially suitable to industrial-sized wind generation, like the type at Bolton Valley or Jiminy Peak. He pointed out that while ski resort ridgelines could be prime locations for wind power, many ski resorts, including Smuggler's, lease land from the State, making such projects difficult.

Over at Mt. Abram in Maine, renewable heat has literally risen from the ashes. A lighting strike set fire to the ski resort's main lodge in the summer of 2011, burning the building to the ground.

Taking the occasion to revisit the resort's dependence on fossil fuels, Mt. Abram built their new lodge with a wood pellet boiler. Stoked by dry, highly-pressurized wood pellets from sustainably-harvested sources right in the state, the "Energy Box" system provides plenty of warmth for the lodge. Building off that momentum, Mt. Abrams updated the heating in their rental shop and top patrol shack with pellet heaters as well.

"Switching from No. 2 heating oil to a carbon-neutral, locally-sourced system was an easy decision based on our current goals as a ski area" says Erin Bragg, Mt. Abram's Director of Sustainability. "The move was also pushed to the forefront of our 'greening' time line due to the destruction of our oil boiler in the fire."

The base lodge project, which offsets the use of more than 12,00 gallons of No. 2 heating oil per year, helped win the resort a National Ski Area Association Golden Eagle Award for Environmental Excellence this year. Hancock believes that "all ski areas have a strong self preservation interest in promoting projects that support colder, snowier winters."

Courtesy photo Mt. Abram's GM standing with the resort's Golden Eagle award in front of their wood-pellet boiler.

In the case of solar, says Hancock, many ski areas have available land but it's likely to be facing north, and thus not in the direct path of the sun. Mt. Abram, like Smugglers, has enough south-facing acreage to make solar a real option.
"Mt. Abram has engineered and is fully permitted for a two-acre solar array specified to generate more electricity annually than we consume," says Hancock. He adds that the resort is the final phases of financing and hopes to have the installation in place before the 2012 ski season.

Hancock sees pressure from customers, not just warming winters, as a driver that will push resorts to do more to lower their impact.

"You don't venture out with kids and grandparents in zero degree windy weather if you don't love the outdoors and care greatly about the planet," says Hancock. "As more ski areas take a more serious approach to their environmental footprint, I believe a greater environmental stewardship will be an ante to stay in business."

Across the divide in the Rockies, Park City Mountain Resort has recently installed a Falcon 12kW vertical axis wind turbine at the top of their Silverlode chairlift. Paired with a solar panel, the installation generates 30,000 kW hours of electricity annually, around three times the amount of an average home. Park City also included an informational kiosk that will let the public see the power being generated in real time.

"Our goal is for our guests to see a turbine and solar array installation up close and hopefully encourage them to install wind or solar at their home or business," says Brent Giles, Chief Sustainability Officer of Powdr Corp, Park City's parent company.
"We live, work and recreate in a mountain setting and we want to continue this lifestyle for years to come," says Giles. "Therefore we have adopted a policy to reduce emissions generated by our operations."

Large-scale renewable installations aren't really an option at Park City, says Giles. Instead, the resort purchases wind power renewable energy credits that offset 100 percent of their electricity usage, which averages 14 million kWh's annually.

Auden SchendlerElk Creek mine in Colorado, where Aspen's coal mine methane-to-electricity project will be developed.

In Colorado, Aspen Ski Company is taking a leading role in developing an innovative form of clean energy from coalmine methane. The practice of venting methane from coalmines to prevent underground explosions has turned into a climate change bottleneck with 20 times more warming potential than CO2, coalmine methane contributed ten percent of the all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, according to the EPA.

Aspen is the capital investor in a new project at Elk Creek Mine that uses waste methane to power a dynamo and generate electricity, downgrading the methane to CO2 and at the same time. The project is a first of its scale in the United States, and helped net the resort a National Ski Area Association Golden Eagle Award for Environmental Excellence this year.

"We've been looking for a large scale clean energy project for over a decade and we finally found one," says Auden Schendler, Aspen Vice President of Sustainability.

Schendler expects the 3 megawatt project to go online around September, and says that in a matter of month it will make approximately the same amount of electricity that Aspen uses annually, around 25 million kilowatt hours. "Because we're destroying methane in the process," adds Schendler, "this is equivalent to triple offsetting our carbon footprint each year."

Schendler believes that industrial scale, on-site power generation wasn't feasible for Aspen, and isn't necessarily the solution for other resorts.

