This Sporting Life

Sebastien Chaigneau, the Frenchman who won last weekend’s Hardrock 100 endurance run, sounds like an interesting fellow. He set a new record for the counterclockwise race direction at just over 24 hours, 25 minutes. But in post-race interviews he said it was not the winning that mattered, or the record, but “the spirit of the trail.” He said he runs “without objective.”

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Hidden High Grade

In the compressor house next door to the mine portal they gave us yellow hard hats and waterproof rain jackets. Then we climbed aboard the trammer and straddled its hard metal bench. A tour guide who calls himself Rock Chip swung up on the engine, and the trammer clanked and jerked into the tunnel. The light of the outside world, the warm summer sunlight of Ouray, quickly shrank to a silver dollar behind us, then vanished altogether.

Debunking a Pie-in-the-sky Eurovision

Josh Geetter’s Alps-inspired vision for the future of skiing in the western San Juans (Watch Commentary July 29) was a seductive read. Seductive because anyone who has skied the big, interconnected resorts in Europe can’t help but have fond memories.