THE POMPANO BEACH incident resembles any of a dozen fatal accidents that occur each year in the elite, high-risk world of technical diving—a sport that involves descending beyond 130 feet, often in hazardous environments such as shipwrecks and caves, at times using breathable combinations of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. And it is precisely the kind of event that throws the diving community into a fit of pained self-examination. Only now, the internal debate is being fueled by a broad institutional change: In January, an arm of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, or PADI, the world’s largest dive-training agency, will roll out its first technical-diving training program. The firm’s new courses will make what many consider to be the hazardous fringe of the sport more accessible to the millions of sport divers around the nation.

This scenario—which concerns many veteran tech divers—could scarcely have been imagined back in the mid-1980s, when Bill Stone, a structural engineer from Gaithersburg, Maryland, first began experimenting with helium-based breathing gases to explore deep caves in Wakulla Springs, Florida. Stone and his team ventured more than three miles into underwater cave passages at depths exceeding 300 feet—far beyond the reach of ordinary compressed-air scuba. Though commercial and military divers had breathed “mix” (a blend of breathable gases) for decades, and Jacques Cousteau had used it to reach 400 feet in 1976, Stone was one of the first to apply it to recreational diving. By the early 1990s, with the support of a handful of specialized training and equipment vendors, the fledgling sport of technical diving began to take hold among more adventurous scuba fans.Today it is arguably the highest-profile segment of the sport.

PADI estimates there are three million sport divers in the U.S., but Technical Diving International, a school based in Maine, says that there are only about 200,000 technical divers in the entire world. Still, tekkies make a dent in the market disproportionate to their numbers. Each of these elite frogmen commonly spends as much as $5,000 on gear, including a specialized buoyancy-compensator device, a dive computer, and sometimes an underwater scooter. (A typical sport diver owns about $2,000 worth of equipment.) Tech divers also invest heavily in training courses. Which is where PADI comes in.

Considered the Microsoft of diving—a no-holds-barred competitor dominating the training industry—PADI claims to certify 70 percent of all new divers in the United States, and 60 percent of all divers worldwide. Its global network of about 100,000 retailers and instructors dwarfs that of the firm’s nearest competitor, the National Association of Underwater Instructors. Some 200 staffers work for the private company, based in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. In a 1996 interview, PADI president John Cronin said the company pulls in more than $30 million a year from certification fees and the sale of instructional books and videos in 24 languages. It is a finely tuned marketing machine, built on untold scores of regimented dive classes.

Which is, in the eyes of many, exactly the problem. Making tech diving more accessible to a mass market is “like putting a civilian pilot behind the controls of an F-14,” says attorney Bobby Delise, whose Metairie, Louisiana, firm built its practice on representing families of those killed in diving accidents. “You can’t market life-threatening activities like tech diving and BASE jumping the same way you market other services. You have to play by different rules.” He is concerned that would-be tekkies already take so many classes that they don’t get enough real-world diving experience. “It doesn’t make any sense for students with fewer than 100 dives to be taking a mixed-gas class,” he says. “The bar is too low, and when a mistake occurs the price is too high.”

Like alpinism, tech diving is brutally unforgiving—participants risk such physiological disasters as nitrogen narcosis, oxygen poisoning, and the bends. In 1998 and 1999, 28 out of the nation’s 161 diving fatalities, or roughly 17 percent of the total, were tekkies. If that sounds unimpressive, consider that tech divers constitute a very small slice of the overall diving population. “I lose two friends a year,” says Bridgeport, Connecticut­based technical diving instructor Joel Silverstein. (He’s never lost a student or partner.) “Fatalities are part and parcel of technical diving.”

PADI acknowledges that it is plunging into treacherous waters. “Our philosophy is that tech is not for everyone,” says Karl Shreeves, a vice-president of Diving Science and Technology, the arm of PADI that will run the new tekkie program. “We’re not going to market it that way. We don’t expect huge numbers.” But many tech trainers have profound philosophical issues with the firm’s approach. PADI students progress through a sequence of written exams before advancing to the next level. Instructors must stick to the book and are given little or no leeway to improvise. By contrast, old-school tech trainers believe religiously that the experience of the instructor is everything and that rote rules just won’t help beyond 200 feet, when problems must be solved quickly and instinctively.

Though Shreeves says PADI won’t oversell the tech program, critics fear the firm’s mass-market focus. “Tech diving is completely different [from sport diving],” says Dave Mount, the general manager of the International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers (IANTD). “It requires an exceptional instructor with tremendous experience and currency.” Shreeves counters that PADI has a proven track record and offers the industry’s best quality-assurance program —asking students to critique their instructors. Further, he stresses that the new program will only accept students who have logged more than 100 dives, trained in specialites such as night diving, and have several certifications above the basic open-water level.

The Pompano Beach incident arguably demonstrates that not even the training organizations that specialize in tech diving have spotless records: At the time of the tragedy, Derek McNulty was an IANTD-certified instructor.

