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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Nov 14, 2007 - 07:23pm PT
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Capt. Chaos, are you the guy that posted those ski pics in the Himalaya a while back? Pretty damn fine.
I never knew Steve but did follow his ski racing career as I ski raced myself eons ago. But I sucked. Now I live vicariously through my kids racing...Sad that such adventurous individuals are taken from us so needlessly...
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captain chaos
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 15, 2007 - 01:32am PT
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This list is missing two records Stevie set in Portillo Chile in 1977 & 78. It was in 78 that he first broke 200 kph, if I remember right it was 200.222 kph. Also, there was no race in Cervinia in 77 the Italian's cancelled it, but Stevie did set a record in Portillo in 77 and then one in 1978 in Cervinia, it was 198.0?? kph. Anyway, since the Italians cancelled the race in 77 McKinney, Buschmann and Kalavev Hakkinen and I went to Portillo knowing Dorworth set a record there at one time, others were to show up but they didn't, although they all did in 78. The track Dorworth used had a huge boulder field in the run out area and so we found a new track and pretty much handled the entire track preparation on our own in 77, needless to say it was a bumpy ride. In the end Stevie set a record on that track in 77 and 78. In total he set 5 records, two records in Cervinia (74 & 78), two in Portillo (77 & 78)and one in Les Arcs in 82.
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brodix
climber
Maryland
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Nov 15, 2007 - 05:47pm PT
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/Users/johnmerryman/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2007/Roll 2/DSC_0081.JPG
My sister send me a link to this thread. I'm a cousin of Stevie's from back east. His mother and mine were sisters. I don't have much to add in the way of stories, as most of his exploits were repeated through his sisters in Kentucky and the ones that come to mind have already been covered. The family grew up between Lexington in the summers and Tahoe in the winters. Horses and sking. They would come east for a few weeks in the summer, as kids and I passed through Tahoe in the late 70's. Other then that, he would stop through every few years. If this picture posts, that's his mother behind him. It was taken about '85.
Oh, well. The picture didn't go through. I know more about horses then computers. See who I can email it to....
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captain chaos
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 16, 2007 - 02:38pm PT
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Yes Rolling Stone did do an article on Steve, and all of us involved in Speed Skiing at the time, if I remember right it was in 78. The writer Ed Zuckerman stayed with us for a couple weeks, we took him climbing at Lovers Leap and many other things (no snow to take him skiing though) and for a thanks he wrote things about us that the ski companies didn't like, think 78, think Lake Tahoe which was similar to Aspen in those days and you can imagine what the guy wrote about. They did the same thing to Bridwell a few years later, the title was The Bad boy of Climbing, or something like that. Stevie and I warned Brid about it, but he didn't listen and made the same mistake as us and let the guy in on things we wished to keep private. C'est le vie...
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brodix
climber
Maryland
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Nov 16, 2007 - 05:17pm PT
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Let's see if this works;
When you die, I figure you get smeared out across the universe, rather then just pop up somewhere else. Stevie had us all beat. That why he didn't need to wait around.
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graham
Social climber
Ventura, California
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Nov 16, 2007 - 05:48pm PT
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Nice to see the photo, Thanks
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captain chaos
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 16, 2007 - 05:58pm PT
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Good to see it worked John... my best wishes to you and your family- Craig
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Fletcher Wilson
Trad climber
New Hampshire
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Nov 18, 2007 - 01:58pm PT
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I am posting this message with a heavy heart. I knew and loved Steve. He is my true love and I have been feeling him near, in my dreams, next to me at the end of the bed, walking close up my mountain with me and definitly in my heart.I spoke to my very dear friend this morning to find him also knowing Steve is near with a sadness in his heart. Somehow he watches over us and his son Stephen. I know he would want all his friends to keep his son close and share with him the love of the man who gave us all a part of him and in return give back a piece of yourself. Fletcher Wilson wrote a poem on the day of his celebration of life and he wanted me to share it with all of you.
From: KT
"I had a friend, he was one of a kind
Strongest of body, strongest of mind
He always looked beyond the door
And always felt he could do more
Always a smile and always kind
he showed me things he would find
He would teach me all the lessons he learned
And tell me things he yearned
He had his dreams and most came true
But now it's up to you
Now it's time to rise above
To pull together all our love
Listen hard and try to hear it
The message left by his great spirit
To always help your fellow man
Carry on the best you can
For if we try I know somehow
We will find a way to make him proud"
By Fletch
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captain chaos
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 18, 2007 - 02:48pm PT
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Karen... is that you? Craig
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Fletcher Wilson
Trad climber
New Hampshire
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Nov 18, 2007 - 03:01pm PT
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Yes, it is me. Hello Craig.
