Shaun White is the number 1 boarding miracle of our times. He’s won a medal in every X Games since 2002 and took Olympic gold in 2006 and 2010 in the snowboard halfpipe. His first sponsor arrived at the age of 7 and it’s been non-stop since then. The 2010 Olympics was his crowning glory with tricks never seen before in competition. How did he pull it off? Well…
Shaun White's Halfpipe
One of Mr White’s main sponsors is Red Bull. If you weren’t aware of it, Red Bull’s annual marketing budget is a fairly reasonable $900 million. About a million of this was spent building a secret halfpipe solely for Mr White’s Olympic preparations that was named Red Bull Project X.
The halfpipe was built near Silverton, Colorado – renowned for having some of the world’s best powder. Located at 12,000 ft and built in the backwoods, it was only accessible by helicopter or snowmobile and was kept secret from the outside world.
Project X was built in stages. To begin with, it was ascertained that a 30ft depth of snow was needed to create the pipe. A site was found at the bottom of a valley. Over 2 months countless helicopter trips took place, throwing 25lb explosives into snowbanks higher up the mountain, causing avalanches to pile up raw snow at the intended location.
Several Snowcats with enormous shaped blades were driven into the site. Over the course of 7 days they worked day and night to create the halfpipe.
By the end of the project Shaun White had a facility built to his exact specification. Over 190,000 cubic metres of snow had been moved. It was 550 ft in length. The foam pit at the end of the run alone took 300 hours to build, had over 3.5 tons of steel in it and contained 7200 foam blocks.
The result of all this endeavour? Victory, of course. And the pipe itself? Nature has reclaimed it. The mind, and Red Bull’s carbon footprint, boggles.
Let us assume for a moment that you’ve just come into a vast amount of money, or you’ve been diagnosed with an unpleasant disease and have recently wangled an enormous loan from your neighbourhood gangster that you’ve no intention of paying back, what could that money buy you in terms of experiences?
It seems that you’re alive at the right time. Well done.
With the collapse of communism, economies and the relentless demand for new sensations the possibilities are almost unlimited. Let’s have a look at what’s out there.
1 – Dive the Titanic
The Titanic
If you have £28,000 and 12 days to spare then you can go down and have a look at the remains of the Titanic, going only where scientists, James Cameron and other rich and bored people have been before. Travelling aboard a Russian Academy of Science owned ship, once you’ve covered the 350 or so miles from Newfoundland you descend 2.5 miles down in one of their submersibles. Once down there you can weep over little Leonardo Di Caprio, take some pics or just tick it off your list. Taking souvenirs away is not encouraged.
2 – Drive an F1 car.
Piece of piss?
Ever watched a backmarker in an F1 race and thought you could do better? If you really wanted to find out that could be arranged.
There are no shortage of places offering F1 experience drives. Prices tend to start at around £1000 and rise rapidly. You may find the experience not all that you were hoping for as many of them detune the engines, reduce the number of gears and limit you to a tiny number of laps.
If you want it done right then things will need to be more involved. It’s pretty tough to find a complete top-line F1 car for sale. There are plenty around minus engines and electronics but your chances of finding the remaining parts are zero. Running one would also require a small army of people and computers.
To make life easier we’d recommend buying something already developed to run in the Big Open Single Seaters series. Slightly simplified 90s mid field cars start from £50,000. If you want something proper retro and easier to operate then a nice 70s Cosworth DFV-powered machine will be a lovely buy.
Rent yourself a race circuit. Not many have the noise levels allowing F1 cars, but you’d be looking at £5000 a day for a smaller circuit up to £25,000 plus for the Silverstone GP circuit. Of course if you’re that rich or dying then you may as well take it out for a spin on the public highway.
3 -Fly to Antarctica to have a look around
Buckle up
Almost all Antarctic tourism involves getting there by ship. Unfortunately this means you have to cross the Drake Passage which is renowned as the planet’s roughest patch of ocean.
Since you’re now rich, and thus important, the only option is to fly. Your options are fairly limited. Qantas offer day flights over the continent in conventional airliners. They reduce speed to lessen the pollution and allow more time for cooing out the windows but there is the small annoyance of not actually landing.
