My Page: Jule Banville
Running
Fat Girls Finish: Training for the Missoula Marathon, Part 2
That first Sunday, 16 weeks before the race, us newbies ran either one or two miles. I went two because, I thought, “I got this,” but what I got was a burning sensation in my lungs and some wicked phlegm (you’re welcome). Do you know why that is? Because a) running when you’re overweight and haven’t really run in a long time is hard, b) I started out too fast and c) I’m sort-of phlegmy anyway.
The training program, thankfully, is a gradual one, building up miles for the shorter runs (Wednesday nights) and the longer ones (Sunday mornings). Unlike previous attempts at running, I stuck with it, with Claire at my side. It turns out we had a similar pace (slow) and had lots to chat about (our moms).
Making the commitment to her, to the other ladies and to everyone involved in an organized training program makes all the difference. People are counting on you so you show up.
In that way, it becomes your community, not just something you do to work off beer.
[more]Mountain Biking
New Bike Park Set to Open in Jackson Hole
Roughly a year in the making, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is ready to open its new bike park, billed as challenging to all levels.
Designed by master trail-builders Gravity Logic and with the financial backing of North Face, the Jackson Hole Bike Park next to Grand Teton National Park opens June 18 and will shut down some time in September.
The building team smoothed out trail beds and buffed the rocky terrain so either the most advanced or beginning bikers can feel challenged and comfortable. “We wanted to build a playground for riders at every stage of the game. We have a lot of experience riding powder in the winter, so we wanted to create a similar mountain bike experience that was effortless and fluid,” said The Park and Pipe Supervisor, Ranyon D’Arge. “On most of the beginner and intermediate trails you hardly need to pedal or brake, you just flow. It’s the ultimate downhill ride.”
[more]Site News
New West Launches Adventure Rockies
Lawyers and baristas, dentists and dog walkers: In the Rockies, we all have something in common in our amazing, coveted surroundings. We live here and work here because we want to play here.
That’s what our readers tell us in every survey we do. Regardless of your income bracket, your education, where you were born or how you came to live or love it here, by and large, you are outdoor people interested in outdoor recreation.
We at New West get it. We’re outdoor people, too. That’s why we’re excited to introduce a new part of our site, Adventure Rockies (newwest.net/adventure). It’s a curated blog, populated by both experienced and novice writers and photographers from Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico. They have diverse interests and styles, from river guide Ryan Bentley in Idaho to guidebook author and backcountry snowboarder Brian Hurlbut in Montana to pro freelancer and active mom Jill Adler in Utah: All bring a unique voice to our site.
[more]Running
Fat Girls Finish: Training for the Missoula Marathon, Part I
This story really starts with how I got fat(ter), beginning with the gestation of my first child. I call him Butters. He started growing inside me when I was on my honeymoon in Ireland.
I mean, I had gone to the gym, even sort-of regularly. I sucked it all, mostly, into the dress. But when it was all over, it was time to stop caring, especially when those Irish cows ate that Irish grass and produced such delicious Irish butter. I mean that stuff is nothing like the hard, tasteless sticks that pass for baking lard over here.
Butters, as you might gather, stuck around long after the honeymoon was over. He added a few friends, namely Beers and Ice Creams.
My routine to deal with these children was to oh, well, you know, hike on the weekends. Walk when I could. Occasionally, I’d decide I needed to run them off. I’d sign up for a 5K, huff through it, quit.
[more]New West Film
Filming, Preserving ‘The American Serengeti’ of Montana
Years from now, when the official American Prairie Reserve stretches 3 million acres, Ken Burns’ team may show up, as they did in the National Parks, to tell the story of who made it happen and how.
But right now the story of protecting the grasslands largely contained in Montana and traveled by Lewis and Clark is still in progress. What “The American Serengeti,” a new National Geographic film screening this weekend at the 34th International Wildlife Film Festival, makes clear is that there is a lot of work to be done before this ambitious, possibly unrealistic, dream can become real.
An unfinished story, of course, is still worth telling and this one doesn’t need Ken Burns when it has writer/producer and NatGeo veteran, Andy Mitchell. Mitchell’s film, the winner of the IWFF’s Best Made in Montana award, will be shown in Missoula’s Roxy Theater Saturday at 3 p.m.
