But everyone knows how that goes – mountain local moves to new mountain locale and the talk is always big. Or as a friend recently joked, “How do you know someone lives in Jackson? It’s easy, they’ll tell you.”

But I regress. My wife, Kir, and I went to the Dolomites. Our goal was to climb, hike, explore and check out some via ferratas. Sure, we’d grab some culture along the way, drink some fine espressos, and dine on hand-cut minestrone or handmade pasta around a rifigio hearth.

Here’s the deal. You can climb long moderate routes forever in the Dolomites. A minor day would be the equivalent of the Exum on the Grand Teton. Want a 20-pitch-plus .10B line on the Marmolada? Go Don Quixote. Want to follow Cassin or Messner lines? Take your pick on the Tre Cime or anywhere, really. Desire a three-big-tower-link-up at a moderate grade? Go to Sella Pass and look left.

The Italian approach to weather forecasting leaves a bit to interpretation, but they make up for it with their sophisticated approach to everything else. When the forecast looks unsettled you can sport climb at an area such as the Citta Dei Sassi, or the City of Stones. Kinda like City of Rocks in Idaho, only instead of Almo as your cultural hang, Sella Pass has full leather guys in mirrored shades on Ducatis and bronzed women in tight white jeans sipping lattes.

So, is Dan right about how great it is over in the Dolomitis?

Well, probably best for you to go check it out yourself …

(Roll cursor over photos for captions.)

Sari and I are in France where she’s racing in the 24th annual Pierra Menta, an infamous, four-day randonee stage race, where 180 teams of two will skin up and ski down over 10,000 meters (32,000 feet) before the finish on Sunday.

And, because Sari seems to love any kind of race that involves an obscure sport, loads of expensive gear, days of suffering and virtually no prize money, this was a race she couldn’t miss.

I’m here as a cheerleader and I’ll do my best to blog updates on Sari and all of Team America each night.

So, here goes. …

Team America is present and accounted for – 12 boisterous Yankees that stick out like sore thumbs in this tiny town of Areches, tucked away deep in the French Alps where no one speaks any English and it’s perfectly normal to run around in a one-piece, skin tight ski suit and lime green boots all day.

Sari is racing with her Nike teammate Monique Merrill (Mona), joining four other American teams who’ve made the trek here, plus one more team of American ex-pats who live in Chamonix. It’s an impressive showing for the US, where only a handful of people even know what a randonee race is.

Team America consists of:
Pete Swenson and Cary Smith
Monique Merrill and Sari Anderson
Jared Inouye and Brandon French
Jason McGowin and Brad LaRochelle
Nina Slitich and Lynsay Myer (from Chamonix)
Katie French and Ian Anderson (coaches/cheerleaders)

Sari and I arrived in Geneva on Monday morning after successfully completing an almost dry-eyed handoff of our 20-month-old daughter to my parents at the Dulles airport. In Geneva, we met the other American teams and planned our assault on Areches. It required two-trains, an overnight in Albertville (site of the ‘92 winter Olympics) and a couple of taxis loaded the the gills for the final push to Areches.

The race starts tomorrow at 7 a.m., much to the disappointment of Sari and Mona, who were excited about the originally planned 10 a.m. start. Apparently, it snowed 80 cm above 2,500 meters here yesterday and the avalanche danger is pretty high. We watched a helicopter throw dozens of bombs around the surrounding peaks this afternoon. So, the race is starting early in the hopes that conditions stay firm and safe. Regardless, all racers are required to carry a beacon, shovel and probe, just in case.

After registration, we all met back up for dinner. According to the race organizers, tomorrow should be relatively short, about three hours for the top teams, with about 2,500 meters (gulp!) of total climbing. Team Captain Pete Swenson thinks it’s the downhills that’ll be the hardest part of the day. The snow conditions are likely to be super variable – soft at the top, to bulletproof in the middle, to slush at the bottom. Pete, who has raced in Europe a bunch, says that the Italians and the French are the teams to watch. Not only do they go up fast and transition quickly, but they’re experts at the high-speed ‘wedge’ technique on the downhills, which most Americans are too prideful to adopt. It should be interesting to watch.

Anyway, Katie and I are getting up early tomorrow in hopes of catching our team at the top of one of the climbs. I’m going to try and post photos and blog updates each night, so stay tuned and cheer on Team America!

When not Woot-Wooting, Ian Anderson works for Backbone Media.

Team North America – Howie, Schnitz, Ogle, Adam, and 2mas.

Team Europe – Thomas, Davos Dan, Erlend, Audun and Juju.

Goal – We have come to Switzerland to make good Freeride, compliments of Cloudveil, POC Helmets and Black Diamond. The plan is to visit Fritschi, Black Diamond Europe HQ, ski and have editors talk about skis, boots, bindings, trends and how the markets differ globally.

Eiger and Monch from the Gehrihorn

Highlights:

Day 1 - Tour of the Fritschi factory with Stefan Burki and Stefan Ibach. Introduction of the new Diamir Eagle AT Binding. Touring to the summit of the Gehrihorn from which we can see the distant summits of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau. Trad fondue dinner. Weisbeer, Kirsch, white wine, don’t drop your bread in the fondue as this is a boys trip.

Day 2 – Train to Davos. Ski off piste pow testing next year’s product in Pischa. Davos Dan Caruso (DC) is our tour guide and shows us the goods. The deal is Tram to T-Bar to Traverse off piste, then knee deep freshies 3K plus to the valley floor. Hitch hike, call a cab, grab a bus and do it again. We make good Freeride yah!