"We're trying to develop a huge amount of clean power, we're not trying to do something gimmicky," says Schendler. "We don't need to shoehorn clean power into inappropriate places like most ski resorts, there are plenty of good projects to develop, they don't happen to be at ski resorts. The atmosphere doesn't care if the power gets used on site -- scale is everything when it comes to solving climate change."

Which isn't to say that Schendler and Aspen don't support renewable energy development by ski resorts. The opposite in fact: "It's important, so that when these resorts go to Washington to ask for an aggressive climate policy they have a leg to stand on and some credibility," says Schendler. "We need to walk before we can talk."

Wanted!!- Able bodied person's to run about the resort, meeting chalet hosts, being sociable, go riding, talk about ski and snowboarding and get fed free cake and tea.

Oh yeah, experience in ski rental operations, the ability to work under... pressure- as part of a team or individually, and being flexible, adaptable and motivated would be a real asset as well.

If you, or someone you know, thinks they've got what it takes to be a Doorstep Skis Technician then drop us an email on info@doorstepskis.com with a CV and relative experience.

See More at; https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Doorstep-Skis/149648009042

Ski Mountaineer Greg Hill Signs with Salomon

What does Salomon have up their sleeve?

By:Powder Magazine / Posted on July 9, 2012

Greg Hill PHOTO: COURTESY SALOMON

Words: Derek Taylor, Grind TV How do you top your own record of climbing and skiing one million vertical feet in a single season? For most, it’s an insurmountable task. For Greg Hill, who set the 1-mil mark in 2004-05, it was simple: double that in a calendar year. Hill did just that in 2010. For the mathematically challenged, that’s the equivalent of climbing and skiing 5,500 vertical feet every single day, for an entire year. That’s a pretty hearty day for most backcountry skiers, but it also assumes Hill didn’t take any rest days, days off for his kid’s birthday or hanging out at trade shows, which of course Hill had to do at various points during the year.

Simply put, Hill is a skinning and skiing machine. His 2-mil record will likely stand for years to come. All of this made him the perfect face for Dynafit, the market leader in lightweight touring bindings. So his decision to leave Dynafit for Salomon raises more questions than it answers.
Salomon, of course, has been focusing more and more on the backcountry ski market in recent years. They continue to refine their Quest boot line and last year they unveiled the Guardian backcountry touring binding, which will hit stores this fall. But while the Guardian has been receiving accolades for what it is: a burly Alpine-style binding with touring capabilities, it’s not intended to be the tool for the 10,000-plus vertical-foot days in the backcountry that Hill is known to rack up (and certainly not for the 50,100 vertical feet that Hill and Crested Butte’s Jimmy Faust logged in 24 hours in 2006, another record).

The question that arises, then, is what does Salomon have up its sleeve? They already have a bevy of athletes qualified to usher in the Guardian and Quest projects (Mike Douglas, Jamey Parks, Cody Townsend, Mark Abma, Elyse Saugstad, Kim Havel… the list goes on). Does the signing of Hill signify that there is a lightweight, tech-compatible touring binding in the works at Salomon? Time will only tell. As of now, the company is being tight-lipped about their plans, to the point that the brand manager refuses to talk about it with her own husband (full disclosure: I’m the husband in question).
More at GrindTV 

When The Devil Came To Morzine

Romeo Vitelli is a Canadian Psychologist and back in November 2009 he wrote this very interesting thesis on the spooky, ghostly goings-on that occurred in Morzine in the 1850's. It's so bizarre, and totally not what we imagine from our pretty Alpine town!

It was a fine spring day in 1857. The charming little town of Morzine, located in south-eastern Savoy (then an Italian province), was already well-known for its panoramic views of the Alps and the religious piety of the people who lived there. A ten-year old girl named Peronne Tavernier was eagerly preparing for her first communion when, on March 14 of that year, she reportedly saw a young girl falling into a river.  Although the girl was unharmed, Peronne became increasingly uneasy during the day and, while at school, collapsed into a strange stupor where she reportedly "lay as one dead for some hours". After being carried home, she regained consciousness but collapsed again a few days later. Peronne's strange fits began occurring more frequently until April when she and another girl, were found unconscious together where they had been herding goats on the hillside. Afterward, both children began showing similar fits including strange behaviour while in a trance state. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the girls stretching out their hands and receiving an invisible letter. On awakening, they reported visions of the Virgin Mary and the Devil.