[more]New West Film Feature
Rare Screening of ‘Red Skies of Montana’ Offers Classic Glimpse of Both Smokejumping and Missoula
During the making of “Red Skies of Montana,” various Hollywood stars were severely injured on a motorcycle, stung on the neck by a hornet, burned badly, missing eyebrows singed off unintentionally and visiting the local dentist to repair two busted front teeth.
It was an eventful filming in and around Missoula in the early ‘50s. And although, by today’s standards, the acting’s kind-of hokey, “Red Skies” remains an important testimony to the history and bravery of the men (and, now, a few women) who jump out of planes and helicopters to fight the West’s fires.
Smokejumping was about nine years old when the filming got under way and, to those involved in that world, it was a huge deal to have 20th Century Fox buy the rights to the story –- and bring in big-name actors Victor Mature (the original lead) and Richard Widmark (the man who replaced him after Mature’s motorcycle accident just outside of Missoula).
When it premiered in 1952, “people from New Hampshire probably didn’t know a smokejumper from a Martian alien,” said Stan Cohen, who authored a pictorial history of smokejumping and has recently added to what’s likely the world’s largest collection of “Red Skies” memorabilia.
[more]National Park News
Actual Harbinger of Spring: Bears Emerging From Dens in Glacier, Yellowstone
Recent observations of bear tracks in the snow indicate bears are emerging from hibernation and venturing out looking for food in and around Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks.
Signs of Yellowstone’s bears emerged earlier this month when park employees observed grizzly tracks on Mary Mountain, roughly near the center of the lower loop of the park’s Grand Loop Road.
Tracks were spotted in Glacier this week, prompting Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright to remind visitors: “Bear tracks in the snow are a good reminder that Glacier National Park is bear country and park visitors need to be alert for bear activity and to be familiar with and comply with safety regulations.”
Land Management
Forest Service Denies Request to Manage Snowmobiles Under Off-Road Vehicle Guidelines
The U.S. Forest Service today denied a request from recreation groups asking that snowmobiles on national forest lands be managed under the same guidelines applied to all other classes of off-road vehicles.
In August 2010, 90 organizations representing 1.3 million members filed a petition with the forest service and the Department of Agriculture formally requesting that the agency amend the 2005 Travel Management Rule, the framework used to designate routes, trails and areas on each national forest unit open to motorized use. Petitioners requested the removal of an exemption making management of over-snow vehicles optional while making designations for all other classes of off-road vehicles mandatory.
[more]Wildlife Encounters
Moose Vs. Snowmobile Videos Prompt Warnings From Colorado Wildlife Officials
A YouTube video, embedded below, of a snowmobile chasing a moose on a trail in Grand County, Colo., prompted the Colorado Division of Wildlife to issue warnings about interacting with moose and other wildlife.
The public education campaign is primarily aimed at snowmobilers and snowmobile rental companies. Wildlife officials say they’re seeing too many videos like the YouTube offering that show people chasing and harassing moose while riding snowmobiles.
“Moose don’t behave like deer or elk,” says DOW Area Wildlife Manager Lyle Sidener. “You can’t ‘shoo’ them off a trail. Moose don’t see people as threats and they will stand their ground, or possibly attack.”
[more]New West Film
This Weekend, It’s Time to ‘Roll-Out Cowboy’ at the Big Sky Film Fest
If there’s one guy who’d be at home in Montana, it’s an Obama-lovin’, cowboy-hat-wearin’, hip-hoppin’, gay friendly guy from a town in North Dakota too small to have a grocery or a restaurant.
But Dunn Center does have a bar, the Ilo, and it does have Chris Sand, aka Sandman the Rappin’ Cowboy. Both the town and the guy star in “Roll-Out Cowboy,” a film festival darling (it’s hit more than 25 of them so far) that’s screening, along with a performance by Sand, at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula this weekend.
Sand actually is at home in Montana, mainly because it was his home in the formative years. These were the ones in Ronan during middle and high school, when living on the Flathead Rez, he says, exposed him to the urban vibe of the ‘80s that still throbs in his skinny white boy soul.
The 74-minute documentary that exposes that soul follows Sand around for a year as he tries to live in two worlds. In one, he’s a creative, wandering performer, a modern mashup of Woody Guthrie and LL Cool J on the road and breaking hearts from Chicago to Des Moines to Olympia. In the other, he’s just trying to fit in at home, which happens to be an old falling-down farm house he bought for a thousand bucks in a town of 122, mostly Lutherans older than his parents.
[more]