In some respects, PADI may usher in a higher level of professionalism for the sport. “PADI has a long history of creating outstanding [classroom] materials,” says Bob Decker, the training director at Olympus Dive Center in Morehead City, North Carolina.”In that manner they will raise the bar.” But he also charges that the company has in the past been guilty of taking what he calls a “fast-food approach” by not insisting divers put in the time to pay their dues and gain critical experience.

IT IS DIFFICULT to say whether the first large-scale foray into training beyond 130 feet will mean more divers will die there. “Tech is more risky than recreational diving, but to be honest, that’s part of the appeal,” says PADI’s Shreeves. “Extreme-sports enthusiasts appreciate the challenge of managing that risk in exchange for the experience that few people get to have.” By virtue of its sheer size and resources, PADI will undoubtedly open up the dark depths to throngs of adventure seekers, and if not launch a trend, then tap into one that is already growing. “People treat tech diving as if it were just another recreational specialty like night diving,” says Florida-based Jarrod Jablonski, one of the top tech divers in the world and holder of the record for the deepest underwater cave penetration, just over three lateral miles. “But it isn’t.”

A C C E S S + R E S O U R C E S
Abyss Exploration 101

Although tech diving is dangerous, it is also great adventure. Take the time to learn the risks involved before going deep. Below, some of the leading players in tech training.

Professional Association of Diving Instructors
800-729-7234;
PADI’s tech diving program will launch in January. Prices will vary with locations and instructors.

Global Underwater Explorers
800­-762-3483;
The average two- to three-person, five-day course is $600. Private classes run $1,100 to $1,600.

Technical Diving International
888-778-9073;
Course lengths vary according to diver’s skill level and run $150 to $1,000.

International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers
305-751-4873;
One- to eight-day classes range from $150 to $750.

American Nitrox Divers
800-229-2634;
Course lengths vary according to diver’s skill level and run $495 to $700.

National Association of Underwater Instructors
800-553-6284;
Classes vary in price according to length and region.

Ěý

THE U.S. SKI team has always been a place where dreams are made and broken, but the drama doesn’t usually go down like a Shakespearean romance. That changed last spring when U.S. Ski Team women’s coach Dan Stripp, 39, was fired by his boss, Marjan Cernigoj, for “overstepping the professional boundaries between coach and athlete.” The athlete in question happened to be the nation’s top slalom racer and best hope for a gold in the 2002 Winter Olympics: Kristina Koznick, an eight-year ski-team veteran now ranked fifth in the world in slalom. “The ski team does have a policy against relationships, and it is hard to enforce,” says Koznick, 25. “We knew the rules. There was no [sexual] relationship between us.” But the soap opera didn’t end there. In August, after Stripp’s firing, Koznick dropped her own bombshell: she had quit the team to train with her squeeze.

Training solo is a rare and risky strategy; World Cup­level racing requires Napoleonic logistics and astronomical travel costs. “It hasn’t happened before with an athlete at her level,” says USST spokesman Tom Kelly. (In the mid-1990s, however, top-ranked world racer Julie Parisien opted for a private training regimen—with full support from the U.S. Ski Team—and tanked.)

Has Koznick thrown it all away for love? Not according to her. “He knows me like the back of his hand,” she says of her coach, himself a former USST racer. “He knows everything about me, and my skiing’s done really well. It’s rare, and I can’t let it slip away.” Refusing to bow to their sport’s ethical elite, Koznick and Stripp have in recent months trained on slalom courses set up by European teams. On a glacier in Solden, Austria, they awkwardly trained alongside the U.S. team—head coach Cernigoj is not on speaking terms with Stripp.

“I don’t think a coach and athlete should be that close. It’s not professional,” says Tasha Nelson, one of Koznick’s former teammates. “Some of the girls didn’t like it. They felt cheated.” Since the split, Nelson admits, “it’s not been smooth by any means.”

Koznick also misses her former colleagues. “I wish I could still train with the team,” she reflects, “but they said it had to be all or nothing.” She’s determined to prove that she made the right decision. Used to facing slim odds—she’s from flatland Minnesota, for one thing—Koznick thrives under pressure. For now, she’s trying to raise the $300,000 needed to compete on the World Cup circuit and train for the World Alpine Ski Championships, in Austria this January, and eventually, the Olympics. “It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, and it’s coming down to the last straw. I know what I need to do to win.”

Hazy Shade of Winter
Activists battle to preserve the birthplace of extreme skiing. But will lthe trucks return?

THIS COULD BE THE LAST winter in many moons to see 15,771-foot Mont Blanc and nearby peaks as they appeared back in the 1950s—that is, bright, white, and smog-free. Last summer, the French government announced that the Mont Blanc Tunnel, closed following a tragic March 1999 fire that claimed 39 lives, will reopen in spring 2001, likely bringing back the daily parade of 2,500 to 5,000 heavy trucks that have used the tunnel to pass through the Alps. This is not good news for the tiny town of Chamonix. Experts predict that carbon dioxide emissions there and all over the Alps will increase more than 20 percent if nothing changes in the next ten years. Now, in a region better known for radical couloirs than radical causes, air quality has moved to the top of the agenda.

