Around the Mountains: Jackson woman skis down Everest

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BY ALLEN BEST
special to the daily
November 5, 2006

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JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. - Kit DesLauriers of Jackson Hole has become the first woman to ski off the summit of Mount Everest. In doing so, she also became the first person to ski from the summit of the highest peak of all seven continents.

The only footnote to this superlative regards Australia. Some mountaineers consider Carstensz Pyramid, located in Indonesia, to be the highest peak on the Australian continent, and there was no immediate proof that she had skied that.

The second potential footnote is that she did not ski 2,500 of the 8,500 feet of the normally skiable portion of Everest because of avalanche and other dangerous conditions.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide, relaying a National Public Radio report, tells of a harrowing if successful trip. The cold was so intense in climbing near the summit that DesLauriers was forced to wear goggles in the dark, to prevent her eyeballs from freezing.

After skiing off the summit, DesLauriers and her husband, Rob, and another Jackson Hole climber, Jimmy Chi, were forced to belay down the Hillary Step. Soon after, their oxygen gave out. There was more danger yet on the Lhotse Face, where blue ice is found at an angle of 45 degrees.

"I'm scared, and I don't want to die," Kit said when she skied up to her husband. "Good, then make a plan and let's keep going," Rob replied.

One concluding thought from DesLauriers during her NPR interview: "I definitely feel like my whole idea is to challenge our own perceptions of what we find our limitations to be, because those are really mostly mental."



Tiff reported in eden of Yellowstone Club

BIG SKY, Mont. - There's trouble, or at least a lawsuit, in the paradise known as the Yellowstone Club. There, former Tour de France champion Greg LeMond is claiming that the developer of the private ski resort has cheated him out of millions of dollars. LeMond, 45, was an early investor in two limited liability companies that control the Yellowstone Club.

The mastermind behind the Yellowstone Club, rags-to-riches timber baron Tim Blixseth, 56, claims that LeMond is trying to profit from Blixseth's hard work. "He's an aging athlete whose income-producing ability has been usurped by Lance Armstrong," Blixseth told Bloomberg.



Truckee enacts ban on new real estate offices

TRUCKEE, Calif. - The proliferation of real estate and other offices continues to be a concern in mountain towns of the West. Truckee, on the crest of the Sierra Nevada, is the latest to take action with an emergency ordinance which bans any new businesses except retail, restaurants and bars from ground-floor units in a district called Commercial Row.

Elsewhere in the resort West, similar regulations earlier this year were enacted - and then suspended - by Crested Butte. Telluride this week was scheduled to discuss such zoning. And Nevada City, Calif., a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, recently adopted similar regulations for its historic downtown area. In Nevada City, however, the new law allows offices to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.