No Sticks with Julie Zell
Late afternoon, April 1994 at Tsaina Lodge in Valdez, AK. The Jones brothers, cameras in hand, are gearing up to capture footage for their first Teton Gravity Research film. I’d just earned my first crown—“Queen of the Hill”—and the Joneses, with their raw enthusiasm, convinced me to come along. I agreed, but with one condition: “I need a warm-up run.” Truth was, the residuals of celebration from the previous night’s award ceremony still lingered—brain fog, legs loaded with lactic acid.
I had only ever been on one heli run before. It was just a few days prior, for the comp. That included visual inspection, photos and a terrain selection that supported a full field of athletes. This was not going to be like that.
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