Last October, the 2,500-member Association pour le Respect du Site du Mont Blanc filed a civil suit against the government-owned company that manages the tunnel. With donations from U.S. firms like Patagonia, which has given some $35,000 to its cause, the no-more-trucks camp— including ARSMB, Chamonix mayor Michel Charlet, and a group called Alp Action—hopes that a favorable ruling in the pending trial will force France’s transportation industry to use railroads for commercial shipping. They also hope the trial will calm hot tempers. “People are going to blow it up before it opens—that’s how mad people are,” says Marie Bouchard, owner of the North Conway, New Hampshire­based climbing gear manufacturer Wild Things and a part-time Chamonix resident. “It’s not going to be peaceful.” —Eric Pfanner

EAR TO THE GROUND

”People remain very charged up. Especially when they realize that the government doesn’t move unless it is confronted with violent action. For the moment, I’m doing my best to temper them.”
—Georges Unia, president, Association pour le Respect du Site du Mont Blanc

”We would like the tunnel to reopen, but in the context of a broader transportation policy that includes discussion of rail.”

—Spokeswoman for the French Transport Ministry

”Something so beautiful shouldn’t have to be defended with words in a courtroom. It’s outrageous that this site needs a lawyer.”
—Martine Heraud, owner of the Librairie VO bookstore in Chamonix

”France, for the moment, is totally out of step with Europe on transport issues. Not a single decision has been made in favor of rail.”
—Nadege Chable, environmental coordinator for Patagonia’s French Alpine region

* Association pour le Respect du Site du Mont Blanc can be found at www.chamonix.org/arsmb.
* Autoroutes et Tunnel du Mont Blanc, the company that manages the Mont Blanc Tunnel, makes its case at www.atmb.net.
* A joint statement by Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, president of Alp Action; Michel Charlet, mayor of Chamonix; and Andreas Weissen, president of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps, is at www.cyberalps.com/index2.html.
* Tourist information about Chamonix and Mont Blanc is available at www.chamonix.com.

The Alternative: Trucks on Trains
With a single European market fueling appetites for Roma tomatoes and Roquefort cheese, the Mont Blanc Tunnel has become a crucial commercial link. The ARSMB proposes two new tunnels, either of which would keep big rigs out of Chamonix (the group has no boeuf with cars). A new $10 billion, 30-mile railway tunnel under the main spine of the Alps would allow high-speed trains, carrying tractor trailers, to pass far underneath Chamonix. In neighboring Switzerland, one such tunnel is already under construction. Failing that pricey scheme, Georges Unia, the 45-year-old leader of ARSMB, proposes an upgrade of existing crossings (for a cool $1 billion), such as a short rail tunnel in the Maurienne Valley 50 miles to the south. French and Italian leaders have been holding regular meetings in pursuit of an agreement on that proposal. A final deal has proven elusive, though all parties agree that something has to be done. For now, the trucks have been belching through the Maurienne Valley and groaning over a mountain pass near the ski area of Montgenèvre. Sure enough, one town on that route, Argentiere-la-Bessee, is now suffering the same smoggy fate that befell Chamonix. Says Montgenèvre mayor Joel Giraud: “Unless something is done, the tourist industry here is doomed.” —E.P.

Ěý

IT’S NOT TOTALLY true, you know, this notion that geeks never see the sun. Dedicated gearheads just need a few gadgets to make the great outdoors a little less outdoorsy. Take geocaching, a small but growing nerd sport that combines the childhood thrill of the scavenger hunt with the bushwhacking joys of orienteering.

The idea is simple: Participants visit the geocachingWeb page located at www.geocaching.com, and enter their zip codes. The site returns a list of nearby hidden treasure chests—typically, white plastic buckets containing sundries such as a bottle of tequila, a disposable camera, a paperback, some gum—and the booty’s latitude and longitude coordinates. The player then punches the cache’s location into his handheld GPS unit and sets off to find it—a quest that usually involves a short off-trail hike, but sometimes calls for a bit of boating or rock climbing. Once discovered, the finder takes something from the bucket, replaces it with a trinket of his own, and goes back online to tell the tale.

If it seems like a lot of effort to justify a little fresh air, consider that geocaching was actually invented—well, let’s say enabled—by Bill Clinton. Last May, he ordered the Defense Department to shut off a jamming signal that, ostensibly for reasons of national security, had deliberately been fed into the Global Positioning System. With a few keystrokes at Space Command in Colorado Springs, a GPS unit that could previously fix the location of a given object, say, a bucket labeled “GPS CACHE,” within 300 feet could now nail it within 30. Presto: The geeks had a new hobby.

More than 110 caches are now hidden in at least 28 states and 13 countries. The question remains, though: Why? Rich Gibson, 39, a computer programmer and GPS cacher from Sebastapol, California, chalks it up to a kind of millennial Calvinism. “Deep down we all know that the journey is the destination, but we recoil from pursuits that lack a destination. I have a friend who calls this ‘purposeful purposelessness,'” he says. And you thought it just sounded like fun.

