Mike and Steve Marolt have decided the best way to prepare for skiing Mount Everest is by trying a little warm-up schuss on Cho Oyu, a neighboring 8,000-meter peak on the Nepal-Tibet border.
The Aspen twins and boyhood friend Jim Gile left last week for their latest ski mountaineering expedition. Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth-highest peak topping out at 26,906 feet, is about 20 kilometers west of Everest.
“The first goal is just to get another 8,000-meter ski under our belt,” said Mike Marolt, who skied Shishipangma with his twin and Gile in 2000 and reached 25,000 feet with skis on Everest in 2003. “Then, if all goes well, get acclimated on that, and Everest base camp is only a 45-minute-to-an-hour drive. Go over there, we’ll be acclimated and do the best we can with it.”
The Marolts learned four years ago that approaching Everest from the north is not the best way to acclimatize.
“Plus, Cho Oyu is a better ski, and we’re skiers,” Mike Marolt said.
SKIING: Fundraiser set for young ski racers
A fundraising giant slalom for Home Team Rocky Mountain goes off Saturday at Arapahoe Basin.
Home Team Rocky Mountain is a fund established to help the top 50 young athletes in the Rocky Mountain Division of the USSA with the cost of training and traveling. It includes alpine, nordic and freestyle disciplines. Entry fees are $45 for adults, $25 for children.
For info, call 1-800-839- 9976.
KAYAKING: Steep creek race: One wild, crazy ride
For five years, the world’s bravest kayakers have endured dangerously feeble flows on Homestake Creek for the Teva Mountain Games’ annual steep creek race. The race is short and brutish, plummeting 120 vertical feet in less than a quarter-mile. Its bony drops were made even sketchier by the minimal flows that sometimes dipped to a trickling 25 cubic feet per second. This year, the annual festival of mountain play has cajoled Vail Resorts to release water from its allotment upstream in Homestake Reservoir. The 50 acre-feet Vail is providing equates to about 100 cfs, which promises to elevate the showdown at the Dagger Steep Creek Championships to new heights May 31.
TEVA GAMES: Landis to race in Mountain Challenge
While it’s doubtful he will be paddling the surge on Homestake, Tour de France winner Floyd Landis will compete in the Teva Mountain Games, marking yet another high mark for the event. Landis will join two other famous athletes on Team Athletes for a Cure competing in the Games’ Mountain Challenge, a two-day competition featuring a downriver kayak race, a road-cycling race up Vail Pass, a trail-running race and a mountain-biking race. The team will raise money for prostate cancer research. Landis, who underwent major hip surgery only eight months ago, will compete in the Teva Games’ road-bike hill climb up Vail Pass and the mountain-bike cross country championships, joining kayaker Tao Berman and runner Simon Gutierrez on the Athletes for a Cure team.
ULTRA RUNNING: Van Deren fourth in McNaughton race
At the starting line of the inaugural 150-mile McNaughton Park Trail Runs in Illinois – the longest ultra race in the country – Sedalia ultra-racer Diane Van Deren was in tears. She had just spoken with her son as he loaded a plane to go fight in Iraq. Through her tears, she promised she would win for him.
She did. Running for almost 47 straight hours last weekend, Van Deren, 47, endured pouring rain, snow and 8-inch deep mud to finish as the top – and only – woman in the race. Of the 48 racers in the 150-mile endurance race, only eight finished. Van Deren placed fourth overall. Last month Van Deren was deterred for a second time on the Iditarod Invitational, a grueling race across hundreds of miles of frozen terrain in Alaska.
“Between the disappointment of the Iditarod and my son being deployed to Iraq and my grandmother dying last week, it was a very overwhelming and emotional week. I took all those emotions on the trail and once the gun went off, I knew my job was to win and I just focused everything on that,” she said.
Mackey’s victory diamond- worthy: Boulder adventure racer and running guru Dave Mackey has a new rock. The 37-year-old earned the one-carat diamond, valued at $11,500, from the renowned Ekati Diamond Mine after winning the inaugural Rock and Ice Ultra race across the frozen wilds of Canada’s Northwest Territories.
Enduring temperatures nearing 30 below zero, Mackey finished the six-day, six-stage, 186-mile, self-supported race ahead of five other finishers.
CYCLING: Powers gears up for racing in Europe
Boulder cyclist Alison Powers, 27, is joining the U.S. national cycling team for spring racing in Europe. The former U.S. Ski Team racer, who took up competitive cycling in 2005 and made her professional debut this season, is one of six women selected for the elite U.S. cycling squad. Powers will compete in the next two races in the UCI Women’s Road World Cup as well as two races in the Netherlands.
