Steamboat Springs – Every Tuesday night in the winter, they gather from afar, donning the longest skis ever made and skin-tight suits. For two hours, they rule the jumps of historic Howelsen Hill, hurtling through darkness and soaring awkwardly into the lights.
“Lock it up!” screams Steamboat local Pat Arnone as he watches “the new kid” – Greg Henion, 50 – hit nearly 50 mph off Howelsen’s K-90 jump.
Henion heeds the advice. A split-second after leaving the jump, his chin leads his chest, his legs stiffen and his arms want to spread like wings, but he pulls them to his sides and his backside juts slightly outward – an ungainly position he holds until skis touch down a little past halfway down the icy landing ramp. Henion can’t get back to the top fast enough.
“It’s a hilarious, good time,” he says.
With each grunting leap these bold gelande jumpers uphold a fading tradition in the ski world. While their free-heeled nordic brethren soar in the Olympic spotlight, gelande (pronounced ga-lun-day) jumpers fly in the dark. Literally. The Howelsen jumpers have stretched an extension cord across the snow and clamped a 60-watt bulb to the edge of the fabled hill’s biggest jump so they could at least see the final 10 feet of track before they spring, at 60 mph, into the lighted but unseen landing.
“That was so awesome,” says Arnone, Steamboat’s uncrowned godfather of gelande. “You couldn’t really see anything until you were in the air.”
Gelandesprung was created by Alf Engen, a Norwegian powder skiing master who hosted the first alpine ski jumping contest at Alta ski area in 1964. Today, there are about 20 professional gelande jumpers in the U.S. – yes, they have day jobs – who compete in three annual contests at Howelsen, Montana’s Snowbowl and next month’s championship at Snowbird in Utah. Gelande jumpers are judged on form and distance, much like their nordic cohorts, who trace the roots of their sport back 145 years.
Gelande’s world-record distance, set by Montana’s Rolf Wilson two years ago at Steamboat’s Winter Carnival gelande competition, is 110 meters, or 366 feet. That day in 2005, 12 of 16 gelande jumpers soared more than 300 feet. It was a milestone in gelande – a day when the snow was slick and the jumpers hovered like flying squirrels.
Using alpine equipment limits the potential flight time of gelande jumpers. Nordic jumpers can fly twice as far down a hill. But the time and effort required to perfect a safe nordic jump with half a binding leads some ski-shod flyers to the gelande camp.
“It’s a bit easier in alpine gear. The consequences, at least, are much less dire,” says Bruce Stott, a 15-year gelande jumper from Frisco whose fear of dire consequences apparently does not include racing over jumps at 40 mph behind a galloping horse. Two weekends ago Stott was crowned the country’s champion skijoring racer after a first-place finish down Main Street in Red Lodge, Mont.
“It’s still crazy technical,” says Stott, who drives four hours round trip from his home in Frisco every Tuesday for a couple of hours of jumping. “It all depends on what you do in the last hundredth of a second.”
Lots of hang time
Henion, known among the Howelsen gelandesprungers as “the new kid,” has spent two Tuesday nights, about four hours, gelande jumping. He tried it nordic style with telemark skis a few times, but feels more stable on alpine equipment. After only two nights, he was jumping at full speed off the almost-biggest jump at Howelsen. Henion says there were a couple of hurdles to overcome before he moved over to the bigger jumps, where his speed nears 50 mph and his flight time reaches three or more seconds.
“The big one for me was the speed on the in-run and the fact that once you are in there, you are in for the duration,” he says. “There’s no turning back once you start moving. It’s a high level of commitment in there. My buddy’s sister thinks he’s going through a midlife crisis because he’s out here jumping.”
New faces lacking
With ages nearing the half-century mark, it’s a natural question for the wizened jumpers: Don’t you know better than to hurl your body at highway speeds 300-plus feet down icy ramps?
“Ever since I had my kid, I hear that all the time,” says 37-year-old Brent Wilson from Eagle, whose violent tumble last Tuesday marked not just his first fall since 2001, but his chest and stomach with glowing red welts.
“Jumping is a lot safer than skiing in my book,” says Arnone, also a father.
Wilson’s fall, which seemed inevitable as his body slowly began to rotate around his V-formed skis during one of his longer flights, appeared catastrophic. The real danger, he says after surveying his broken boot and nearly broken body, was hurting his skis.
“It’s getting harder and harder to find these skis,” he says of his not-made-anymore skinny and super stiff 223 cm Volkls with race bindings dialed to a 21 DIN.
The lack of younger participants and new blood in gelande worries the Steamboat crew. For about the past eight years, the number of pro jumpers has remained at about 20. At every contest, amateurs are invited to participate in open contests and the Steamboat showdown last month lured seven newcomers. That’s not enough to anchor a new generation of gelande jumpers.
Gelande’s relative obscurity is a reversal of the traditional competitive skiing paradigm that elevates the fixed-heel athletes and relegates the telemarkers to the shadows. And in the new school of skiing and snowboarding, gelande doesn’t seem to be holding its own against the acrobatic lure of terrain parks and similar send-you-airborne terrain.
“There are a lot more disciplines today competing for the same number of skiers. The traditional stuff, the kids today look at it and say: ‘That’s too easy. I want to go do a double back McFlip twist or whatever,”‘ Wilson says. “It’s hard to believe this sport can’t grab more participants. There’s really nothing like it out there.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