As the fits grew worse, the two girls both began swearing blasphemously and screaming that serpents were wrapping around them.  The convulsions were so bad that three adult men were needed to hold Peronne down. More remarkably, they began accusing several men in the village of "bewitching" them and made predictions that others would be possessed as well. Peronne also predicted her father's death from witchcraft (he did die shortly afterward but the cause of death isn't recorded). Other people in Morzine began to show similar symptoms including a fifteen-year old girl named Julie Plagnat who went into convulsions and claimed to be possessed by seven devils. Julie also cut herself severely with a hatchet during one of her seizures (one of her possessing devils claimed responsibility). Although the parish priest was actually skeptical about the possession cases, the villagers loudly complained about his disbelief.

Peronne's brother, Joseph Tavernier, grew despondent after his father's death and claimed that the Devil was preventing him from eating. Joseph resisted any attempt at forced feeding and eventually starved to death. Over the course of the next few months, more than twenty-seven cases of demonic possession were recorded in Morzine. The symptoms were rarely the same in each case. While some reported being chased by black dogs that only they could see, others reported visions of men being transformed into animals. There were also cases of villagers "speaking in tongues". When a physician was sent to Morzine to examine one of the possessed women, he reported that "the devils in her" taunted him by saying that his medicine was useless and only exorcism could drive them out.
As panic grew over the possession cases, suspicion fell on those villagers who Peronne and the others had accused of witchcraft. One elderly shoemaker in particular, Jean Berger, was attacked by an angry mob armed with scythes and nearly killed. Others were forced to close their businesses out of fear since many villagers were demanding that the "magicians" be burned to end Morzine's suffering. The main suspect was a defrocked priest who had been driven out of Morzine years before and had supposedly cursed the town as a result. Despite a bizarre ceremony performed by the villagers to kill the ex-priest (who was in hiding in Geneva), there was no relief from the possessions. Even exorcisms did little to calm the villagers.

By 1860, France had annexed Savoy and the French government took an interest in the odd happenings in Morzine. The government dispatched two prominent psychiatrists to examine the cases in depth. One of them, Dr Constans, was the inspector-general of lunatic asylums across France who wrote the first scientific analysis of the Morzine possession epidemic. Of the one hundred and twenty cases of possession that were reported, Constans examined sixty-four in depth and concluded that there was no set pattern to the possession cases. While the overwhelming majority of cases were women, they varied widely in age and the symptoms that they presented. Some spoke in voices while others showed bizarre convulsions (including acrobatic leaps that astonished the ones watching). Dr. Constans had the worst cases sent to asylums and threatened the other villagers with heavy fines but the epidemic dragged on.

Finally, by 1865, the French government had enough of the strange happenings in Morzine. Dr. Constans returned with a full detachment of soldiers and a replacement priest for the Morzine parish. Armed with full police powers by the French government, Constans declared martial law on the town. All accusations of sorcery were punished with heavy fines and villagers showing signs of possession were ordered to return to normal or face exile. As before, the worst cases were sent to asylums and the rest were scattered as far from Morzine as possible. Although the government measures were harsh, they apparently did the trick. Despite reports of fresh outbreaks in other parts of France where the worst cases had been sent, the Morzine epidemic was essentially over.

But not completely. A few years later, Professor Joseph Tissot, a philosophy professor from Dijon, visited Morzine to research the epidemic and its aftermath. While Tissot noted that the government action had been effective in bringing the town under control, there were still some remaining possession cases. In a remarkable series of experiments, Tissot carefully examined these cases (he even secretly dosed them with holy water to observe their reaction) and concluded that the possessions were due to simple hysteria. He also examined the eyewitness reports and Tissot wrote about his findings in a book which has since become a classic of early skepticism.

As you might expect, the skeptical tone of the book offended many of those churchmen who had believed that the Morzine epidemic was real. Some of them even argued that the holy water test had failed because Satan was too cunning to fall for such a trick! While Tissot's book stirred up controversy, it died down quickly enough. As Tissot had prophetically pointed out, the expansion of the main road into Morzine ended the isolation that had encouraged the epidemic and the town settled down to becoming just another rural village.

While there have been other episodes of mass hysteria before and since, the Morzine epidemic represents the first case that was formally studied from a scientific perspective. Given the rash of anti-witch hysteria currently occurring in other parts of the world, it seems more important than ever to recognize the dangers of suggestion and superstition when allowed to go to extremes.

