Author: Susan (Page 10 of 15)

While sweating through the August heat, choking on forest fire smoke and anticipating the first snowfall, I’ve been reporting on off-season activities like summer skiing, base jumping, golf and jeeping. Here’s a post by Rob McCormick about a modest off-road vehicle that bit off more than it could chew and discovered a local backcountry gem in the process.

Last weekend I decided to try a new off-road trail in my 1971 Land Cruiser.  I noticed an intriguing route on the map that starts just west of Cisco Grove at an OHV (off highway vehicle) staging area called Indian Springs.  The route is called the Fordyce Creek Jeep trail and travels northeast into the central part of Jackson Meadows.   The route looked especially enticing because it goes into the spectacular terrain that most people notice to the north of I-80 just after Emigrant Gap when traveling eastbound toward Truckee. Read more >>

Just finishing up our annual base jumping trip to Norway. Once again it was mind blowing. Traveling with base jumper friends JT Holmes and Cliff Ryder (yes that is his real name) and our Norwegian buddy Tom Erik Heimen. Norway is stunningly beautiful. I highly recommend a visit there sometime. We made 18 base jumps in 16 days and hiked up a total of around 16,000 meters. We only didn’t hike 2 days and that was due to needing to drive to the next town. Tons of fun charging up mountains with Norwegian base jumpers. They are all in very good shape. It is common to see old men and women 1,000 meters up in the mountains in places you would NEVER see Americans hiking let alone old ones. The Norwegians were always joking about the typical fat, lazy American. They decided that because their country is so rich they are going to take over The U.S. by buying McDonalds and then giving away free hamburgers all day every day and then watch us eat ourselves to death.

We did some very cool flights in Voss and in Stryn. One really great canyon flight and then ended the trip in the Romsdalen area where base jumping has some deep roots and a lot of history. Here we entered the World Base Race which is basically a wing suit speed flying competition to see who is the fastest flying human in the world. Very very cool and exciting competition. It is head to head, duel format heats. First guy across the vertical finish line wins and moves on to the next round. Amazingly I placed 2nd and won 1,000 Euros! So for 1 year I can claim to be the 2nd fastest flying human in the world!

JT and Cliff also entered and flew very well but everyone who weren’t flying Vampire suits didn’t stand a chance against them. The Vampire wing suit is incredibly fast. They were jumping the S-Fly Expert suit which is a very easy, fun and great suit for proximity flying. We stayed with some Norwegian friends in Romsdalen who’s kids became our cheering section and fan club. Very cute little girls! When we were in the town of Stryn we were able to rent a very cheap car from a friend of a  friend of a friend. Everyone said that it suited our loud American style.

It was another great trip and an incredible learning experience. Norway will be on the schedule for years to come now!

-Shane McConkey

In September 2005, I traveled to New Zealand and piled into van for two weeks to travel around the country and ski. We skied Treble Cone on the South Island and Whakapapa and Turoa on Mt Ruapehu on the North Island. We also hiked up Temple Basin. Click on the photo below to see pics from the trip: