The Colorado Mountain Club will launch its annual member photography exhibit, a tradition dating to 1918, on Wednesday at the American Mountaineering Center in Golden. An opening-night reception on Wednesday from 6-7:30 p.m. will include a screening of the film “Light of the Himalaya.”
The award-winning film follows a 2005 international expedition of alpinists and American and Nepalese eye surgeons with the Himalayan Cataract Project. The doctors performed sight-restoring surgeries in remote Himalayan villages with the highest rate of cataract blindness on the planet before climbing to the summit of the 21,128-foot Himalayan peak, Cholatse.
The screening at the American Mountaineering Center will include several athletes from the “Sight to Summit” expedition. Tickets are available through www.cmc.org or by calling 303-279-3080. The 100-photo Colorado Mountain Club exhibit will run through Saturday, Dec. 9.
SNOWBOARDING: Bleiler, Lago are golden
Aspen snowboard queen Gretchen Bleiler joined X Games medalist Scotty Lago for two Thanksgiving Day victories in Switzerland to start the World Cup halfpipe season.
Lago stomped a frontside air, backside 540, frontside 1080, cab 720, frontside 900 and backside air on his first run in the first World Cup contest of the season at Saas Fee, Switzerland, for a gold medal.
Bleiler followed with a first-run frontside air, backside 540, frontside 540, backside air and frontside 720 to start her season with gold.
Last year Bleiler won four of the five Grand Prix Olympic qualifying events en route to a silver medal in Italy. She followed her silver with a win at the final World Cup of the season at Lake Placid and then won the U.S. Open a week later.
Breckenridge’s Steve Fisher, the 2004 X Games champion, finished sixth among the international field of men, and Tommy Czeschin of Mammoth Lakes, Calif., finished ninth, fueling a momentous start to the halfpipe season for the men’s U.S. snowboard team. A second World Cup halfpipe contest scheduled for Saturday was canceled because of weather.
Bleiler will host the first Snow Angels Invitational on March 22-25 at Snowmass. The invitational is expected to draw the best female rippers, including Hannah Teter, Kelly Clark, Tricia Byrnes and Soko Yamaoka. Those women will live together, and a potential TV reality show is in the works.
SNOWBOARDING: Reiter carves way to second
Steamboat Springs boarder Justin Reiter continued his heralded carving streak last week at Copper Mountain with a second-place finish in the parallel slalom on Tuesday’s final day of the U.S. snowboarding race to the Cup competition. Reiter was tracking toward gold through the finals before crashing on his last two runs, which allowed Sweden’s Daniel Biveson to take the gold.
Reiter took fifth the day before in the parallel giant slalom. His Copper Mountain finishes mark the fourth time in four races that Reiter finished in the top 16 this season. Fellow Steamboat Springs carver Erica Mueller finished sixth in Tuesday’s parallel slalom, making her the top American woman.
The American riders return to competition Sunday with a World Cup parallel giant slalom in Italy.
(COMPILED BY STAFF WRITER JASON BLEVINS)
