Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Tragedy in the mountains.
Ski-Base jumping skier Shane McConkey dies in freak mountainside accident while filming stunt
Murray/AP Extreme skier Shane McConkey in a rare moment of rest in Milford Sound, New Zealand.
Influential and daring skier Shane McConkey died Thursday after falling from a 2,000-foot cliff while performing for cameras in northern Italy. He was 39.
McConkey was unable to deploy his parachute during a 12-second freefall from the Saspardoi cliff in the Dolomite Mountains, according to a news release from Colorado-based ski-film company Matchstick Productions.
An innovator of ski-BASE jumping – in which athletes ski off massive cliffs with a parachute in their hand – McConkey starred in dozens of ski films, as well as the 2007 mainstream release "Steep," a documentary about the history of daredevil skiing.
The grisly accident occurred while McConkey was performing on a trip sponsored in part by Red Bull energy drinks, the company whose logo was often emblazoned on McConkey’s parachute.
A former ski racer who hailed from a prominent skiing family in California, McConkey’s exploits in exotic mountain ranges and his innovations in ski technology are credited with for skiing’s resurgence in the late 1990s, after snowboarding had made the sport look moribund.
"You could almost go so far to say he was the Michael Jordan of skiing," said Scott Gaffney, a filmmaker who worked with McConkey for the past 15 years. "He has left a lasting impression, and he was still going. He still put in an incredible year last year."
McConkey was also a risk-taker who clearly relished the sport’s rebellious roots and often cracked jokes about the dangerous situations he put himself in.
A witness to the fatal accident was J.T. Holmes, a ski-BASE jumper who often collaborated with McConkey – including in a 2007 jump off the Eiger, one of Switzerland’s iconic peaks.
Holmes, who had reportedly just jumped the same cliff, described the accident to the author of a news release distributed Friday by Matchstick Productions.
"McConkey performed a double backflip from the cliff and planned to release his skis and then fly in his wingsuit, a stunt he's executed a number of times," said the announcement.
"But when both skis failed to release upon tugging on straps leashed to his legs, McConkey went into an upside down position as he manually attempted to release his bindings."
According to the announcement, McConkey ultimately succeeded in detaching his skis but didn’t have time to adequately slow his descent with his parachute.
McConkey is one of the only big-mountain skiers (the term "extreme skiing" is outdated) to have an entire ski film dedicated to him alone. The 2001 film, directed by Gaffney, is called "There’s Something About McConkey."
In his films and in ski magazine he occasionally inhabited the role of "Saucerboy," a clownish persona that seemed to make fun of uncool skiers. He also recreated a famous James Bond skiing scene.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Monday, March 02, 2009
Sometimes you feel lucky.......
Feted as hot new resort, ID's Tamarack goes bust
BOISE, Idaho -- Tamarack Resort in central Idaho billed itself as the first new destination ski resort in a quarter century when its first customers climbed aboard lifts in December 2004. Four years later, the resort operation, including lodging, is shutting down Wednesday, leaving owners of resort real estate once worth millions fearing the worst. Factors dooming Tamarack, at least for now, include a spending spree by French owner Jean-Pierre Boespflug that drained a $250 million construction loan, tight credit markets, collapsing resort real estate demand, foreclosure litigation and $20 million in unpaid construction bills.
Financiers at Credit Suisse Group are pulling the plug after a $2.8 million operating loss since Oct. 20 - "greater than the receiver (or anyone else) anticipated," according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press. Mom-and-pop ski areas come and go, the victims of fickle weather and fickle finances. Where there were once more than 800 such U.S. resorts, there are now about 475. Still, to find a failed Western resort approaching Tamarack's size and aspirations, Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, can recall only the 1974 demise of Stagecoach Ski Area, about 20 minutes from Colorado's Steamboat Springs.
Tamarack, on the shores of Lake Cascade reservoir, has seven lifts. Of 2,100 planned chalets, condos and town homes, only 250 are completed, near a Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed golf course.
Another 174 residences sit half done, a mountain lodge is similarly incomplete and the centerpiece Village Plaza required emergency measures late last year to protect it from winter's destructive forces. Tennis stars Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf bolted from a luxury hotel project, and Bank of America threatened to remove ski lifts after Tamarack missed payments. Credit Suisse and lenders it represents are now owed more than $275 million on the construction loan. They've committed to chipping in $1.7 million, on top of a previous bridge loan of $10 million in November, but the money is well shy of the cash needed to finish the ski season, let alone open up the golf course, Wilson said.Meanwhile, George Bacon, Idaho Department of Lands director, said he has received Tamarack's $250,000 annual lease payment for the 2,100 acres of state land where the ski area is located. The next installment isn't due until January 2010. "The real telling point will be next year, to see if the lease is going to continue," Bacon said. "If the lease were to end, the state could look and see if there was someone else wanting to take over what remained."
