On a cold day in early March, Laurie Lambert & Sylvester “Sly” Coons ran the 2009 U.S. National Snowshoe Championships. The 10k course at the base of Mount Hood in Oregon, received 18 inches of powder the night before the race! Lambert finished 7th of 36 women with a time of 1:03.41 & Coons edged out a couple Oregonians with a time of 50.18 to place 10th of 69 men. Both earned silver in their age divisions!

We met these great athletes for the first time at the 2007 Kahtoola Snow or No, and we were happy to see them again at our 2008 event at the Flagstaff Nordic Center. The Kahtoola Snow or No is an USSSA Championship Qualifying Event.

Summit of Denali
North America's Highest Peak
Summit #5 - Ad Alta!
On June 19, 2008, 11 year-old Jordan Romero climbed to the top of Denali, after waiting out a storm that sent many people down the mountain. Jordan used his FLIGHTsystem all the way to the camp at 11,000 feet, where he changed into mountaineering boots and KTS.  "I used the crampons all the way to the summit.  They are great!  They helped me climb up some really crazy steep climbs and traverses.  My crampons never came loose and I really appreciate how lightweight they are." Jordan is on track to become the youngest person in the world to climb the Seven Summits. Learn more about this amazing young man at jordanromero.com.

Congratulations to Deia Schlosberg & Gregg Treinish for finishing their amazing trek! To the best of our knowledge, they are the first people to backpack the length of the Andes Mountain range! On April 17, 2008, after 7,500 miles, Gregg & Deia made it to Cabo San Pío, the southern-

most point of Tierra Del Fuego. Kahtoola was pleased to provide our KTS to these intrepid adventurers. Please check out their website, acrosstheandes.com, for journal entries, photos and videos of their nearly 2-year journey!

Mindy Bell, a science teacher at Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy, will join a research team in Antarctica to study marine life below the sea ice. She was selected as one of 15 educators nationwide to participate in PolarTREC, a program designed to involve teachers in cutting-edge research and sharing their experiences with students and the public.

Mindy will spend 6 weeks of the Antarctic spring with Dr. Stacy Kim and her team from Moss Landing Marine Laboratory in California. The researchers will be based at McMurdo Station, the hub of American scientific activity on the coldest, driest, and windiest continent on earth. They will venture out daily onto the sea ice in their extreme-weather clothing to deploy an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) to study unusual invertebrates that live on the seafloor. Follow Mindy’s scientific adventures through the PolarTREC website.