For $38,000 Adventure Network , the only people in Antarctica with a private camp, will fly you to various spots in the Antarctic including the South Pole.
If you intend to charter your own plane to get there then be warned that the US Antarctic program does not encourage logistical help for joyriders so if you run out of fuel you may be washing their dishes for a very long time.
4 – Climb the Seven Summits
161 people have climbed the highest mountain on each continent. The first was Richard Bass, a US businessman in 1985. Since then there’s been a bit of dispute over which mountain is in which continent so your task will be 8 summits -
Kilimanjaro in Africa, 19,340 ft. Everest in Asia, 29,029 ft. Mount Elbrus in Europe, 18,510ft. Mount Mckinley in North America, 20,320ft. Aconcagua in South America, 22,841ft. Mount Vinson in Antarctica, 16,050ft. Kosciuszko in Australia, 7,310ft. Carstenz Pyramid in Australia, 16.024ft.
That all sounds like seriously hard work, so we’ll have to get creative. If it really means that much to you to slog your way up from the bottom then try a pressurised version of one of these.
Roughing it
You will require a team of hardy porters. Be nice to them.
If you simply want to step outside onto a summit then our top tip is a Super Blimp
It’ll probably need upgrading to cope with breezes up there but there look like few more relaxing ways to get those peaks in the bag. Check out www.aeroscraft.com for your very own sky yacht.
5 – Fly around the moon.
The Ultimate
For $100 million a seat Space Adventures will fly you and a special friend around the moon. That seems awfully cheap but their mission plan utilises existing Russian technology that has already been there, albeit unoccupied. Within the last couple of weeks Space Adventures announced that their first taker has signed on the dotted line. There’s still time for you to nab the second seat.
It’s nearly winter Olympics time and we can’t wait. Even if the poor old Canadians have to slap snow on their hills by hand it’s still one of the only conventional sporting events that captures our undivided attention.
Before the event begins we can easily guess the nationalities that’ll dominate, but there is one corner of winter sports that shall be forever British.
The Cresta Run in St Moritz, Switzerland is probably the most famous winter sports venue in the world. You would expect it to be festooned with sponsorship and folks swanning around in rubberised unitards, but that isn’t the case at all. It’s an amateur racing club founded by British officers in 1885 and a regular human can still turn up for a burn in their jeans.
Working off the hangover
The club originated during the 1870s. British guests of the Kulm Hotel of St Moritz developed steerable sleds to race each other through the streets. The residents of St Moritz began to kick up a storm about having their daily business put at risk by high speed toffs bombing past.
In an attempt to keep residents and guests happy the owner of the Kulm Hotel and a Major Bulpetts built a natural ice run away from the town. The run descends 514 ft and is 1200 metres in length. Built from scratch every winter and open for 9 weeks until the end of February, riding takes place every morning.
The Cresta Run operates skeleton toboggans only. Unlike the Luge, riders go down head first and any steering and braking has to be done with spiked boots and shifting of the body weight as the toboggan has no control mechanism. The fastest average speed of the run is 53 mph and speeds top 80 mph by the end.
Serious skill is required. A conventional ice track is capable of holding an uncontrolled object within in its walls right down to the end, the Cresta Run is a more open half pipe that’ll do its best to throw anything off at the earliest opportunity.
Fledgling riders receive the ‘death talk’ from an experienced Cresta Runner. An X ray collage of nasty injuries over the years on the clubhouse wall is a testimony to the dangers involved. Limbs have been lost, trigger fingers torn off and the odd death has been known to happen.
The Cresta Run has two starting points. Beginners must set off at first from the clubhouse and if you pass with flying colours you’re allowed to begin at the top, much further up the course.
The most famous bend is known as Shuttlecock – an open bend that has a 1 in 14 chance of throwing you off the course. The outside of the bend is padded with straw and snow in preparation for disaster. If you’re one of the flyers you gain the right to wear the Shuttlecock Club tie.
The run is open to anyone on practice days if they join as a supplementary member for a price of around £300. They supply the equipment, you bring the clothing and insurance. Traditional clothing is encouraged, perhaps a pith helmet gets a discount. You must be over 18 and (whisper it) male.