The French Paradox

Eat fat…be slim and healthy. It sounds too good to be true and as an advert for a diet company you probably wouldn’t believe it but this statement has been true in France for centuries. Local Morzine magazine Yodel had a look into this paradox and here's what they un-earthed... 

The great French paradox has baffled dieticians and experts for years; how do the French eat high amounts of cream, butter and fat but have one of the lowest rates of coronary heart disease (CHD) in the world? According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, despite an intake of saturated fat that is 50% higher than the US, people in France have a 30-40% lower chance of developing CHD.

One element could be the portion sizes in France, which tend to be smaller than other countries. Compared to the US they are a massive 30-50% smaller, so despite the high level of fats, the calorie intake is a lot lower. The fats in these foods also act as a hunger suppressant, reducing the necessity for snacks which in the US amounts to an enormous $30 billion industry!
The most surprising theory is that this paradox can be explained by the consumption of red wine throughout the country. The 1995 Copenhagen Heart Study confirmed the health benefits of moderate but regular wine consumption.
There is an antioxidant in grape skins called resveratrol that aids weight loss and overall good health. In other words, sinking three bottles of Merlot every now and then will not have great benefits
for your health but regular glasses will! Drinking a little alcohol each day, particularly wine, has often since been associated with an increased life expectancy.
Goose and duck fats are also popular ingredients in French delicacies including pates and foie gras. These can help to keep cholesterol levels down as they have a composition that is closer to that of olive oil than butter.
Dr William Clower, author of ‘The French Don’t Diet Plan’ took time to answer a few questions yodel had about this theory…

What are the main factors that allow the French to live a long and healthy life? 

One factor is the quality of their foods, which can provide the powerful antioxidants and healthy oils that can stave off chronic diseases. But the other aspect is simply that the volume of food consumed is more appropriate for long-term health. In population studies, as well as research on experimental animals, smaller quantity consumption is associated with higher longevity.

Do you think the social nature of their meal times could help? 

Absolutely. Taking your time and sharing the meal with the people around you has a number of physiological consequences that help you become a more conscious eater – which, by the way, helps prevent you from over-consuming.

Can red wine really help you be healthy?

Yes. Red wine has a trove of polyphenols – as well as the currently popular resveratrol – which are wonderful for your heart. But, just as anything can become bad for you when it is over-consumed, the very same red wine that is good for your heart will become bad for your liver if you have too much.

Do you think there is a link between high fat foods and cholesterol or has this been disproven?

There are good fats and bad fats, just as there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. You very much need those healthy fats in your diet. So the idea that you should avoid foods with fats has certainly been disproven, as we learn more about the nature of those molecules and their relation to things such as heart disease.
If you have any questions for Dr Will Clower, he would be happy to answer them simply email him; info@willclower.com.

How demanding is the Tour de France?

The Tour de France – currently underway – has long been regarded as one of the most demanding endurance events in sporting history. But what does that mean in physical terms for the athletes taking part?

RELATED

• McEwen gives Tour cycling team an edge
• Factbox: Tour de France
• Evans moves up in Tour de France
• Sagan nails second Tour victory

By Chris Abbiss, Edith Cowan University
The Tour de France – currently underway – has long been regarded as one of the most demanding endurance events in sporting history. But what does that mean in physical terms for the athletes taking part?
RELATED: Cycling Central
When it began in 1903, the Tour comprised 2,428km of racing over six days. Some 60 cyclists competed in that inaugural race, which was eventually won by amateur rider Maurice Garin in an impressive time of 94 hours and 33 minutes. While the structure of the Tour has changed somewhat since its inception, the unbelievably demanding nature of the event remains.

The finish of the first Tour, 1903, with (on the right) the first winner, Maurice Garin.

The Tour of today is conducted over 21 days with finishing athletes completing a total of 3,500km on some of France’s harshest roads. These roads include the long (around 200km) relatively flat early stages, which are designed specifically for sprinters and ridden at remarkably fast average speeds (around 45km/hr).
At the end of these stages, which can last for four-to-six hours, cyclists are required to overcome severe mental and physical fatigue in order to maintain speeds of more than 60km/hr for the last five-to-ten kilometres of racing, reaching speeds of 75-to-80km/hr at the finish line.
Those wishing to contend the sprint will attempt to conserve as much energy as possible throughout the stage in order to produce sufficient power (around 2,000 to 2,500 watts) required reach these speeds. (It’s worth pointing out that healthy men and women in other walks of life would struggle to produce more than 800W and 600W on a bike, respectively.)