Ěý

It was about as effusive as the New York Times can get over a lame duck president. Last fall, under headlines such as “A Forest Legacy” and “Monuments for Posterity,” a series of editorials lauded Bill Clinton for his “bold” and “breathtaking” late-term action on environmental issues. Specifically, the editorials referred to two executive orders that the president either has invoked or intends to invoke, and which, taken together, may qualify as the biggest conservation coup since Teddy Roosevelt created 200 million acres of public land between 1905 and 1909. “For someone who paid no attention to environmental issues during his first year in office,” the Times wrote, “Clinton may wind up with an impressive legacy as a preservationist.”

High praise, to be sure—but no less exceptional than what Clinton is attempting to do with his executive orders. Last October, he invoked the National Forest Management Act—an obscure provision created in 1976 that enables the president to issue directives to the U.S. Forest Service—to prohibit any new roads from being built in parts of the national forest that are presently roadless. By making commercial development in these lands virtually impossible, the scheme—which must undergo a gamut of public hearings that will last until the end of this year—could create a 50 million acre patchwork of protected forest, an area the size of Virginia and West Virginia combined.

It was also last autumn that Clinton explored the idea of using the Antiquities Act of 1906—which allows a president to protect public lands from development by designating them national monuments—to create as many as a dozen new monument sites in the West. Since then, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has been barnstorming all over the West visiting proposed areas and soliciting public comment. The candidates could include sites from the Otay Mountains in southern California to the majestic South Quinault Ridge in Washington.

Both plans, of course, must still survive the test of presidential politics, yet pundits are already identifying Clinton’s land campaign as one of his most significant legislative achievements. And in at least one respect, they’re correct: Regardless of whether these initiatives succeed or fail, credit lies exclusively with the White House, which has fashioned an unorthodox strategy for thwarting Congress. Through his executive acts, the president hopes to circumvent a Congress that is deliberately uncooperative on environmental issues. By so doing, however, Clinton has antagonized powerful Republican politicians who are allied with timber and mining bigwigs, and who now accuse the president of undermining the very foundations of democracy.

The hyperbole has been impressive. In October, several western Republicans characterized the president’s “Great Western Land Grab” as an unseemly bid to satisfy his libidinous need for an environmental legacy. Soon thereafter, Representative Jim Hansen, a Republican from Utah, opined that “Democracy isn’t always pretty, but I think we can all agree it is a lot better than having a king dictate everything from the White House.” By December, presidential hopeful Senator John McCain had entered the fray, blasting Clinton’s executive action as “the epitome of federal arrogance.”

Although the Republicans may be serving Mammon more than John Q. Public, curiously, they do have a point. In order to bypass Congress, Clinton has resorted to a scheme with an unsettling similarity to the semantic contortions of the Lewinsky affair (To wit: It depends on what your definition of “environment” is). The Wilderness Act, passed in 1964, requires the president to secure congressional approval before designating any piece of federal land as wilderness, a label that grants it the highest level of protection. So Clinton has proposed the creation of a new designation with only slightly less regulatory heft—near-wilderness—which would not require Congress’s blessing. It must also be acknowledged that the administration’s record with environmental executive action is hardly a model of soliciting public input. In September 1996, Clinton invoked the Antiquities Act to create the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, enraging many locals and politicians who felt—with some justification—that they were not adequately consulted.

Admitting that Clinton’s foes have a point, however, isn’t the same thing as saying that they’re right. In fact, the Republicans’ expressions of outraged shock and indignation are not only disingenuous, but profoundly hypocritical. The main reason the president has resorted to unilateral action is that Congress has repeatedly refused to consider similar legislation itself, and has sabotaged several of his previous efforts at conservation —despite numerous polls indicating that Americans overwhelmingly favor environmental protection. Moreover, GOP umbrage loses much of its moral force, considering the efforts of congressional representatives to weaken environmental law through back-door tactics such as anti-environmental riders, last-minute amendments to bills. In recent riders, Republican senators have taken steps to permit more logging in national forests, proposed allowing mining companies to dump thousands of tons of waste on federal land, and tried to block the government from collecting millions of dollars in fines from power companies that violate clean-air laws.

Ultimately, what is perhaps most ironic about this skirmish is that it comes at a time when populist muscle has actually been most successful in effecting environmental policy. In the ’98 elections, some 170 preservationist ballot initiatives were passed across the country. And at the nearly 180 local public hearings already held by the Forest Service to discuss the roadless initiative, there has been enormous public support. Republicans may be lamenting the alleged subversion of the democratic process, but the people are shouting to be heard. It’s just that they’re often drowned out by the din of partisan yelping.

In an elegant Manhattan apartment, champagne flows and sitar music fills the airĚý while the artist Andres Serrano, creator of Piss Christ, schmoozes with the party’s host, a noted collector of Renaissance art. Most of the attention at this soirĂ©e, however, is focused on three abstract paintings: a work in gunmetal blue that evokes the charged energy of lightning, a smaller canvas whose bold strokes suggest a horse leaping from negative space, and a dark composition called Forest, which features angry green bands and is signed by an artist named Bird.