If you demonstrate enough enthusiasm and other members vouch for you, you too can become one of the 1300 or so full members. You’ll be in good company, it’s a favourite haunt of upscale society as well as gritty British armed forces types.
A quick vid from the Toro Rosso team celebrating the return of F1 to Canada. Using the world’s only set of studded F1 tyres, they took one of their cars for a workout in the snow.
Simply because we’re still in the mood let us have a look at some extra snow machines for the pure hell of it.
You might have spotted Ken Block’s tracked Subaru Impreza STI recently.
Sporting 400 bhp, you won’t find many faster ways of getting the kids to school across the average glacier, however Earth’s polar regions are harbouring stuff that’s plenty stranger.
Mars-1 Humvee
It may look like Arnie’s wet dream, but the Mars-1 Humvee may well help us explore the stars in the future. Built for the Haughton Mars Project this machine functions as a mobile laboratory studying the Haughton impact crater in the Canadian arctic. The crater is being used to develop techniques to investigate Martian geology.
The Mars-1 also doubles as a prototype pressurised Mars rover which will one day serve as a roving home and workspace for four astronauts on extended field trips. It was delivered to the research site by specially trained drivers wearing flotation suits just in case they went through the ice.
Snow Bug
The Snowbug is a Russian-built 6×6 vehicle custom designed by Arctic explorers . Fitted with Peugeot diesel engines they cruise at 25 mph. They can sleep 3 people, be dropped anywhere by parachute and are loaded with the technology to keep their crews oriented and warm in the most extreme conditions. A team of Snowbugs completed the fastest ever land crossing from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole in 2000. Their ultra-low pressure balloon tyres allow them to float on the surface of the snow and also pull the odd cool party trick. See above.
The Terrabus
If you decide to go for a career change in the US Antarctic program, Ivan The Terra bus may well be the first personality you meet on arrival at McMurdo Station. Manufactured by Foremost it can carry up to 56 passengers at 25 mph. Originally designed for tourism, less than ten examples are said to have been built and they’re mainly now used by polar bases. Unquestionably the ultimate choice for that mobile alpine disco.
Overland Train
The LeTourneau TC-497 was developed for the US Army in the late 50s to solve the problem of cargo delivery to areas with no roads. It utilised gas turbine engines driving electric motors in each wheel. Each wheel was steerable but despite that a full length example still had a turning circle of a 1/4 mile, with 10 ft tall tyres and 570 ft long with multiple trailers attached that’s not surprising.
It could accommodate a crew of 6 in comfort over ranges of up to 400 miles. The cruising speed was 20 mph and the carrying capacity was 150 tons. The Overland Train became obsolete before testing even finished as helicopter load capacities increased. A tiny part of the machine lived on as the creator of Bigfoot bought its tyres from a scrapyard.
The train from the rear
Delta 2
Another Antarctic workhorse. The Foremost Delta is used as a bus, a pickup, a truck and anything else that’s needed in marginal conditions across the globe. A quick sniff around reveals a 1981 example can be yours for $85,000. Put those house deposit plans on the backburner.
Antarctic Snow Cruiser
The undisputed crown jewel of icy oddness, the Antarctic Snow Cruiser was the brainchild of Thomas C Poulter. It was billed as the ultimate polar exploration vehicle, allowing the US government to seize tracts of Antarctica in comfort before any other countries could reach them.
Built in six months for a 1939 expedition, the cruiser was bursting with superlatives.
It was 55 feet long, had a range of 5000 miles with room for a crew of five and enough supplies to last them a year. An aeroplane strapped to the roof would supply mapping and photography data. Accommodation consisted of a control cab, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom and storage space. The wheels were retractable to aid crevasse crossings.
To reach the expedition ship departing for Antarctica in Boston, the cruiser was driven 1000 miles from Gary, Indiana attracting intense media attention all the way.
The cruiser arrived at the Bay of Whales in Antarctica in January 1940 with much excitement. Unfortunately it proved to be hopeless.
The machine was severely underpowered, overheating the electric motors powering its wheels within a few hundred yards. The wheels span uselessly in the snow. The most successful trek was completed in reverse. The snow cruiser was covered over and used as a static shelter.
