Photo by MARC LESTER / Daily News archive 2005
A skier launches off a 60-foot tabletop jump at the Borderline Summer Camp for skiers and snowboarders at Alyeska Resort. Where skiing and snowboarding were once about speed, they are now about air.
Love affair with air
Ski-jumping's the sport of choice as Alaska adrenaline junkies hit the slopes for a natural high
Published: January 29, 2006
Last Modified: January 29, 2006 at 07:22 AM
Pipe or park, snowboard or skis, free-skiing or free-riding, it's all about catching air on the slopes these days.
"It's a lot of fun, because you get a little rush,'' said Anchorage snowboarder Sarah Taylor. "I'm really into powder and air,'' she added, though she confesses her enthusiasm for the latter has waned as she's aged.
"I'm 28 years old,'' Taylor said. "I've already had one knee replacement. I don't need another knee replacement.
"I just take calculated risks now. I'm more conservative. I'm just not going to throw myself off something if I can't see what the landing looks like.''
This wasn't always the case. Young brains are hard-wired for thrills, and on the slopes it shows.
"I'd just huck myself off everything,'' Taylor said. "I had some blowups, and everyone would cheer because they thought it was cool a girl would do it.''
("Hucking,'' for all old fogeys, means throwing yourself off a jump and into space, whether on a snowboard, skis or a mountain bike.)
Among the younger crowd, the urge to huck seems to be almost overwhelming these days. It's hard to find an Anchorage hill where kids haven't shoveled snow into a ramp, commonly called a "kicker,'' for launching snowboards or skis.
On the Anchorage Hillside, Will Murphy built one such launch ramp atop the 5-foot retaining wall at the base of a slope in his yard so he and his friends could try to fly over the driveway.
Just down the street, friend Ben Sorenson and his posse built another kicker in the middle of the steep driveway of an undeveloped lot so they could chase air right out the back door of Sorenson's house.
"It's a lot of fun,'' the youngster said of hiking his snowboard up the hill, buckling in, shooting down the snow-covered drive and temporarily taking flight.
Where once skiing and snowboarding were about speed, they are now about air: fat air, thin air, little air and big air -- or "hospital air,'' as some ski patrollers call the latter.
"As catching air lures more and more ambitious young skiers and riders, terrain parks seem to have evolved into 'trauma parks,' '' the American Association of Snowboard Instructors has warned. "A recent study commissioned by the National Ski Areas Association revealed that the snowboard injury rate has doubled the past 10 years, indicating there may be some merit to that moniker.''
"The highest injury rate,'' according to a report from The American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, "is among 11-to-13-year-olds. Their ability is intermediate, but their judgment is not as good as adults.' Injuries to teenagers (13-20) are slightly less frequent but more severe. Many have the skill levels of adults with immature judgments.''
All of which might only serve to heighten the urge to fly.
Even the cross-country crowd is getting into the act now.
Ski maker Fischer late last year unveiled what it calls the Jibskate, a twin-tip skate ski for catching air and making moves.
"This isn't your grandfather's version of nordic skiing,'' chimes the cliche on the Web site www.jibskate.com, which heralds the ski's capability for doing such aerial tricks as:
• Spins: 180, 360, 540, 720, D Spin
• Flips: Back flip, front flip, Under flip
• Rodeo
• Lincoln, Lincoln Loop 180
• Cork 5
• Switch: Take-off, Landing (Jibskates are Twin Tips!)
• Half Cab Mute Grab
• Alley Oop
• Rail tricks
So what's the attraction here, other than the chance to learn a whole new vocabulary? (Cork 5: n., a 540-degree spin with your body at an angle diagonal to the slope. The skier or snowboarder making this maneuver is thought to resemble a spinning cork.)
URGE TO FLY
"It's the adrenaline,'' said 20-year-old snowboarder Alison Ford, who has been riding since she was 12. "It gives you a moment to breathe, a couple seconds of uncertainty.''
Adrenaline is a naturally produced mind-altering drug similar in chemical composition to amphetamines. And many mammals, humans included, have a soft spot for mind-altering drugs.
But maybe there's even more to the desire for air.
Before men even dreamed of flying, humans were creating gods who flew -- Eros, Nike, Mercury and Apollo, who was said to ride across the sky in a golden chariot drawn by white horses. By the 16th century, Leonardo DaVinci was making drawings of helicopters. For centuries, all sorts of contraptions were built in futile attempts at flight.
The Wright brothers finally got humans into the air at Kitty Hawk in 1903, but that wasn't an end to the quest for flight -- just the beginning. The governments of the U.S. and the former Soviet Union would subsequently spend billions to put humans in flight beyond the gravity of Earth. Wealthy entrepreneur Paul Allen and aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan are now spending millions more trying to bring this space flight within the reach of the average man.
And closer to earth, there has be a continual evolution in the quest for individual flight -- ultralight airplanes, hang gliders, parasails, base jumpers, and, yes, even snowboarders and skiers.
It would seem the urge to sail through the air is deeply embedded in the human psyche.
"There's sort of a feeling of release,'' Ford said. "I guess it's just kind of a feeling of, I don't know, how do you define simplicity?''
Those who get a lot of air describe a sense of freedom and peace in the air and a shot of ecstasy at pulling off a successful landing. There's nothing quite like putting yourself in a little danger, Taylor said, and then coming through safely.
"It's a great feeling,'' the longtime snowboarder said.
Wherever the urge to fly comes from, ski areas years ago recognized it was there. The Alyeska Resort in Girdwood fashioned its pipe specifically for riders and skiers who want to shoot up the walls into the air, but youngsters on skis and boards can be found improvising places to catch air almost anywhere on the mountain.
EVOLVING FROM A SIMPLE STUNT
Skiers were, of course, the first to fly. The first ski jumping contest was held in Trysil, Norway, in 1862. But ski jumping never gained a big following, in part because it required the construction of a large ramp to launch skiers.
Not long after downhill ski racing debuted in the early 1920s, skiers were going so fast they began to take flight naturally coming over hills and off drops, but the object quickly became to minimize flight because it slowed a racer's speed.
The latest air craze might well be credited to or blamed on -- depending on your point of view -- ski great Stein Eriksen. A gold medalist in the giant slalom and a silver medalist in the slalom at the 1952 Oslo Games, the Norwegian became the first big, international ski celebrity.
He was phenomenally stylish going downhill on skis. But that wasn't all he could do. The son of an Olympic gymnast (Eriksen's father competed in the 1912 Olympic games), the Norwegian in the late 1960s completed what is believed to have been the first single flip after skiing off a small bump of snow.
What today seems like a simple stunt spawned a radical change in snow sports. Soon there were lots of skiers doing flips and spins -- or trying to do them. By the early 1980s, the International Ski Federation had recognized freestyle aerial skiing as its own discipline.
Then along came snowboarding, with a pipe and park culture stolen from the skateboard crowd, and the rest is history: X-games (as in X-treme), "Big Air'' competitions, free-riders trying to one-up each other with ever-more-radical descents down mountainsides.
Tune into NBC anywhere in American today and you'll find aerial skiing and aerial snowboarding among the most heavily promoted sports around as the network heads for the 2006 Turin Games.
It is, it would seem, all about air.
Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com or 257-4588.