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captain chaos
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 18, 2007 - 03:23pm PT
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Nice surprise Karen... I'll send you an e-mail if the one you listed here works- Craig
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Nov 19, 2007 - 11:36pm PT
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Hey Craig -- big thanks brother for starting this thread. Glad to hear you are still living the Alpine life. Of course you're right, I have a few more McKinney stories after living a winter at his place, and here are some:
A blown VW engine led me to Steve McKinney. Mid 1970s, not sure what year. Time was fluid then. Claudia Axcell and I had been nosing along the western approaches to the Wind Rivers hoping to find a cabin to winter in, maybe a fishing lodge to caretake. But we looked too much like California hippies, got snubbed by cowboys and turned west. Spent my 30th birthday at the City of Rocks; we were the only ones there. My yellow ’58 Bus drove us down long dirt roads toward Wells, Nevada. Goose Creek and Duck Creek were shocking emerald oases meandering through low sage hills. They still seem like some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.
With a good Nevada ramble going, we crossed Interstate 80 to get back on gravel running between the eastern scarp of the Ruby Mountains and another lush expanse, the Ruby Marshes full of birds. The old Pony Express route took us onto a sketchier road west over Overland Pass. Down in the Huntington Valley it got weird. This old stage road ran through intense dust wallows. The finest silt like glacial till puddled up bone dry in low spots. Maybe thirty feet long and up to 8” deep. I had to get out and walk them like checking a stream crossing before gunning the old 36 horse engine and fishtailing through. Well we made it past several of those wallows, but the engine finally choked on silt and threw a bearing.
Now my John Muir (sic) Complete Idiot’s Guide to VW repair counseled that the first thing you should do when it breaks down is “get in back and ball your old lady.” Unfortunately, the bus would still run, a little. Fortunately, Claudia knew this guy living at a ranch at Steamboat, over toward Reno. So we limped west at 15 mph, max, with the little engine clanking and whining. It was a long ride at Pony Express speed to finally pull up in the yard of Steve McKinney.
With typical graciousness Steve welcomed us to his spread that had the whitewashed corrals of a former “horse property.” I pulled the engine and began scattering parts across the floor of a tack shed, but first we had to smoke a joint in the house and get to know each other. Steve was towering and lanky, restless with energy. Yet at the center of him was an amazingly calm. His piercing blue eyes would settle on you really curious, just hungry to suck wisdom out of you that maybe you’d forgotten you carried. And he was kind. Of course we could stay.
The rebuild dragged on and I went to work in a Reno ski shop to pay for it. An itinerant medical student named Louie showed up to live in our loft room. We pushed the bus parts aside, put in a wood stove, fixed up the tack shed and settled in for the winter.
One morning in the dim grey of first light a battered pickup with New Mexico plates pulled into the yard. I stumbled out of the tack shed pulling on my pants to see two big Indians dragging gunny sacks out of the back. Slit the sewn top and Peyote buttons poured out onto the floor. Fresh ones. We sat with paring knives at the fussy task of cutting out little tufts of white hairs that held most of the strychnine. Like cutting the eyes out of a potato, only the buttons were tougher, more fibrous. Then into the blender, crawl away to barf anyway, and the fresh day began to shimmer.
What could be more natural? I wandered out the back to get to know these new surroundings. We were half way between Reno and Carson City. The Post Office down off 395 said Steamboat, but the hot springs that lent the name were a mile away, steam escaping from rundown buildings. It seemed seedy and I never got a close look. West of us a creek ran out of the first ridges of the Sierra, enfolding an old mine. An apple orchard was going to seed, bordered by a wall of river stones.
Steve drove out mornings to go skiing. Often to Squaw Valley, where his family had another house. Bridwell was patrolling up there. Sometimes to the closer lifts this side of the Lake at Mt. Rose and Slide Mountain. Tagging along one day I quickly got schooled in world-class skiing. Now I had been around hot skiers for years. My partner skiing 250 miles of the Sierra Crest was Carl "Peanut" McCoy, a downhill specialist and alternate to the Men’s National Team. And I had lived awhile with Heidi Holmes, who ran second in downhill at the Junior Nationals.