Day 3 – More ski testing on Rinerhorn and Jakobshorn. Dan educates us to an emerging Freeride dialect that is similar to Swiss German. “Dude, he dry docked his ski and went totally Peggy Fleming-ing.” We witness the new school Howie-hawk and visit the legendary Wallhalla Telemark Freeride Bar.

DC hitching a ride back to Davos

Day 4 – A bit snowy and flat light for the absinthe-minded. We hit Parsenn for never ending piste runs and some leftover chowder. Also visit the SLF – the Davos based Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research. Dan is married to a local charger Pepe and they have two boys Rocco and Little Guy. The boys take after their parents – little rippers who also understand the importance of a good plate of pomme frites at lunch.

Little Guy scoping a line from the deck at lunch

Day 5 – Visit Black Diamond Europe and talk trends with GM Christian Jaeggi. Be very wary of the Baseler Festival.

Yeah, it was nothing like this at all….

The conditions have been pretty harsh. It is still early in the winter for the ski season, which means the temperature hovers right around the melting point and snow melts onto your gear as soon as it lands. I have been using a Hoback Jacket and that seems to do the trick of keeping my core warm and my I-Pod dry.

On the few days with warmer weather, fellow ambassador Sarah Marvez, Cody, and myself have visited the Zillertal, home of the famous local beer (see photo) and several amazing bouldering areas. Sarah has been working on sending boulders and I’ve been working on collecting footage for my upcoming video, PURE.

Austria is a great place, and not too expensive at the moment… especially compared to Switzerland, where it costs an arm and a leg to do pretty much anything. An afternoon of skiing and a giant Hefe-Weissen beer for $20? Now you’re talking….

Switzerland is an amazing place. I have to say the people here have a very high standard of living. Things are expensive, but everything is clean and tidy and the trains are always on time. I have been filming Fred Nicole on some amazing stuff.

On Sunday, we went to an area where huge orange leaves blew across problem as Fred climbed. Certainly some of the best video I’ve ever shot… an amazing athlete in a perfect setting doing incredible things.

I have a ticket to take the train down to meet Fred’s brother Francios who is also a very strong climber. He will show me some new boulders he has and I am looking forward to adding another name onto the roster for Pure, especially someone so talented as Francois.

I have started my euro-English accent. Here’s some stuff I said today:

“Do you know where is the restroom?”
“He seems very sympatic” (french for ‘friendly’)
“What is the time of which these trains are running?”
“Perhaps we first take a coffee and after that we catch the train.”

Also part of the Euro-accent is speaking English slowly and more clearly than normal, so you all will have to forgive me when I get back to the US because I may speak to you as though English was your second language.

Sorry in advance.

Prolific climber and Cloudveil ambassador Chuck Fryberger is also a videographer and blooger. Check out his Web site.

From Treehugger- Sweden has already built a pod car pilot on an old football field on the outskirts of the university town of Uppsala, while in West Virginia a small pod-like transport system has been shuttling students back and forth for many years. Now on both sides of the U.S. in Ithaca, New York, and Santa Cruz, California, advocates are working hard to convince city officials that pod cars are the way to go.

Heathrow is building what it is calling a pod car system to shuttle travelers around the airport. But what seems to be needed is for one or more cities – probably ones that hasn’t yet made the investment in light rail – to embrace a pod-car structure and show us all how lovely it might be traveling above the city streets in our very own sound-proofed pods.

This September I had the opportunity to travel to the Spanish island of Mallorca to try the insane and increasingly popular sport of Psicobloc, or deep-water soloing. Chris Sharma, one of the world’s best climbers, increased the sport’s popularity by sending routes in Greece and Mallorca in his newest movie, King Lines. He makes it look easy.

Just like other forms of climbing, the goal is pretty simple: to avoid falling off of whatever you’re climbing on.

While mountaineers climb high, they rarely fall. Boulderers fall all the time but rarely from more than 10 or 15 feet.

In my mind, psicobloc has just the right blend of difficulty, athleticism and consequences. Climbers are enticed to try their hardest due to the low risk of lasting bodily harm, but there are very real consequences for failing: one very large, very wet consequence.

What most people don’t realize about the soloing in Mallorca is that there are actually loads of beginner-friendly areas. Caves like the ones at the beach of Cala Varcas hold about as much danger as your local bouldering gym. The routes are moderate in difficulty and well traveled, and generally top out at no more than 30 feet. I spent my first couple days at areas like this practicing the style of climbing and learning how to correct for different kinds of falls.

One of my projects was a climb called Loskot and Two Smoking Barrels. It was first done by the climbing legend Klem Loskot. I did OK at the beginning, which features with 35 feet of easy climbing to get to a no-hands rest. The vicious seven-foot dyno across a blank section of wall gave me some problems. The feeling of jumping with both hands and both feet off the rock 40 feet out over the water is indescribable. The slap of the ocean after falling 40 feet on four consecutive tries is describable in one word: ouch.

The scene at the crags is much more like surfing or bouldering than solo rock climbing. In fact, you’re rarely solo. It’s common to hear encouragement coming from all directions in several languages during an attempt. “Venga! Venga!” from the Spaniards. “Ale! Ale” from the French, “Go for it!” from the Americans and “Go for it, eh?” from the Canadians.

On my fifth try I was able to stick the dyno and finish out the rest of the route. The adrenaline made my hands shake for several minutes, even after I got down to terra firma.

After a day in the sun, in the water and on the rock, we bought fresh fish and cooked them by the beach. We ate the catch, drank wine, and talked about where we would climb tomorrow.