What’s so attractive about Bird and his colleagues? Well, they’re Asian elephants, and the flurry of interest their work has aroused is deliciously apt, considering that all of New York was recently abuzz over an attempt by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to force the Brooklyn Museum to remove a portrait of the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung. Plus, connoisseurs will soon be to able purchase originals for themselves. On March 21, a consignment of pachyderm paintings will be auctioned at Christie’s to raise funds for the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project, a group founded in 1998 by Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar, Russian-born conceptual artists who have satirized everything from Soviet Realism to Western kitsch. Although they are notorious pranksters who delight in subverting art’s many pretensions, Melamid and Komar have loved elephants since they were children. Thus their decision to spearhead the project, which is designed to assist the 3,500 Asian elephants and their mahouts, or owners, who were left without work after logging was radically curtailed in Thailand in 1990.

Melamid and Komar have established Elephant Art Schools in Kerala, southern India; Bali, Indonesia; and Lampang and Ayutthaya, Thailand, where pachyderms spend their afternoons pondering the blank surface and then splattering it—and anything else within 20 yards—with paint. The Jackson Pollockesque results earned more than $50,000 at their first showing in Bangkok. And if all goes well, the Christie’s auction could net another $250,000 to lavish on conservation efforts—a prospect that both gratifies Melamid and Komar, and confirms their views on the enterprise of art. “I know plenty of unemployed humans who are masters of nothing and have turned to art,” says Melamid. “Elephants aren’t as smart as humans. But I’m not sure you have to be smart to paint.”Ěý

Recovering lost shipwrecks has proven quite lucrative. Last May, gold coins salvaged from the California steamer Brother Jonathan were auctioned off by Bowers and Merena Inc. for $5.5 million. And over the last ten years, the paddlewheeler S.S. Central America, which sank in 1857 off the U.S.’s Atlantic coast, may have netted its finders more than $100 million. Now, however, the pressure is mounting on divers searching for new wrecks. Next month in Paris, a UNESCO delegation, responding to the long-standing battle between underwater archaeologists and sunken-treasure hunters, could ratify an international convention that will declare shipwrecks more than 50 years old off limits to commercial salvors and sport divers. Herewith, the short list of the unplucked plums.

WRECK
THE LOST SHIPS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

SUNK
Off the coasts of Haiti, Panama, and Jamaica

DATE
1492-1504

WHAT WENT WRONG?
Columbus lost four ships to hurricanes, four others to shipworm damage, and one to grounding on his four voyages to the New World. Most are believed to be buried in sediment and sand in very shallow water.

WORTH
Unique historical and archaeological value.

WHO’S SEARCHING?
Currently, no one. Interest faded following the 500-year anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage.

WRECK
NUESTRA SEĂ‘ORA DE LA CONCEPCIĂ“N

SUNK
Bahamas

DATE
1563

WHAT WENT WRONG?
The 450-ton °ä´Ç˛Ôł¦±đ±čł¦ľ±Ăł˛Ô was the flagship of a fleet carrying gold, silver, and other New World treasures back to Spain when it was lost in a storm.

WORTH
Some 25 tons of gold and silver, plus precious stones valued at $100 million.

WHO’S SEARCHING?
Minneapolis-based Treasure Ventures Inc., a newly formed group of investors and entrepreneurs.

WRECK
LOST SHIPS OF THE ARMADA DE TIERRA FIRME AND THE TIERRA FIRME FLOATA

SUNK
Florida Keys

DATE
1622

WHAT WENT WRONG?
Six ships were lost in a hurricane after leaving Havana. To date, three of the six, including the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, have been found. The Atocha alone has yielded some 47 tons of gold, silver, and emeralds valued at $400 million.

WORTH
Depends on the ship; at least one may contain $200 million in treasure.

WHO’S SEARCHING?
The company formed by late king o’ slick salvagers Mel Fisher.

WRECK
THE SAN JOSÉ

SUNK
Off the coast of Cartageña, Colombia

DATE
1708

WHAT WENT WRONG?
The richest Spanish ship lost in the Western Hemisphere, the San José exploded during a battle with English warships. Only five of her 600-member crew survived.

WORTH
Thought to contain 11 million gold pesos and two tons of platinum. (Present value: $1 billion.)

WHO’S SEARCHING?
Numerous companies have negotiated unsuccessfully with the Colombian government for the rights to search for and salvage the wreck.

WRECK
REPUBLIC

SUNK
Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington state

DATE
1870

WHAT WENT WRONG?
Republic was carrying California gold miners to San Francisco when it collided with another ship. Only two of the estimated 275 passengers survived.

WORTH
Bullion worth at least $30 million.

WHO’S SEARCHING?
Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration.