WW2 caused the cancellation of funding and the cruiser was left to its fate. It was found in the late 40s buried under several feet of snow and found again in 1958 just as it had been left all those years ago. After that it was never seen again. Perhaps it was spirited to the Soviet Union, perhaps it fell to the bottom of the sea.
And the future? Lotus have this offering running around in the Antarctic today.
Powered by biofuels and weighing only 360 kilos, the Concept Ice Vehicle is the last word in low impact exploration. The machine comes with ice penetrating radar to detect crevasses and an exciting spiked foot to ram into the snow to stop in a hurry.
Here in Britain we tend not to know anything about snowmobiles. You’d have to be a bit optimistic or just plain weird to own one in this country despite the recent weather.
In other parts of the world they’re as close to the sporting maniac’s heart as motocross bikes, quads or surfboards. North Americans spend $28 billion per year on snowmobiling. Races, from drag runs to the Iron Dog – 2000 miles across Alaska – take place across the globe. A giant tuning industry has sprung up. And if there isn’t any snow then people just razz them on tarmac, grass or water .
And these machines are seriously fast. The latest examples have over 180 bhp and can do 0-60 in under 3 seconds on the right surface and top 150 mph. F1 legend Gilles Villeneuve began his racing career on snowmobiles.
However things weren’t alway so sexy. The first snowmobile of sorts was probably the Lombard Log Hauler – a steam locomotive adapted to haul logs through the snow at a heady 4.5 mph at the turn of the century.
Some old time dudes getting ready to shred
All kinds of different formats were tried – lightweight propellor powered craft, cars with half tracks and skis strapped to the wheels, until the conventional layout of two skis at the front with a track at the rear was settled upon.
NKL-26 armoured Aerosan
Half tracks
For many years snowmobiles were for purely practical applications. They were just too heavy and slow for anything else until Bombardier introduced the Ski-Doo in 1960. This machine made use of new lightweight engines, rubber tracks and a profile we can all recognise.
Ski-Doo
The Ski-Doo was the first snowmobile built purely for recreation and competitors raced to improve it. By the 1970s there were over 100 manufacturers. There are now 2.5 million examples registered in the USA and Canada.
But it’s not all sweetness and light. These machines require strength and skill to handle. Fatalities are higher than cars. Riders are killed by crashing into trees, animals, pedestrians, cars and falling through ice. Snowmobilers also seem to be inordinately fond of a wee drinkie whilst riding. And quite a few have been killed by trains as they rode between the sleepers, unable to hear the approach of the track’s rightful inhabitant.
There are also encroaching restrictions on access due to their noise and environmental impact. But as long as things like this are possible the snowmobile won’t be going anywhere soon.
We’ll see how the rest of the winter pans out. If it has another turn for the worst we may invest and let you have a go on ours. Time will tell.
It’s hard to think of many better feelings than really flying downhill on a mountain bike. Whether it’s winding through a technical trail or bombing down a smooth forest track, it always seems to end too quickly.
And a handful of people on remote mountainsides have taken things just that little bit further.
The quickest speed we’ve pulled off has probably been somewhere above 50. At that speed eyes were streaming, tyres were twitching and smacking into insects felt like shots from an rifle.
Eric Barone holds the current world record at 138 mph.
Using a custom built bike, aerodynamic suit and helmet and a snowy mountain he streaked into the record books in 2000.
Decidcing that wasn’t enough, Mr Barone wanted to prove that he could go faster on soil.
After a global search he discovered the Cerro Negro volcano in Nicaragua. The clean slopes and soft ash of the volcanic surface were ideal.
In 2002 he topped 101 mph on a standard mountain bike. A few moments later he set off on a carbon fibre prototype bike. He hit 108 mph and took the record for soil. Seconds after that things stopped going to plan.
Apart from some broken ribs he was fine and vowed he was still willing to beat his own records.
Prototypes are well cool, but it would also be nice to see how a standard mountain bike would fare on a snowy surface too. Luckily Markus Stoeckl has done it for you.
In 2007 he topped 130mph on Chilean snow slope riding an Intense M6. The slope was a mile long with a 45 degree incline.
So if you can drum up an Alienesque helmet, full body condom, sexy calf extensions and a nice steep slope, cover it in snow and let us know how it went.