Such high power outputs are needed to rapidly accelerate the cyclists against the high wind resistance – and would be sufficient to power a fridge, TV and most of the lights in a standard house.

Climbing

Perhaps the more demanding stages within the tour are those that travel over some of Europe most gruelling mountain passes (known as “hors category” ascents). These mountains are often greater than 10km long, at an average gradient of 5-10%, requiring more than one hour of continuous climbing.
The high altitude at the summit of these mountain passes (in the region of 2,000-2,500m) makes the speed the Tour cyclists ascend (around 20km/hr) even more impressive. The stage profiles video below should give an idea of the challenge facing riders on this front.
At such altitudes the reduced barometric pressure limits the ability to deliver sufficient oxygen to active tissue (muscles), compromising exercise capacity by as much as 10-to-15%.
Indeed, the top of the climbs in the Alps and Pyrenees are high enough that many sedentary unacclimatised onlookers may begin to experience symptoms of acute altitude sickness, including dizziness and shortness of breath.

Since such mountain stages are often extremely influential to the overall outcomes of the race, cyclists wishing to finish well in the general classification are required to stay with the leading riders during each relentless surge or attack.
The average power output cyclists apply to the pedals during their 30-to-60-minute ascent of mountain passes can be upwards of 450W (6.5W/kg). To put this in perspective, the average trained recreational cyclist may be able to hold this power output for a maximum of between 30 and 120 seconds.

Food

The extremely intense and long duration of the stages within the Tour de France require riders to consume an average of 23–25MJ/day (5,500-6,000 kcal), which is more than double the average daily calorie intake required by most people.
Achieving such high calorie intake is obviously complicated by the high demands of racing and the large percentage of the day spent on the bike. Still, in order to avoid depleting energy stores, cyclists are required to consume carbohydrates at a rate of approximately 25-60 grammes an hour during racing.

Failure to consume sufficient macronutrients during – and in the evening following – racing will result in a progressive decline in exercise capacity and ultimately an inability to complete the Tour.
Despite consuming extremely high calorie diets, riders in the Tour will still experience significant lipid and protein breakdown throughout the three-week race.

Hormones

The physiological stress resulting from 21 days of racing begins to alter hormonal function, resulting in a decrease in resting cortisol and testosterone, a situation that’s typically only observed after months of intense training.
The continuous and repetitive stress placed on the body during the Tour also increase injury and suppresses the immune system, increasing the athlete’s susceptibility to illness.
Regardless, the cyclists are required to wake up each morning for 21 days in July, put on their lycra and ride down to the starting line if they hope to finish one of the world’s toughest races on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Further reading:

• Le Tour de France is set to roll, so what makes a perfect bike wheel?
• High-end bikes for sale … but what are you really buying?
• Cadel Evans and other machines: the science of the Tour de France time trial
• Science of elite cycling: Tour de France (stage 1 to 11)
• Science of elite cycling: Tour de France (stage 12 to 21)

Chris Abbiss does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Hiring for Season 12/13

Wanted!!- Able bodied person's to run about the resort, meeting chalet hosts, being sociable, go riding, talk about ski and snowboarding and get fed free cake and tea.

Oh yeah, experience in ski rental operations, the ability to work under... pressure- as part of a team or individually, and being flexible, adaptable and motivated would be a real asset as well.

If you, or someone you know, thinks they've got what it takes to be a Doorstep Skis Technician then drop us an email on info@doorstepskis.com with a CV and relative experience.

See More - https://www.facebook.com

         So You Want to Buy a Ski Resort?

This might be your year. Colorado’s Echo Mountain is up for auction.

Words: Heather Hansman
Start saving your dollars from your off-season job; it’s a good time to buy a ski resort. Echo Mountain, Denver’s local hill, is on the block. It goes to auction August 2.

According to the Denver Post, current Echo owner Jerry Petitt “bought the 226-acre dormant Squaw Pass(Echo’s former name) ski area at a 2002 auction for $700,000 and has since plowed several million dollars into developing the area.”

That’s probably less than it costs to buy a house in Vail.

If Echo isn’t your mountain, Jackson’s Snow King, Utah’s Brian Head, and Durango’s San Juan Cat Skiing are all on the market as well. You can probably get a deal: western Colorado’s Powderhorn sold for $1.4 million last summer.

Read more about Echo.