On December 18, Julia “Butterfly” Hill attempted a final climb to the top of the 200-foot redwood called Luna in which she had lived for 738 days, but burst into tears before reaching her goal. Minutes later, she rappelled to the ground and was embraced by friends. “I ran, I danced, I played,” says Hill, who hadn’t touched terra firma since she began her protest against the Pacific Lumber Company’s plans to convert the 1,000-year-old forest giant into $150,000 worth of patio furniture. “It was like being on the moon for two years.”

Her descent capped off the longest tree-sitting protest in American environmental history, which concluded after Pacific Lumber pledged to protect the tree and a surrounding 200-foot buffer zone, while Hill and her supporters agreed to pay Pacific Lumber $50,000 in fines (PLC will donate the money to a local university). A former barmaid and the daughter of an itinerant preacher from Arkansas, Hill, 25, weathered a number of ordeals during her first year as loggers disrupted her sleep with air horns and 80-mile-per-hour El Niño winds battered her perch. But by last Thanksgiving, when we paid her a quick visit, she had virtually merged with the tree. Her toes were curled in an almost simian manner; her feet were coated with sap, which she said helped her stick to the branches; and she claimed to have established a rapport of sorts with Luna, divining the tree’s moods and professing to find solace in its arboreal vibrations.

Written off by some as a pantheistic eco-nut, Hill demonstrated an impressive savoir faire for waging an effective media campaign. She kept a digital camera and a pager with her in the tree and used a solar-powered cell phone to conduct interviews and lobby politicians such as Senator Diane Feinstein. Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, and Woody Harrelson stopped by to visit. And last year, in addition to being featured in Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone, she was voted one of the “20 Most Fascinating Women in Politics” by George.

Having surrendered her perch, Hill is now forbidden to wander freely on Pacifc Lumber’s land—an injunction that she says leaves her somewhat nonplussed because, in the flurry of her departure, “I didn’t have a chance to be with Luna and to say good-bye.” But upcoming events should leave her little time to grieve. Her book, The Legacy of Luna, will be published next month by Harper San Francisco. And in the meantime, Hill says she wants to promote compromises between environmentalists and businesses similar to the one that preserved Luna. “A corporation and an activist are on opposite ends: They’re driven by a love of money, and I’m driven by a love of life,” she says. “So the fact that we came to an agreement is magical.” And perhaps it is.

Ěý

Power Stroke
“Add up every phone bill from my entire life and it won’t equal November’s,” says 36-year-old Tori Murden, referring to the tally of $3-per-minute emergency satellite calls she made in efforts to outsmart Hurricane Lenny during her successful bid last December to become the first woman to row solo and unsupported across the Atlantic Ocean. Despite her $6,000 debt to AT&T, the six-foot-tall Kentuckian and former lawyer is ecstatic over her 81-day, seven-hour-and-46-minute crossing of the south Atlantic from Los Gigantes, Tenerife, to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Having scooped the record, Murden insists she has no immediate plans to jump back into the morgue-drawer-size cockpit of American Pearl, her homemade 23-foot, Kevlar-reinforced plywood boat. But she readily admits that the allure of long-distance ocean rowing may eventually pull her back. “It’s like eating a great big meal,” says Murden. “You swear you’re never going to do it again, and then pretty soon you start getting hungry.” —STEPHANIE GREGORY

Midnight in Yellowstone National Park. A sequined sky provides God’s own scrim for an all-you-can-stare night show. Meteors flare, the Milky Way glows, and geysers shoot up like silvery, vaporous ghosts. That is, except at the park’s main attraction, Old Faithful, where the pumped-up lumens of more than a dozen halide parking-lot lights create a brittle mile-wide glare that obliterates the heavens’ mysterious and beautiful backdrop. In the faux glow, even the moon itself vanishes.

Lovers of darkness call this light pollution, and although it’s been wrecking night skies for decades, only recently have environmentalists started worrying about its effects in pristine areas. Last March, the National Parks and Conservation Association, a private watchdog group, released the results of its first analysis of light pollution. Conclusion: Glare emitted by towns up to 150 miles away obscures the stars above two-thirds of the 189 American parks surveyed—a long-distance phenomenon called “skyfog.”

While the effects of this newly recognized pollution can be a real mood-killer for tourists, the impact on park denizens can literally be lethal. In Hawaii’s Haleakala National Park, endangered dark-rumped petrels become so disoriented by streetlights that they dash themselves against the windshields of passing cars. In National Capital Region Park, night-blooming water lilies wilt under the 24-hour, dirty-orange wattage of Washington, D.C. And every summer at Florida’s Gulf Islands National Seashore, hundreds of sea turtle hatchlings shake the eggshells from their eyes and scuttle toward the distant lights of beachfront bars. Cut off from the ocean, most are picked off by hungry birds or toasted by the sun.

