Tag Archive for 'California'

I had the great pleasure of going to Tahoe yesterday as part of the Alpenglow Sports slideshow series.  It was a blast.  I always forget how many people I know there and it’s like having a party with 100 of your best friends and meeting fifty new ones.

One of the highlights of the evening for me was meeting Rick Sylvester, who I had known of since I was a little kid as the guy who skied off of the 3,000′ face of El Cap and later skied off the even bigger face of Mt. Asguard for a stunt in the James Bond movie, “The Spy Who Loved Me.”  Rick’s jumps predated BASE jumping by years/decades and he said “We just called it Ski Parachuting.”  At the time, they were using circular, non-steerable parachutes, which definitely added some spice to the sport.

 Here’s the James Bond trailer of Rick’s stunt work…

 
Although I knew that a lot of legendary climbers and skiers came from California, until talking to Rick, it never occurred to me that many of them were not only from the Tahoe area, but of the same generation. 

Holy horsepower. I wonder if the people at this table knew that they were going to shape the future of American climbing, skiing and adventure for decades to come? From the Fermin bar in Truckee, CA sometime in the 1970′s (photo credit unknown (Craig Calonica?) – sorry).  Kim Schmitz (2nd, left), Jim Bridwell (3rd, left w/beer), Galen Rowell (back right corner), Steve McKinney (flannel shirt, front/right). In subsequent years, skiers such as Scot Schmidt, Glen Plake, Tom Day and many others have come out of the Tahoe area as well.

I would easily slice my spleen out with a rusty sardine-can lid to have been at that table, yet at the same time, I recently was, as the photo below illustrates: