Malaria, that old-fashioned scourge of tropical explorers and canal workers, is returning with a vengeance, and not just in hidden corners of the world. The reason: burgeoning numbers of anophelinemosquitoes are now spreading the disease. From the 1960s to the mid-1990s, malaria was under control everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa, thanks to a widespread eradication program utilizing the pesticide DDT. For the past five years, however, malaria has reinvaded a broad swath from Asia to the Americas, with rare occurrences even reported in the United States. “This is not a disease of other people anymore,” says Robert Desowitz, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It’s becoming everyone’s nightmare now.”

The surge in malaria cases stems in part from the curtailed use of DDT through government regulations and outright prohibitions (the UN is scheduled to vote on a worldwide ban this summer). Third World countries can’t afford to combat the spread with expensive alternative pesticides like deltamethrin, which breaks down more quickly than DDT. But even more disconcerting is the malaria parasite’s tenacious adaptability: A growing percentage of Anopheles now carry strains of malaria that are invulnerable to preventive drugs, even Lariam, the most popular anti-malaria prophylactic for Americans.

Hot spots are scattered across Africa, Asia, and South America. In Sri Lanka, cases have risen from 17 in 1963 to more than 200,000 35 years later. In Peru, the rate of infection has increased 300 percent since 1990. And last year in Kenya, epidemics erupted through a number of highland villages situated above 6,000 feet—confounding scientists who believed Anopheles couldn’t survive the cold, high-elevation temperatures long enough to spread the disease. “Basically,” says Desowitz, “if you go to these places, you bite the bullet and realize you can get very sick.”

While the current drug-resistant strains of malaria, which commonly result in symptoms like intense chills, sweating, and high fever, are medically treatable, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says it will be a few years until new prophylactics are available. Although serious, the outbreak poses far less of a threat to travelers than it does to those living in the Third World. “If you’re going to take a vacation to a tropical country, you’re not exposing yourself as much as the locals,” says Donald Roberts, a leading expert in tropical public health. “But for them, it’s a way of life. A miserable way of life.”

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Last August, four scuba divers set off in pursuit of a manta ray near the coast of Key Largo, Florida. Three of the men were sporting new split-blade fins, while the fourth, a Green Beret and an experienced diver, had decided to stick with the more traditional single-blade fin. As the ray accelerated, the three split-bladers kept pace with the slightest flutter of their ankles. But no matter how vigorously the Green Beret kicked, he lagged woefully behind. “Later, I swapped fins with him,” laughs Tim Core, a Navy SEAL dive instructor. “He swam about ten yards, stopped, and started hollering underwater.”

His excitement stemmed from an innovation in underwater gear design that will no doubt interest the hordes of divers heading off on trips to the Caribbean this month. In studies conducted by ScubaLab, an independent testing company on Santa Catalina Island, California, split fins increased speed while decreasing air consumption between 20 and 40 percent. Thus, divers are able to stay down longer on a single tank, and snorkelers can explore larger sections of reef before coming up for air.

A patent is held by Pete McCarthy, a former software licenser from Laguna Niguel, California, who spent seven years working on his concept, which he calls Nature’s Wing. But Bob Evans, a renowned diver and photographer, claims he was first, since his Santa Barbara­based company, Force Fin, brought a split-blade model to market back in January 1998. About the only thing the two men agree on is that their ideas were inspired by a fish. The fins mimic the biomechanics of the wahoo, a mackerel that can swim at speeds of nearly 70 mph thanks to tail fins that flutter independently of each other, pushing water like a boat’s propeller.

While the design-origin issue may be headed for patent court, McCarthy is concentrating on other matters: licensing his technology to as many manufacturers as he can. Which is good news for divers. When Atomic Aquatics, a scuba company in Huntington Beach, California, begins production this month, tens of thousands of pairs will flood into dive shops throughout the country.

Nature’s Wing Fins: Apollo: 800-231-0909; ScubaPro: 800-467-2822; Atomic Aquatics: 888-270-8595 Force Fin: 800-346-7946

Imagine breaking into a high-resistance stint in your Spinning class as “When Doves Cry” blasts over the sound system. Suddenly, a microphone is shoved into your face, and your demanding instructor expects you to sing The Artist Formerly Known as Prince’s falsetto part. Sure, Spinning is the best way to get into condition for spring cycling, but it’s also stationary, monotonous, and, well, boring. All of which might explain (but not defend) the latest fitness craze: Karaoke Spinning.

In the battle to attract new students to their classes, health clubs like Crunch and Bally Total Fitness generate buzz by applying ever-more baroque twists to the concept of the theme-based workout. September 1998 saw the emergence of Urban Rebounding, in which exercise buffs bounce up and down on mini trampolines to a disco beat. A few months later, Cardio Thai Boxing debuted, melding hip-hop sound tracks and martial arts moves. Neither of these routines, however, achieves the hybridized weirdness of Karaoke Spinning, conceived last fall by Stacey Griffith, a 32-year-old instructor at Crunch in Los Angeles who sidles up to her students during “climbs” and high-cadence pedaling “runs” and holds a cordless mike to their lips. Taking their cues off a large screen at the front of the room, the students alternately gasp and belt out lyrics. “Brass In Pocket” and “Love Will Keep Us Together” are mainstays. At the chorus, the entire class chimes in.

Currently the most popular class at the L.A. Crunch, Karaoke Spinning has migrated to Miami and New York—where it is meeting with mixed reviews. “I think it’s hilarious,” says Mary Noonan, a producer for CBS’s 48 Hours who works out at Manhattan’s 38th Street Crunch. “Of course, I myself wouldn’t do it in a bazillion years.”

Dubious as the trend may be, karaoke can actually help you determine how hard you’re working out: As long as you can sing clearly, you haven’t exceeded 70 percent of your maximum heart rate, which is where you should be for much of your training. Try to wail “Purple Rain” if you’ve gone beyond that threshold, however, and—questions of taste notwithstanding—you’d better stick to lip-synching.

“If you are paying $60 for a lift ticket, lashing two toboggans together is not an appropriate medical response,” says Eric Jacobson. “It’s a flaky system.” Jacobson is referring to tandem toboggans (or, in ski-patrol parlance, “meat wagons”), the chief means of carting injured skiers off the mountain at most resorts. In search of an alternative, Jacobson, an entrepreneur from Telluride, Colorado, teamed up with his cousin Roy Davis (who sells swimming pools in Kalamazoo, Michigan) and designed a vehicle capable of offering skiers state-of-the-art emergency medical care.

Christened the Medi-Cat, the machine is a tracked snow ambulance equipped with oxygen tanks, defibrillators, IVs, and heart monitors. Its 212-horsepower engine and rubberized treads will, in theory, bring ER-quality help right to the scene of the accident. “This machine can deliver the highest standard of care,” says Art Seely, director of Littleton, Colorado’s Snow Operations Training Center. “If you have a spinal injury, the first handling of the patient can make a difference between recovery and permanent paralysis.”

Surprisingly, the company’s most logical customers have little interest: Not a single ski resort has placed an order. The $250,000 price tag and the machine’s inability to climb the steep stuff seem to be deal-breakers. “It’s a limited-use vehicle and can only travel on certain slopes,” explains Bob Persons, medical supervisor for the ski patrol at Colorado’s Keystone Resort, whose request for a Medi-Cat was denied by management for cost reasons. Nonetheless, the partners hope it’s only a matter of time before resorts are seduced by the Medi-Cat’s special features, such as the compressed-air foam firefighting system that, Davis insists, would be perfect for Vail (which suffered a $12 million arson incident in October 1998). “Right now,” he says, “if there’s another fire, the only thing they can do is show up with a weenie-roast fork.”

The urge to slide on snow—what the french call glisser—cuts across continents and species. Otters are notorious schussers, black bears occasionally enjoy a skid down the hill, and humans have evolved from sled to ski to snowboard in their quest to better glide across a snowy expanse. Now two old-school skateboarders from Seattle have developed the latest tool for snow conveyance: a shrunken surfboard with teensy tail fins that floats on fresh powder like a Jeff Clark gun on the swells at Santa Cruz. Inventors Curt Buchberger and Steve Dukich have christened their product the SnoDad (). “It’s from the old surfer’s term ‘ho-dad,'” explains Buchberger, 31, “which is what they called the greaser who hung out in the parking lot and didn’t surf.” It’s a fitting name, since they promote their design as a step backward in snowplay evolution—an anti-snowboard that won’t work on the packed snow of ski resorts. “Grooming,” intones Dukich, 31, “is the enemy of the SnoDad.”

The SnoDad was born four years ago when Buchberger and Dukich, who often spend their summers riding Washington State’s frigid coastal waves, passed a glassy surf day goofing around the slopes of Mount Hood with an old wooden Snurfer, the 1960s-era banana sled. The Snurfer, with its bindingless hop-on-and-ride operation, felt more like snow-surfing than snowboarding. Inspired, they crafted their own Snurfer-skateboard hybrid, with kicktail and all. “That was a complete disaster,” recalls Buchberger. “It was like trying to stand and ride an aluminum saucer,” adds Dukich. After a few more trips to the drawing board they hit upon their master design: a five-foot-long, seven-ply maple deck with a rubber footpad, three fins arranged in a thruster pattern, no bindings, and no metal edges. “It’s not an extreme sport, but in powder you can duck down, come up, and get these nice airs,” says Dukich. “It feels like you’re planing on top of the snow instead of cutting through it.”

Since the fins can’t slice through packed snow, SnoDadders must either poach freshies before the chairlifts open or find their own corniced backcountry waves. A board that won’t work on the groomers likely won’t turn its inventors into the next Jake Burtons, but that’s fine with Buchberger and Dukich. The idea, they say, is to have fun messing around in the snow without a lot of expensive gear. Indeed, the board may float best on the trashiest terrain. (Logging clear-cuts are ideal.) Dukich, who moonlights as the bassist for the Seattle-based blue-collar punk band Steel Wool, discovered a dreamy run last winter during a low-budget Alaskan tour. “We were playing Chilkoot Charlie’s in Anchorage,” he says, “and found these hills outside the club right next to the freeway. For two nights, between sets we took the board out there and completely rode out the hillside. That’s the point—just put on your Sorels or Doc Martens and ride.”

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It was a bitterly cold night last February when the Big Air competition at the U.S. Freeskiing Open got under way in Vail, Colorado. Mike Douglas, a Canadian freestyle skier, stood shivering in the starting box as a little-known Quebecois named Phil Poirier started down the ramp in rented boots and a borrowed pair of skis. Skiing backward, Poirier launched off the lip of the jump, performed a soaring back flip, and landed 50 feet down the hill—backward again. Douglas gasped. He hadn’t even jumped yet, but Poirier had won. “He took the sport to a new level,” Douglas recalls. “And I was like, ‘Great. Now I gotta learn another crazy move that scares the crap out of me.'”

During the past 18 months, Douglas and a group of fellow Canadian freestylers—among them, J-F Cusson (who invented the 360 mute grab three years before Jonny Moseley made it his signature stunt in Nagano), J. P. Auclair (credited with the first mute grab back flip), Vincent Dorion (a bold fakey innovator), and Shane Szocs (king of the front flip)—have helped launch and publicize a new movement. They have taken the raw energy that stokes motocross, in-line skating, and snowboarding, and injected it into skiing—a sport often criticized for its poor innovation, dwindling hipness, and flatlining sales (as the number of alpine skiers declined by 13 percent from 1993 to 1998, the number of snowboarders more than doubled). Their exploits have earned them the sobriquet “the New Canadian Air Force,” while their style, dubbed New School Skiing, has inspired the development of a new ski that makes its mass-market debut this month and that might just change the business of selling skis—precisely because the manufacturers that drive the business didn’t invent it.

Instead, they’ve enlisted Douglas and his friends to help them milk both the craze and the ski for every cent they’re worth. A native of Vancouver Island whose ski-bum argot camouflages a keen marketer’s mind, Douglas started skiing when he was 11 at nearby Mount Washington. By his midtwenties he had landed an assistant mogul-coaching gig with the Canadian National Freestyle Ski Team. The job, together with a $10,000 annual sponsorship from Kneissl, enabled him to spend most of his time hanging with the mogul team, a group of friends who in their off-hours were lighting up the terrain parks of Whistler-Blackcomb with a series of moves no one had ever really seen: crisp, edgy, uninhibited stunts, like the Japan Air, the Huntony, and the Misty-Flip 720, which owed as much to snowboarding and skateboarding as to anything that had been done on a pair of skis. Douglas and his friends weren’t the only ones experimenting, but as a group they were certainly the best.

Nonetheless, despite the innovations, Douglas lost his meal ticket in the winter of 1996 when he learned that Kneissl was scaling back its freestyle program. His lifestyle, and his nascent hotdog revolution, seemed doomed.

One night the following June, he found himself in a restaurant in Whistler commiserating with Steve Fearing, a fellow freestyler who coached the Japanese mogul team and whose sponsor was thinking of dumping him as well. Fearing mentioned that he’d heard the ski manufacturers were looking for something new. Douglas told him about the tricks he and his Canadian buds had been nailing, and the reactions of snowboarders, whose disdain for skiers had begun giving way to awe and respect. “We were talking about the energy on the glacier,” Douglas recalls, “marveling at the buzz that was building around what we were doing. And Steve asked, ‘What would it take to convince the ski industry that this is the next big thing?'”

That night, they hit upon an idea. Over the next two months, Douglas put together an eight-minute video showcasing his and his friends’ repertoire. To accompany the tape, Douglas wrote a 20-page memo that included the specs for a new ski that would suit their hotdogging. A ski that could perform in the half-pipe but also hold up all over the mountain in bumps, powder, and crud. A ski stiff enough for big landings but short enough for tricks in tight places. And most important, a ski that boasted turned-up tips on the back as well as the front, so that freeskiers could take off and land backward, opening up a new universe of tricks and, for the first time, tapping into snowboarding’s skate-park appeal. He shipped the package to virtually every manufacturer in the industry and spent the next three months waiting for the phone to ring. “I was so discouraged,” Douglas recalls. “The ski industry has always been so conservative. And once again, no one was stepping up.”

Unbeknownst to him, however, the tape was creating some excitement at Salomon, generally considered to be one of the savvier marketers in the industry. “This was the first time we’d seen something that looked as big as snowboarding,” says Mike Adams, director of alpine marketing. “I showed the tape to my kids. My ten-year-old, he just went off.” In early December 1997, Douglas got a call from Guy “Mingo” Berthiaume, Salomon’s promotions manager in Montreal. Salomon wanted to work with the Canadians, and the company’s R&D team in Annecy, France, had some preliminary designs. Would Douglas and his team be interested in seeing them?

Over the next six months, Salomon and Douglas forged an unusual partnership. Every few weeks, Douglas, Fearing, and the crew would receive a package of prototypes from France, which the Canadians would put through their paces and then fax the R&D unit with comments on everything from the sidecut to the color scheme. By February 1998, the final prototype, dubbed the Teneighty in honor of the coveted three revolutions (3 x 360 = 1,080), was ready for trials. On his first test run, Douglas tore several ligaments in his ankle while attempting to ski backward. But within weeks, he and his team were further expanding their routine with inverts and other moves that they had never thought possible.

This past winter, under contract with Salomon, they took their act and their ski on the road. Featured in a crop of freestyle videos with titles like Degenerates and Global Storming, the Canadians became celebrities. Their Teneighties, which had an initial run of 300 pairs and a second run of 1,000, were turning heads, too. Kids who wouldn’t have been caught dead on skis two years earlier were pestering the lucky 1,300 in lift lines. Dynastar, Rossignol and K2, and others rushed rival models into production. And most tellingly, snowboarders started voicing odd remarks. “I had never realized what was going on,” says Drew Neilson, 25, who took second place in Boardercross at the 1999 X Games. “Now that I see the crazy stuff these guys are doing, I’d like to get back on a pair of skis.”

This winter, Salomon will offer 10,000 pairs of the Teneighty, which will arrive in stores by the 15th of this month, and will be priced at $595. The company hopes to create the biggest sensation since the introduction of the Burton Performer snowboard in 1985—and perhaps it will, if for no other reason than, as with the snowboard, the sport preceded the product. “I’m not even sure the ski manufacturers realized there was a bandwagon to jump on,” says extreme-skiing icon Glenn Plake. “But at least somebody was finally smart enough to listen to these guys. It’s great to see hotdog skiing alive and well again.”

As night descends over the Peruvian rainforest, an Indian shaman crouched in a thatch-roofed hut passes a gourd filled with a mahogany-colored liquid—a potent hallucinogen believed to cure illnesses and conjure visions of the future. The drug has been a staple of Amazonian tribal religions for nearly a thousand years, but tonight’s ceremony is far from traditional. The participants, clad in fleece and sneakers, weary from a day of bird-watching, are American and European ecotourists, each of whom has paid around $50 to participate in a ritual that, for most, will include bouts of the most violent vomiting they’ve ever experienced in their lives.

For decades, bands of intrepid travelers, including the Beat bards William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, have trickled into the Amazon basin in search of ayahuasca, a rainforest vine that yields a complex cocktail whose chemical properties have been likened to LSD’s and whose side effects can include nausea, aneurysms, and hemorrhagic stroke. Ever since Peru’s Shining Path rebels took over the Peruvian backcountry in the late 1980s, such experiences have largely been off-limits to foreigners. After the insurgent group’s collapse in the mid-1990s, however, ayahuasca has emerged as an important part of the tourist business, thanks to local outfitters promoting these rituals, mostly on the Internet, as a can’t-miss component of the jungle experience. At more than a dozen rainforest lodges in the Amazon port town of Iquitos, shamans now conduct nightly ayahuasca ceremonies.”It’s like nature takes over your mind,” says Deborah Garcia, a Spanish tourist. “I saw rivers, and the roots of trees in the earth, and tons of green.”

Sound appealing? Before rushing to book a reservation, consider the possibility that you may be hallucinating. This month, when the International Congress on Alternative Medicine convenes in Lima, critics will argue that ayahuasca tourism trivializes a sacred Amazonian rite while leaving travelers at the mercy of shamans-for-hire, most of whom know nothing about their clients’ health. “Under these conditions,” warns Roger Rumrill, an expert on Amazonian tribal cultures, “ayahuasca can be a one-way ticket on a trip with no return.”

It’s a fall morning just below West Virginia’s Summersville Dam, and a torrent of whitewater thunders through threemassive penstock valves, spraying mist 60 feet into the air. For the boaters launching from the north bank, this display of brute hydraulic force is a familiar spectacle: Most weekends during September and October, dam releases transform the Upper Gauley River into a 12-mile obstacle course of Class V rapids and SUV-size boulders. One of the most dramatic sections is the put-in near Summersville. “I can’t think of a bigger rush,” says David Arnold, president of Class VI River Runners, a local outfitter, “than the first five minutes on the Gauley.”

Unfortunately, by next September this predictable but heart-pounding excitement will be a thing of the past, thanks to a plan to couple the 35-year-old dam with a $53 million hydroelectric plant. A power-generating scheme licensed to the town of Summersville by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the project will divert water through a pipe that releases beneath the river’s surface, turning the put-in into a tranquil wading pool. While the project will have no impact downstream, boating advocates, bemoaning the loss of one of the gnarliest whitewater scenes east of the Mississippi, fear the deal could be a harbinger of worse changes to come.

Since 1986, the FERC has been forced to give “equal consideration” to energy conservation, fish and wildlife protection, and recreation—an arrangementthat is the cornerstone of the country’s best dam-release whitewater runs, such as the Nantahala River Gorge in North Carolina. But over the next 15 years, some 275 dams in the United States will be eligible for relicensing, and boaters fear that profit-minded utility firms will use the opportunity to renegotiate their costly dam-release requirements. “The Gauley is just the tip of the iceberg,”predicts David Brown, executive director of the whitewater trade association America Outdoors. Although no one can predict what will come next, this much is certain: If you want to be among the last to experience one of America’s most spectacular whitewater put-ins, you’d better do it this fall.Ìý

ÌýThe last time frank Gambalie III was mentioned in these pages, he was on a cell phone speaking with the pioneering “rope jumper”Dan Osman, who was in the process of making his final, fatal dive off Yosemite’s Leaning Tower in November 1998 (“Terminal Velocity,” April). Two months after that article appeared, Gambalie, 28, took a running leap off the edge of El Capitan’s west wall. At 5:10 a.m.on the morning of June 9, he completed a 16-second free fall, opened his BASE-jumping parachute, and touched down unscathed in El Capitan Meadow. Minutes later Gambalie, who knew that jumping is illegal, was dead, drowned in the Merced River while trying to outrun park rangers. One of several bizarre incidents plaguing the Yosemite Valley area over the past year, his death was soon eclipsed by an even more horrifying tragedy:the July 22 discovery of the body of Joy Ruth Armstrong, a park naturalist who was beheaded by confessed serial killer Cary Stayner.

“BASE” stands for “Buildings, Antennae, Spans, and Earth,” the four primary types of fixed objects from which skydiving’s splinter sect leaps. Today, the activity is forbidden in all national parks at all times, but Yosemite officials estimate that each year around 100 jumpers poach its precipices. “El Cap is a crown jewel,”says Gambalie’s mentor, Adam Filippino. “People travel from all over the world to do it. The lure is high.”If caught, the Class B misdemeanor carries a maximum $5,000 fine or six months in jail and usually includes forfeiture of the perpetrator’s gear. Park rangers are vigorous about prosecuting as many as they can catch. And that’s where Gambalie came in.

When Gambalie landed in El Capitan Meadow, euphoric from his 3,000-foot drop, two rangers appeared, as if from nowhere, bent on apprehending him. Yosemite spokesman Kendell Thompson says the rangers had been alerted when they sighted the jumper’s canopy opening in the predawn haze. But according to Gambalie’s cohorts, the rangers had received an advance tip from an informant who camped atop El Cap the same night, cozied up to the jumper to learn his plans, and later alerted officials via cell phone. When the rangers immediately gave chase, Gambalie sprinted to the Merced River, which was swollen with spring snowmelt, dove in, and began to swim across. By the time the rangers reached the bank, Gambalie was gone. His body was recovered 28 days later, pinned beneath a river rock 300 feet from where he had last been seen. At the time of his death, Gambalie stood at the pinnacle of his sport, having made more than 600 jumps from structures all over the world, including New York’s Chrysler Building and a thirteenth-century cathedral in Germany.

Filippino, who spent 36 hours behind bars in 1989 for jumping in the park, argues that Yosemite’s rangers treat BASE jumping in a manner that is completely out of proportion to the scale of the violation. “They had a freaking serial killer in Yosemite living right under their noses,”he says, “and federal agents were chasing BASE jumpers to death.” Rangers, however, contend that jumpers have no business in Yosemite. “This is not a low-risk activity,”says Thompson. “Four jumpers have died in the park. It’s just not appropriate here.”

Fatal Summer

“It’s hard to fathom what goes on when water comes down these canyons,” says Wolfgang Woernhard, director of the Association of Swiss Mountain Guides, of the July 27 flash flood that killed 21 tourists and guides when a tree-and-boulder-laden tidal wave raced through a gorge near the Swiss town of Interlaken. “The currents alone can kill you.” The fatal canyoning expedition has unleashed a torrent of renewed debate over why, and at what cost, people are pursuing high-adrenaline adventure. It’s a sentiment that seems especially apt, coming as it does near the end of a summer in which the cost of risk has been especially high, as evidenced by the July 8 disappearance on Mount Rainier of former Village Voice editor Joseph Wood Jr., whose presumed death is the fourth on the mountain since May—and the July 31 plane crash that killed nine members of a Michigan-based skydiving group. Why the rash of risk-related tragedies? “Some people want an adrenaline rush without paying their dues,” says Outward Bound USA’s vice-president of safety and programs, Lewis Glenn. Others argue that taking chances is worth it. “We embrace risk because it makes life more interesting,” says Mountain Travel– president Richard Weiss. “Mercifully, these tragedies are rare. I really don’t see this summer as out of the ordinary.”

Within the week that followed the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong’s post-race media victory lap included the following: three phone calls from President Clinton (Lance was too busy to take the first two), appearances on Today and Letterman, a movie deal, a book deal, and a rumored $4 million in new endorsements. During the same period, Frankie Andreu, a fellow rider on the U.S. Postal Service Team who controlled the pace of the peloton to safeguard Lance’s position, wound up with a case of Jif peanut butter (after wistfully revealing on the Internet that he missed the stuff). “It’s hard not to be overshadowed by a story like Lance’s,” sighs Dan Osipow, the team’s operations director.”But these guys will get their chance.”

Indeed. Amid the acclaim washing over the second American cyclist and the first American team ever to win the Tour de France, one important fact was obscured: No cyclist ever wins a major stage race alone; victory is purchased at the cost of a Kabuki-like orchestration of attacks, feints, and spectacular self-immolations on the part of team members supporting their captain. Thus it is appropriate to note—and commend—the extraordinary accomplishments of a nine-rider group that Osipow praises, with self-interest but also with reasonable accuracy, as “the deepest, most talented U.S. cycling team in history.” (It was also the most richly remunerated team of the tour, netting $475,000 in prize money.)

Sponsored as part of an incongruous campaign to create greater “brand awareness”for the U.S. Postal Service’s exciting line of padded envelopes and cardboard boxes, the team includes sprinter George Hincapie, who led Armstrong on the flats; climbers Tyler Hamilton (who finished 13th) and Kevin Livingston, who pulled him up the mountains; and Christian Vande Velde, Pascal Deramé, and Andreu, who chased down breakaway riders and kept anyone from threatening Armstrong’s lead. (Teammates Jonathan Vaughters crashed out and Peter Meinert withdrew because of knee problems.)

Also somewhat lost in the hoopla was the fact that while Armstrong is busy sorting through offers with his publicist, schmoozing with talk-show hosts, and basking in immensely well-deserved glory, the rest of his team is furiously pedaling through several more European road races this fall. Back in America’s heartland, however, only one name reverberates. Even at the Bikesport shop in Andreu’s hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, manager Ken O’Day says he’ll give his longtime friend a big, congratulatory clap on the back when he returns. “Then I’m going to ask if he’ll get Lance to sign a team poster for me.”

Last February, Göran Kropp was spotted cantilevered over the rail of his 12-foot Laser in subfreezing gale-force winds on Sweden’s Lake Vättern. An alarmed passerby phoned the police, who tore after Kropp in a rescue boat. When the cops pulled alongside, they found Kropp happily flying through the chop, ice caked to his eyebrows and sculpted into wild organic shapes around the mast. The 32-year-old adventurer told his would-be rescuers that he was just learning to sail—the first and most important phase of training for his next epic stunt. “I want to be prepared for the frigid temperatures,” says Kropp. “For the blizzards, hurricanes, and monstrous winds in the Southern Ocean.”

Readers of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air will remember Kropp as the Swedish soloist who won the respect of every seasoned mountaineer on Everest for his transcendently pure ascent: He biked 8,580 miles from Stockholm to Kathmandu, summited without oxygen or Sherpas to carry his gear, and pedaled home again. Then, like any good adventure-performance artist, he wrote about it. This month, Kropp is touring the country, promoting his book, Ultimate High: My Everest Odyssey (published by Discovery Books), and laying the groundwork for an encore. Sometime in 2003, he plans to sail a specially designed 30-foot boat—alone—from Sweden to McMurdo Sound in Antarctica (6,000 miles), ski to and from the South Pole (another 1,440 miles) in three months, and then sail home again.

“Göran’s brain is completely loose!” laughs winner of last year’s Whitbread Around the World Race and fellow Swede Magnus Olsson, who’s been tutoring Kropp in the fundamentals of long-distance ocean sailing. “He’s determined to do it, but in such a small boat he’ll have to be very good at analyzing the weather to outrace the deadly storms off Cape Horn.” A competitive cross-country skier who has trained with the Swedish national team, Kropp embarks on his first mega distance test-run this February, when he skis from the edge of the Arctic, off Russia’s Novaya Zemlya, to the North Pole. As for the sailing partÅ well, he’s got three more years to perfect his seamanship. “It may sound like madness,” Kropp admits, “but you only have one life. I want to see and do as much as possible, and I think I’m doing that when I’m living like this.”

Last June, when we previewed the attempt by Mark Synnott, Jared Ogden, and Alex Lowe to make a first ascent of the northwest face of Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower—believed to be the biggest sheer granite wall on earth—we had a feeling they were in for an epic experience. But by the time the trio had returned to base camp on July 31, “epic” seemed an inadequate description of their ordeal. During the 36-day, storm-wracked ascent to the 20,500-foot summit, Synnott and Ogden persevered at the cost of little more than hypothermia, exhaustion, and shredded hands. Lowe, however, wasn’t nearly so fortunate. He contracted a mysterious intestinal infection at 18,000 feet, was struck on the head by a rock and knocked unconscious during a rappel to a bivy ledge, and took a bruising 50-foot fall while leading one of the final pitches, a mishap that inflicted several cuts and abrasions, as well as a puncture wound to his elbow.

Shortly after reaching the summit on July 29, beating a rival Russian team by more than a week, the threesome encountered a tempest that forced them to stage a perilous, rain-soaked retreat down the 6,000-foot route in 48 hours. Synnott admits he still can’t quite grasp the magnitude of the accomplishment, perhaps the greatest big-wall climb ever. “By the time we were descending, things were pretty out of control,” he says. “But we just sucked it up. This was without a doubt the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Got Any Ice?Ìý

“Sixth place isn’t great,” concedes Marshall Ulrich, 48, of his finish in the Badwater Ultra Marathon on July 15. “But I was whipped before the race began.” For which Ulrich has only himself to thank. Ten days prior to the event, he staged an unorthodox solo “training run” along the 138-mile course, which ascends from Death Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney, in California. To aid his 77-hour ordeal, the owner of a pet food company in Fort Morgan, Colorado, lugged 21 gallons of water in a cart equipped with a rubber tube and a solar-powered pump. Impressive? Well, sure; but it also poses a rather burning question: Why? “I hate when people say something’s impossible,” explains Ulrich, a four-time Badwater champion whose next goal makes his present accomplishment look like a cinch. “I’d love to do two back-to-back laps on the Badwater course.”

—STEPHANIE GREGORY AND PAUL KVINTA