Outdoor News and Events
State of the Sport
By Hooked Staff
Jan 1, 2006, 07:45

Snow: All Parks, All the Time

A New Trend is Emerging on Higher Ground

A new all-park resort opened this season near Evergreen, Colorado, just 45 minutes from Denver. Built on land that was a small ski resort in the 1970s, Echo Mountain Park (www.echomountainpark.com) will have terrain park features over the entire mountain. Free of stuffy, high-end condos and lodges, the park will focus on lift-served halfpipes, jumps, rails and boxes. Echo Mountain follows on the heels of parks like Boreal’s Jibassic Park in Northern California, which opened last year (www.rideboreal.com). Expect to see more park resorts opening next year.

Whaleback Mountain in New Hampshir (www.whalebackmountain.com) is making a comeback in a new format. New owners are converting the abandoned resort into an action-sports facility that combines skiing with a year-round skateboard park and freestyle training facility (so you can perfect that 720 indoors before you try it on snow). The concept has garnered huge support from Olympic athletes and X Gamers.

More snow trends: Snowshoeing steps out. Snowshoeing is cool again—no joke. The Outdoor Industry Foundation (www.outdoorindustry.org) reported a 250 percent jump in snowshoe outings since 1998. Perhaps fitness-crazed Americans caught on to its weight-loss potential (just one hour of snowshoeing burns upwards of 560 calories). For more information on the sport, check out www.wintertrails.org .

Tele and nordic sales rise. In its Executive Market Summary, Snowsports Industry America (SIA) noted an increase in sales of telemark gear (up about 9 percent in revenue) and nordic equipment (up 37 percent). SIA projected, however, that increased sales could be due to the availability of more innovative gear and not necessarily higher participation.

Web Watch:
www.ski-trac.com
It could be every skier’s dream. Or, his worst nightmare. Ski-Trac is an indoor, never-ending ski run designed to let urbanites carve turns year-round near crowded, snow-free cities in China, Europe and (someday) the US. You might feel like a Gore-Tex-clad hamster as you navigate the rotating, 160-foot-wide, saucer-like ski run. The first one is being built this year near a freeway in Tainjin, China. Cost of admission? Only $20 per hour.

— Gina DeMillo

BY THE NUMBERS: PADDLING

29,000,000
Number of rafting trips taken in 2004, up from 10 million in 1998, as reported by the Outdoor Industry Foundation (www.outdoorindustry.org ).

130%
Percent increase in kayaking participation for Americans aged 16 and older since 1998. A decline in playboating led industry experts to wonder if fewer people were on the water, but recent studies show that’s not necessarily the case. This has been the impetus for companies to shift their focus from building rad playboats to making affordable recreational boats, including sit-on-tops and fishing kayaks.

48%
Percent of whitewater kayakers who are aged 16-24, according to the same study.

CLIMBING: EURO-STYLE

Ogden, Utah, is not what most would call an adventure hub. But this growing town on the eastern edge of the Wasatch Mountains is pioneering a climbing concept in the US that’s long been popular in Europe. Construction has begun in Waterfall Canyon on a series of vie ferrate, routes that are climbed by fixed cables and ladders. Amateur climbers harness up, clip in and presto! They can safely tackle faces they never would have otherwise (the first complete route is 450 feet long and gains 350 feet of elevation). The original vie ferrate (“iron ways” in Italian) were built in the Alps and used by WWII soldiers and are now popular with European climbers.

More rock news:
Last year, the Access Fund awarded 23 grants totaling $100,000 to support climber activism, stewardship, education and land acquisition. For more information on the projects, protected land and area closures, check out www.accessfund.org.

— Julie Dugdale

Fishing:After the Storm

The Hurricanes of 2005 Hit the Gulf Coast Hard. But Experts Say it’s Safe to Fish Again.

Casting a line into a soup of human decay, oil, feces and chemicals is hardly the River Runs Through It experience most anglers crave. Not surprisingly, charter and guide companies in the Gulf have lost tens of thousands of dollars monthly to cancellations. But amid the sensational reports that “toxic soup” conditions now plague the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain and feeder streams, local anglers want to clear the muddy waters and get reels spinning again. “People think the water is polluted and the fish are contaminated,” says Chris Piehler, senior environmental scientist with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. “That’s just not true. If I weren’t working, I’d be out there fishing.” In 400 samples taken from the floodwater pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain, the department found “no levels above anything that would cause concern.” To be safe, the department will continue water testing for three to five years. Stay abreast of advisories at www.deq.state.la.us  and www.wlf.state.la.us.

— kelly davidson

$130,000
Record amount of first-place prize money awarded to a female marathoner. Jelena Prokopcuka, 29, won the ING New York City Marathon on November 6, 2005, simultaneously becoming the first-ever Latvian winner of the race. This prize purse may set a precedent for future races.

80+
Number of hours ultra-marathoner Pam Reed ran last March with no sleep. By doing so she became the first person to run 300 miles straight, breaking the 262-mile record held by fellow runner Dean Karnazes. Rumor has it that Karnazes may soon try for 500 miles.

20%
Increase in the number of people who participate in trail running since 1998, according to the Outdoor Industry Foundation.

The latest from the Two-wheeler Rumor Mill

Fake Out: Lance Armstrong’s threat to un-retire rocked the cycling world in early September 2005, but ultimately the seven-time Tour de France winner opted to stay out of the peloton for good.

New Race: A new American stage race will debut in February 2006. Sponsored by Amgen, the makers of the controversial performance drug EPO, the Tour of California is an eight-stage, more than 700-mile race down California’s coastline. Amgen hopes to use the race as part of an “educational campaign” to show athletes that “the way our medicines are inappropriately used in sport is not only unfair, but unsafe,” says Amgen Scientific Director Dr. Steven Elliott.

The Dirt on Mountain Biking: After a packed calendar in 2005, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) has scaled back its flagship World Cup series from eight events in each discipline (cross-country, downhill, 4X and marathon) to five, not a good sign for a series that’s struggled to find a title sponsor.

BMX in 2008: Berms and doubles will become a feature at the 2008 Beijing Olympics now that BMX has been promoted to full medal status (a controversial decision that knocked out two track cycling events), making it the second Gen-X sport to gain Summer Olympic status, after mountain biking.

— Joe Lindsey