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Outside Magazine October 2001

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That's Entertainment cont'd.

By Mark Jenkins

THE COLUMBIA RIVER Gorge is as gorgeous as a fjord, with massive black basalt walls rising on either side of a mile-wide, sea-like, deep-blue river. Less than an hour south is the white-crusted cone of Mount Hood; its big brother, Mount Rainier, rises two hours north.

Hood River is like Maui and Crested Butte and Burlington all in one. For obvious reasons—where else on earth can you windsurf, sail, kayak, climb, bike, hike, or ski right out your back door?—a young, hip, outdoor-obsessed community is rapidly displacing the loggers, miners, and rednecks. (Never mind the monstrous lumber trucks still hauling loads of old-growth down Route 14.)

This year there were about 50,000 spectators and more than 1,500 participants at the Gorge Games, held in mid-July. Half of those participants weren't competitors, but outdoor enthusiasts taking clinics in which world-class outdoor athletes taught ordinary people how to bunny-hop their mountain bikes or duck-jibe their sailboardsor cartwheel their kayaks.

TO WATCH THE adventure race—an 81-mile course that includes mountaineering, hiking, biking, rappelling, kayaking, and navigating, practically an outdoor decathlon—I station myself below the Tyrolean traverse, next to the NBC cameras. Waiting for the first two-man/one-woman team to come sliding down the ropes, I interview Arlene Burns, 41, an NBC commentator for the Gorge Games. Arlene's an original hardwoman bombshell (and was Meryl Streep's instructor and stunt double in The River Wild). "I bought my first kayak for $30 when I was 16. The nose was busted off, so I fiberglassed a Clorox bottle over it.

"In college, I kayaked evenings, weekends, all summer. I used to get so many fiberglass slivers in my arms it looked like I had some kind of whitewater disease. "At 21 I had a degree in geology and an offer to work in the oil industry, but then they said I'd only have one week off the first year. I couldn't imagine anything I needed money for that bad—to work a whole year to get a week off. So I bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand. I had 600 bucks in my pocket. I worked as a river guide in New Zealand, Nepal, Siberia, Thailand, Tibet. I was gone 13 years."

When the adventure racers still haven't arrived, I go back to work on my attempt to classify the various species of athletes who have built this odd world of outdoor sports unfolding in the carnivalesque spectacle of the Gorge Games.

THE PIONEERS: Rock climbers in Yosemite in the sixties. Hang gliders in Crested Butte in the seventies. Windsurfers in Maui in the eighties. Arlene Burns. They were visionaries driven by passion. They were inspired by exploration and took great risks. Their equipment was so primitive they were obliged to design and build their own. There was no money, no audience, no acclaim beyond a raucous toast from the tribe around the campfire. They defined and codified the rules, the ethics, and the aesthetics of their nascent sports.

THE DISCIPLES: The second wave, the refiners. Rock climbers in Colorado in the seventies. Mountain bikers in California in the eighties. Windsurfers in Hood River in the nineties. They too are driven by passion, but they may have regular jobs, even careers. They love the sport, but don't live it. They spread the gospel. Some become guides, instructors, writers, photographers. Fame is free gear. They interpret the rules, the ethics, the aesthetics.

THE HERETICS: The apostates, the neo-pioneers. The first sport climbers, the first downhill mountain bikers, the first extreme kayakers. (Thesis-antithesis; see The Lifestylers, below, for synthesis.) They are highly talented specialists who abandon preconceived notions of the sport and blow open old boundaries. They are sarcastic and disrespectful and exactly what their sport needs. There is money, for a few rubbernecking crowds are starting to gather and gawk. Fame is a foul mouth. They rewrite the rules, the ethics, the aesthetics.

THE LIFESTYLERS: The followers. Anybody who lived in his VW van just to do his sport (plus alcohol, sex, drugs, and rock and roll). Anybody who made real money (doctors, lawyers, software engineers) and moved to Steamboat to ski or Jackson to climb or Hood River to board and drives an Audi. Anybody who made no money but moved anyway. They usually start out as single-sport participants but eventually cross-pollinate to become multisport aficionados.

THE PROFESSIONALS: Paid athletes. They are often the sons or daughters of the lifestylers. They embrace the sport when they are very young. They excel almost instantly. They get interviewed, photographed, filmed, sponsored. They understand media. They are telegenic. They are practical, clear-thinking. They have agents and contracts.

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