Fortunately, there are signs of a more enlightened approach. Congress is now debating a national parks appropriations bill that includes a bribe-the-bad-guys provision. The proposal would create a pot of money to pay businesses outside of parks to turn off or shield their most egregiously bright bulbs. Meanwhile, the forces of darkness seem to be gaining the upper hand in Yellowstone. This spring, park administrators plan to install lower-wattage bulbs in the parking lot near Old Faithful. Few other parks, however, have similar plans in the works. “With light pollution, we’re at the same stage of awareness we were with air pollution 40 years ago,” notes Dave Simon, NPCA’s southwest regional director. “It’s not viewed as a crisis yet. But if we don’t protect our dark skies, they’ll literally fade away.”

Troubled Waters

“Al Gore wasted $7 million worth of water during a drought,” growls Steve Duprey, chairman of New Hampshire’s Republican Party. “He should pay back every penny!” Welcome to the most frivolous campaign scandal (so far) of the upcoming election season: Floodgate. The ruckus began on July 22, when the ever-sporty VP showed up for a canoe trip along the Connecticut River near Cornish, New Hampshire, to publicize an $800,000 federal grant for riparian conservation. Despite the drought, the river was running high—thanks to a decision by officials at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company to reschedule the dam release of 500 million gallons of water (a normal release for that time of year) several hours before Gore’s launch. State Republicans immediately declared the allegedly squandered water an “illegal campaign contribution.” While the FEC investigates, the VP’s office seems unfazed: “This was an official visit, not a campaign stop,” says Gore spokesman Roger Salazar. “There’s no issue.”
—PAUL KVINTA

It’s in the low nineties and well past noon, and Todd Presho is lurching alongside a highway retaining wall in a cherry picker near San Francisco, feverishly molding a vertical section of freshly sprayed “Shotcrete” before it solidifies in the California sun. The veteran mason is grappling with an unusual challenge: to hand-sculpt a rock face that is visually appealing, structurally robust, and physically impossible for renegade climbers to scale. “I take great care in creating overhangs instead of ledges, and I always space the handholds and footholds far apart,” says Presho, describing his technique. “But you see climbers driving by and they’re just foaming at the mouth, waiting for us to get out of here.”

Presho’s project is part of an innovative program that began in California in 1995 when a group of aesthetically sensitive highway engineers adopted the radical notion that cement retaining buttresses needn’t necessarily look like a Left Coast version of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, however, it turns out that lining roadways with artful slabs of faux granite can be a recipe for mishap: Rock hounds tend to see these walls as outdoor extensions of their local gyms. In 1995, a group of climbers got stuck halfway up a sculpted wall north of Los Angeles and had to be plucked to safety by the local fire department.

Enter Presho, an artificial rock sculptor who has designed waterfalls, building complexes, and aquatic tanks for whales in Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico, Hawaii, South Africa, and the south of France. Presho got involved with unscalable walls in 1991 while constructing an escape-proof open-air gorilla enclosure at the San Diego Zoo. To date, he has crafted nearly 200,000 square feet of unclimbable retaining walls for the California highway department (this month he will complete a stretch along California 128 through Sonoma’s wine country). Meanwhile, transportation departments in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada are contemplating similar schemes.

All of which surely comes as good news to motorists who will no longer have to drive through mind-numbing, monolithic freeway corridors. But it seems only a matter of time before the rock-climbing community begins to interpret these structures as irresistible challenges. “The fact that they are supposedly ‘unclimbable’ makes them much more appealing,” muses Alain Robert, the French climber known as Spiderman who recently pulled off the first free ascent of Chicago’s 1,450-foot Sears Tower. “The danger of the cars and the noise wouldn’t put me off if I liked the line,” he adds. “I’d sure like to try and see if it’s possible.”

The units’ efficiency and light weight have made them favorites of cave divers, Navy SEALs, and astronauts for more than four decades. The concept, however, has never been effectively applied to high-altitude climbing because moisture tends to freeze inside the valves in extreme cold. But Richard Vann, director of applied research at the Center for Environmental Physiology and Hyperbaric Medicine at Duke University, is convinced the problem can be solved based on his experience designing rebreathers for medical technicians.

Vann’s team wants to breathe new life into the technology by developing a removable carbon dioxide scrubber. It could take them at least a year to build their prototype—relatively rapid progress, considering that climbers have been anticipating this moment since 1953, when Sir John Hunt, a British colonel, first tested rebreathers during that year’s British Expedition to Mount Everest. Hunt’s group climbed nearly twice as fast as others using open-circuit systems, which waste gas and cause horrendous sore throats from bone-dry compressed oxygen. But when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summited using open-circuit oxygen systems, Hunt’s rebreathers failed to catch on.

Although Vann’s project has a long way to go, the news is already generating excitement among climbers and medical experts. “It would open the world of extreme altitude to the general mountaineer,” says Dr. Peter Hackett, an authority on high-altitude medicine,”much like the advent of scuba opened the underwater world to the general swimmer.”