None of that prepared me for the sheer power of Steve McKinney on skis. Here was the main face of a good sized ski area, and the full width of it was diced into the square bumps from a lot of skiers hacking around on the new short skis we disdained. Steve launched it in a huge arc that took in the whole run. The rest of us were picking our way through the bumps, but Steve just set a major trajectory without even looking at the bumps. It seemed like he was skimming right over the tops of them. I looked closer. Those steel-spring legs were actually pressing in and out of the hollows at warp speed, but so fast that at first you didn’t see it, seduced instead by the rock-steady arc of his upper body, serenely on course. I’ve never seen such power applied to snow with such grace, before or since.
Peter Markel was a Buddhist living with us. One morning he and Steve were up early and drove off into the storm. Three feet of fresh at Mt. Rose and they went east under the ropes. Peter was first into the steep gully and what he said about it later was, “The first two turns were worth it.” The second turn kicked off a good big slide, which sucked Peter down hundreds of feet and slammed him into some already shaking trees. His upper arm went right across a trunk and snapped. Steve skied down the debris, put Peter over his shoulder and broke trail out to the road. That was their only choice: call the patrol out of bounds, lose your pass. It was an adrenaline pumping haul for Steve.
Meanwhile the storm had settled down into the Valley and freezing rain turned 395 into a skating rink. Steve was driving Peter’s VW van toward the ER. Peter was sitting shotgun holding his broken Humerus, a pretty unusual and serious fracture, when he looked up to watch a semi coming toward them begin to lose it and drift into their lane. Watching it come at them, Peter’s thought was, “I can’t wait for the day that makes up for this one.” They got sideswiped pretty hard, putting the van out of commission. Minutes later Steve is working with the cops and there’s no ambulance so Peter folds his considerable frame into a tiny Triumph Spitfire for the ride to the ER.
Five minutes later I happened by on my way to work. Steve was OK so I hustled after Peter. He was all wrapped in blankets but shivering so violently he banged the steel table. I walked in and took his hand. Suddenly the color returned to his face and the shaking stopped. I’ve never seen such a dramatic leap out of shock. And all it took was lending a friendly hand.
Steve’s speed skis banged around the living room, and it was interesting to flex them and imagine how they worked to keep that abbreviated tip down on the snow or the ice at the speeds that were just edging past terminal velocity. Those skis are now on display, along with Snowshoe Thompson’s mailbag, at the cool ski museum up on Donner Summit.
The helmet was always underfoot too. It had twin fins that arose off the back of the head and got bigger as they ran down toward the upper back. Steve said that once sucked into as tight a tuck as possible, he could steer just a bit with those fins. The helmet was as big an advance as those new speed suits. A lot of respect went down for Dick Dorworth, who not so many years before had maxed out the record to as fast as a round helmet could go. Steve also said that the biggest danger was getting a hand just started away from the tuck, and demonstrated how the hundred plus mph wind pushing on a hand would have enough force to completely uncoil a tuck and blow up the run. His scariest moments were beginning to lose a hand, feeling the disaster start and using huge core strength and maybe a dose of that arm wrestling power to pull it back in.
The famous shot of him being carried on the shoulders of the crowd after his first record run at Cervinia was on the wall. Steve glanced at it and said, “That was pretty intense. I was on acid for the run and peaking right there in that picture.”
Steve’s girlfriend Linda really was almost too beautiful to believe. Also high maintenance at times, though Steve might have been too. Anyway, the house was pretty intense when they got into it. Amazingly high flow was the rule most of the time, which was remarkable if you thought about all the diverse intense people thrown in together seemingly at random though of course there was really little random about it. We attributed it to Jung who after studying the I Ching coined the word Synchronicity and who near the end of his life remarked at a dinner party: “This is the magic circle; here only the right guests meet”
Come spring Peter went to New Mexico, Louie moved on to a med school in the Caribbean, and I took Steve south to Bishop to ski on some bigger peaks. One day we tracked Basin Mountain with Tommy Simons, another speed skier. The overcooked corn was thick, deep and so wet you threw a rooster tail. Shroomin and inspired by the company I found myself skiing way faster than I actually could control, with my toes curled under as if to grip the skis and maintain a sense of...well, maintaining. That’s when I noticed a very large very solid granite boulder right in my trajectory. Adjusting my course without pulling an egg roll felt as delicate and as proud as pulling an escaped hand back into a tuck at warp speed.
When sage finally trumped snow we fell over laughing and Tommy jumped up on a rock, flapped his arms and cackled, “It’s a wild mountain GOOSE day!”
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Nov 19, 2007 - 11:56pm PT
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Doug, you still write about those days like no other. Except Dorworth brings it back like that, too. You guys are my mentors. Thanks for the Steve stories.
-PsychedelicJello
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 20, 2007 - 12:01am PT
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Hey Dr
That was fuking awesome. Just fuking awesome.
I felt I was right there reliving some of those days.
Carl McCoy was "Peanut" right?
Thanks man for taking the time to write ..........
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Nov 20, 2007 - 12:11am PT
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Thanks, both you guys. Got up at 3:00 this morning and couldn't wait to write about Steve some more. On a writing roll lately, and so inspired by Craig's thread to round out more word on this way Intenso Man.
Yeah Werner, you right. Now why didn't I think to just say "Peanut"? Story goes that when he first popped out his grandpa took one look and said, "That's not a kid, that's a peanut!" Guy never had a chance...
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captain chaos
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 20, 2007 - 03:05am PT
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Great story Doug, you brought back some great memories... every single one was spot on, you have managed to express the spirit, energy and magic of those times perfectly, simply put its the best recollection of those times and Stevie's spirit that I have ever seen, I can't thank you enough for that. I will print out a copy and keep it close to me so I can read it from time to time to remember our very special and gifted friend, and those great and magical times. The part you quoted from Jung described the circle of friends during those times perfectly... “This is the magic circle; here only the right guests meet” all of you guys were these guests and what a great time it was, I would change nothing... with a big heartfelt smile- Craig
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Yeti
Trad climber
Ketchum, Idaho
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Nov 20, 2007 - 12:02pm PT
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Thanks, Craig, for starting this. It is always a pleasure to remember Steve and to communicate with you. And it is wonderful to be reminded of old friends.....Steve, Kim, Carl, Doug, Claudia, Heidi, Galen, P-Nut, Jim, Linda, and so many others. The first time I met Steve he was in a bassinet at Sky Tavern Ski Area where his mother was teaching skiing. The last time I saw him was at the Squeeze Inn in Truckee where we had breakfast in the company of both his son and mine, less than a month before Steve died. In between were many miles, turns, climbs, conversations, adventures, good times, bad times, some craziness and much joy. He was a great friend and we are all fortunate to have had him in our lives. William Faulkner's truism comes to mind: "The past isn't dead, it isn't even past."....Yeti
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captain chaos
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 20, 2007 - 12:38pm PT
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Dick.. so glad to see you here, as you know you played a major role in Stevie's and my lives, you guided us along with great care and knowledge of the things you knew well, and had the insight to know we were heading straight into these things with no looking back... Thank you for being there for us, you've been a lifelong inspiration, tu fratello- Craig
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Nov 20, 2007 - 01:03pm PT
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Real nice read there DR,
So full of life’s texture.
And while the sum is greater than its parts (much greater), these were nice parts:
-Time was fluid then
-“I can’t wait for the day that makes up for this one.”
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Felix St. Clair-Renard
Social climber
Sweden
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Nov 25, 2007 - 08:55am PT
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First time I met Stevie was in Portllo 1978. Of the many things I remember from one crazy week was when I noticed that he had no gloves before he started on this run that became the first over 200 km/t and the new world speed record. I asked him why he was skiing bare-handed on a pretty radical slope with course summer snow that really can make a mess of your skin and he just told me that falling wasn't something he had planned on he's run.
Quite a few years later I skied with Stevie and Tamara in Chamonix after a nice storm and we realized the snow wasn't very stable and abandoned the line we wanted to ski and turned down a bit earlier than we had planned. We got a very nice run and after Stevie gave me a little stone eagle as a souvenir and told me it was he's favorite symbol that also protected him. After our run we found out that some skiers just behind us had taken the line we decided to skip and two of them got killed by an avalanche.
I'll never forget that first week with speedskiing in Chile and the epic bus ride back to Santiago after the race with all the amazing characters that I met and I ended up following the speed circuit for years and made a bunch of friends of which there are some that I had lots of fun with. Terry Watts that I shared room with is also tragically gone but with Craig, aka Captain Chaos, I still spend many nice moments every winter in Chamonix.
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