How To Be A Lady (Who Shreds)

Women in Skateboarding How To Be A Lady (Who Shreds)

An inquest into gender bias in sport and why society thinks women shouldn’t skate.

“Women who prefer exercise and liberty, who revel in the cool sea breeze and love to feel the fresh mountain air fanning their cheeks, who are afraid neither of a little fatigue nor of a little exertion, are the better, the truer, and the healthier, and can yet remain essentially feminine in their thoughts and manners.” – 1894 Lady Violet Greville in Ladies in the Field Sketches of Sport

One afternoon in 1997 twelve-year-old Lucy Adams was leaving swimming practice in Horsham, England, when she noticed a large construction fence had gone up in the vacant lot behind the pool. She wandered over and peered through a small hole in the boards. On the other side a group of men dressed in long T-shirts and baggy jeans were building something that she would later describe as “fantastic”. With heavy iron bars, scaffolding and large, smooth strips of wood they fashioned swooping curves, elegant arcs, gentle waves and precipitous drops into something that looked like a cross between an obstacle course and a post-modern sculpture. She returned as often as she could and watched as the ramps and transitions took shape and the men began to ride them with their skateboards.
One evening before the park had officially opened she went over, roller skates in hand, and approached the men. “Can I have a go on my skates?” she asked. They laughed and told her she needed a skateboard. “So I went home and told my dad, ‘These are shit now, we need a skateboard,’” she says. Adams has gone on to become one of Britain’s best skaters, but her wider relationship to the skate industry remains very similar to those early days of peeking through the fence. Skateboarding may not be against women, but it’s certainly a consolidated boys club.

There are few reliable statistics regarding the number of skateboarders in the world, much less the number of female skateboarders. The US boasts over 12 million riders, with the number of women in this group ranging from twenty-five per cent to nine per cent, depending on the source. If, for the sake of argument, we take the higher estimate, the number of women skateboarding is roughly consistent with the number of women participating in both surfing and snowboarding. However, compared to its sister sports, female skateboarders are still a silent, invisible minority and skating in the wider public consciousness remains a ‘guy’s sport’.

Adams didn’t realise it at the time, but by squeezing through the fence and daring to “ask for a go” she was, like so many girls before her, stepping onto the frontlines of a bitter, and contentious gender conflict that has quietly raged in the dark recesses of Western society’s subconscious for over 250 years. It’s a struggle not over land or money, but what the sociologist Michael Messner calls the “contested ideological territory” of the female body. At stake is the very definition of what it means to be a woman and how you can legitimately use your body.
“Athletic meetings… always attract a large number of women, perhaps it is the gay colours of the runners, perhaps it is their youth and splendid physical condition, whatever the reason, they come in their thousands and bring brightness and colour to the scene even if their appreciation is not always particularly intelligent.” – The Times, 1919

The notion of ‘guy’s sports’ and ‘girl’s sports’ is completely socially constructed; the ill-begotten child of the specific time period and societies in which sporting culture originated, namely Britain and the United States during the Industrial Revolution. Although physical competitions existed before the socio-economic upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it took capital, a sedentary leisure class, and the then revolutionary idea of ‘leisure time’ to turn games into what we know as sports today. As machines streamlined production and the work day became shorter and less physical, middle and upper class men who spent a lot of time sitting behind desks found that exercise was a good way to blow off steam. Tennis, football, American football, rugby, basketball, athletics, swimming and many other sports were refined and popularised as leisure-time activities during this period.

Read on....courtesy of Huck Magazine 033

Alpine Challenge 2013 Launch

Snow Camp's Alpine Challenge 2013 has now launched and once again will be held in Morzine.

Yodel magazine in Morzine took us through what its all about-;

If you haven't heard of Snow Camp yet, it's an amazing charity that supports young people from the inner-city through a combination of skiing, snowboarding and life-skills programmes.
The Alpine Challenge helps to raise money for the Snow Camp charity with a two-day snowsports endurance challenge.

Previously known as The Everest Challenge, the event is now in its fourth year and going from strength to strength. Twenty-five teams of four riders must complete 150km of the Portes du Soleil during the two day event. The night between the 2 days must be spent completing a 10km hike. Whichever team clocks up the most miles, visits the most checkpoints and completes the overnight hike will win.
You can either enter a team of four into the competition or if there are less of you, Snow Camp will put you in touch with people who you could join to form a team.

For more information on the charity, The Alpine Challenge and how you can get involved, visit the Snow Camp website.