Stamstad, 34, is a three-time winner of Alaska’s 320-mile Iditasport Extreme race (not to be confused with its predecessor, the 160-mile Iditabike race—which, by the way, he won four times). We last profiled him in these pages in 1996 (“That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stranger”), and as his Great Divide odyssey makes clear, he’s as impressive as ever: He managed to polish off the journey from northern Montana to the Mexico border in a mere 18 days and five hours. “Normal people take 70 days to do the ride,” says Kevin Condit, spokesman for the şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Cycling Association, which finished putting together the route in the spring of 1998 after four years of negotiating access, splicing maps, and meticulously patching together a network of existing single-track, BLM trails, and Forest Service roads.

To achieve his time, Stamstad barreled along the spine of the Rockies with little more than a sleeping bag and some water, purchasing junk food at the occasional grocery store and logging a measly four or five hours of sleep each night. This month, he contemplates continuing his extended affair with jaw-dropping endurance quests by riding across Africa for the Travel Channel. “I’ll have to miss 24 Hours of Moab,” the soon-to-be cable star concedes. “But I’d just like something a bit more adventurous.”

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE

The world’s longest continuous off-road bike route begins in Port of Roosville, Montana, and ends at Antelope Wells, New Mexico. The Missoula-based şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Cycling Association offers detailed maps of the entire Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (they’ll set you back $37.50 if you’re an ACA member, $55.50 for a nonmember), plus advice on campsites and bike shops along the way. Riders who are appalled by the notion of adopting Stamstad’s approach and are looking for a guided trek can sign on to ACA’s annual 75-day, end-to-end tour, which wheels out of Port of Roosville in mid-June ($2,800 per person). Trips ranging from six to ten days along choice segments of the trail are also in the works for summer 2000. For more information, contact the ACA at 800-755-2453.

“We’re not hosting a cologne competition. This is a serious scientific experiment!” says Dallas Zoo research curator Cynthia Bennett when asked about her new weapon in the fight to save the endangered ocelot from extinction: Calvin Klein’s Obsession. Bennett is part of a research team looking for enticing smells to lure the country’s remaining 100-odd ocelots—which inhabit brush country in south Texas—away from roads and into safer habitat.

Last January, she and her colleagues exposed three of the zoo’s resident felines to putrid rat and bobcat excrement. While the ocelots responded with some mildly enthusiastic sniffing, nothing triggered a frenzy of rubbing, rolling, and drooling like a spritz of Obsession (the cologne belonged to the boyfriend of one of the zoo technicians). This month, Bennett will be testing a handful of rival fragrances to isolate the scent her discriminating ocelots like best. She also hopes to hear from Calvin Klein, which has yet to respond to her letter requesting assistance. “I dunno,” speculates Bennett. “Maybe they didn’t like being studied alongside rat feces.”

When Dave Frissyn tells people he’s going “longboarding,” most folks assume he’s heading off in search of some clean peelers on the California coast. But in fact, he never leaves the big-mountain backcountry around Lake Tahoe. Frissyn, who is currently punching the clock as a security guard in Squaw Valley, spends his free time ripping down steep highway chutes on a 52-inch skateboard, sculpting graceful, sweeping arcs at get-out-of-my-way speeds. Unlike street luge or rollerblading, longboarding offers no brakes—a handicap that makes for some serious road rash in the event Frissyn, 27, encounters a patch of loose gravel, an oil slick, or a road-hogging lumber truck. (Two years ago, he developed a scab running the length of his entire body after trying to dodge a dog.) “If you let it get beyond 25 miles per hour on a mountain pass,” he says, “you’re history.”

Frissyn is part of a scene that flourished briefly in the seventies, died out in the eighties, and now seems poised to follow lava lamps and polyester into a colorful resurgence—albeit with a few new twists. Exposure is one: NBC’s Gravity Games featured longboarding in its debut broadcast in September. But the sport’s most ardent devotees seem to prefer that it remain comfortably hidden in the shadows. Reason: They practice their craft on moonlit nights or at dawn in places like Wyoming’s Teton Pass, the volcanoes of Hawaii, and the Northern Sierra—thus adding subversive hipness to a disdain for formal rules and skin-flaying hazards. Not everyone is impressed, however. “That doesn’t even have to be illegal,” a state trooper recently barked before ordering Frissyn off a highway south of Lake Tahoe. “It’s just plain stupid.”

Update

In our September feature on the competitive miseries of the U.S. Rowing Team’s Selection Camp in Princeton, New Jersey, all eyes were focused on the battle for the coveted number-five “engine room” seat in the first heavyweight eight between two top oarsmen: Michael Wherley, veteran of two previous championship boats, and big Jake Wetzel, a Canadian newcomer. After four weeks of deliberate equivocation that kept tension—and effort—high, coach Mike Teti made his selections as August’s World Championships in St. Catharines, Ontario, approached: The last open spot in the nation’s premier boat went to Wherley, while Wetzel was assigned to stroke the American four. The results were impressive. Both boats won gold medals—the four rather handily and the eight in a thrilling come-from-behind finish over a strong British crew. But none of the rowers can afford to rest his oars. Competition has already begun for seats on next summer’s Olympic eight, and the relentless Teti plans on building his boats from scratch. “We’ll start again,” he declares. “This year, everyone is gunning for us.”
—JOE MCCANNON