Taos Ski Valley, N.M. – Sometimes Gary Fondl wonders if it’s time to hang up his enormous powder boards and retire from the always perilous and often bloody game of competitive freeskiing. After all, he did turn 40 in October.
Then, with judges scrutinizing his every move, he cat-like stomps a 70-foot cliff and posts the second-best qualifying run at an international competition, just as he did Friday at the Salomon New Mexico Extreme Freeriding Championships at Taos.
“A day like today makes you wonder if I’m closer to arriving than departing,” the drywall business owner and father of two from Frisco said. “After my run today a judge asked me how I still do it and I said ‘Geritol, man.’ I guess it’s just the Colorado lifestyle.”
In most every aspect of competitive downhill skiing, it is a 20-something’s world. There just aren’t that many 40-year-old-plus skiers enjoying their sport’s sometimes fickle spotlight. It’s not necessarily that they don’t have the skills to compete, but maybe they just know better than to keep battling kids and teasing gravity.
But in big mountain skiing, experience matters mightily. Across the West, at freeskiing competitions in which the venue is a near-vertical wall of rocky and timbered snow, strong 40-somethings are showcasing the rare prowess found after 20 to 30 years on skis. While the 30-somethings tend to win the big mountain freeskiing events, compared to the teenagers and young 20-somethings who dominate the pipes and parks, the carving elders of the freeskiing world continue to play an active role in defining their nascent sport.
They are the skiers who grew up turning skinny skis of ridiculously long lengths. They have been hurt, recovered and hurt again. They explore the backcountry, gleaning knowledge and skills rarely found from a chairlift. They have the hard-earned expertise to dance along a fine line of control and chaos, but often choose to stay closer to the control side.
“They just know how to move,” said Jim Jack, an International Free Skiers Association judge of extreme skiing events. “They don’t just stop-plop-and-drop. They know that they have to keep moving.”
The oldest skier in the second annual Taos competition’s finals was 43-year-old Marcia Ready, a Taos local who also was the only telemark skier in the finals. She skied with a grace that was unrivaled in the entire four-day competition, which moved on its last day to Taos’ daunting Kachina Peak.
She held strong against women 20 years her junior, finishing fourth.
“I’m more psyched to see some of these younger girls just ripping. It’s time for a change in women’s skiing and this is their time,” said Ready, who dismisses her age as “just a number.” “I’d like to think I could be a role model for some of them. I’ll tell you this, they school me in the air, but on the carving – the turning – I bet I could teach them some things.”
Years of competing have given the 40-plus athletes an edge over the up-and-comers because they know well what judges are looking for: fluid, fast and flawless skiing. But that experience is not always enough to counter a young buck putting everything on the line in pursuit of skiing’s brightest lights.
“Sometimes I think the new kids just try too hard. I just go out there and ski. If I blow something, it doesn’t matter. I’m off to the next turn,” said Fondl, who set an endurance record at Arapahoe Basin after he skied 69 runs on the Palivacinni Lift in 10 hours last spring. “In your 20s you get hurt. In your 30s you get smart and calculated. Then you ride that into your 40s.”
Of the top 19 men at Taos, eight hailed from Arapahoe Basin, where Fondl is a founding father of the freeride team and an inspiration to a strong team of up-and-coming rippers. Two A-Basin skiers – Ryan Banker and George Casaletta – finished in the top five.
“Gary is instrumental in not just teaching us how to do it, but how to do it right,” A-Basin skier Darrell Haggard said.
“You learn from people who are still passionate and really, really good at what they do,” said Teague Holmes, a 30-year-old skier who calls A-Basin his home hill. “Some people are just in tune with what they do.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
