GLOBAL COOLING: Clif Bar SOS Roadtrip Takes Message to Utah
The Clif Bar Save Our Snow (SOS) Winter Roadtrip officially started in the mountains this past weekend in Utah.
Saturday morning we pulled up to Alta in the SOS Roadtrip’s veggie-powered RV, our home for the next month, to a warm reception from Connie Marshall, Director of PR and Marketing for Alta. Connie and Clif Bar have a long relationship–-including partnering on renewable energy credits to power the resort’s lifts with wind power. She directed us to park on the snow at the base of the Wildcat lift, where we set up. Hundreds of skiers came by the booth for free samples of organic Clif Bars, to buy Cool Tags to offset their ski area commute, and to talk with us about saving our snow. The people we met seemed excited to help, and I was pumped to hear what they were currently doing to decrease their own carbon footprints.
Alta is one of my favorite resorts of all-time. I managed to sneak a run in on High Rustlers and Greeley with a group of young rippers, but that was it for the day. Saturday evening brought my Global Cooling Ski Adventure Show to the Our Lady of the Snows–-the chapel/recreation center for the town of Alta. Mike Parziale, our RV owner and founder of greaseNotGas.com, kicked off the show with his own movie about veggie oil and his roadtrip last season for Snowboarder Magazine. The crowd laughed their way through his adventures with broken starters, bent drive shafts, and his $8.40 roadtrip across the country—secretly I winced, knowing what lay ahead for our own Roadtrip. By the time my turn came around at the mike, the crowd was munching pizza and drinking beer, and fired up enough to stay through two broken projectors (we are hardcore!) as we completed the first Global Cooling Ski Adventure Show, sharing practical tips from Clif Bar on simple steps we all can take to address global warming.
The late night was followed by a 6 a.m. start in the veggie rig. A Sundance Film Crew trailed our every move as we set up at the base of the half-pipe competition at Park City Mountain Resort. Crowds were strong again, but of course, the outfits were more refined and trendy, it being Park City. Brent Giles, director of Mountain Operations at the resort, joined our shoot for a tour of the greening of the mountain. We toured the wind powered 6 pack lifts, the energy efficient fan-powered snowmaking system, the bio diesel snow cats, and the new energy efficient night lights. Park City has also partnered with ICLEI and the Cities for Climate Protection to conduct a resort wide carbon footprint analysis.
The film crew followed my every move all day long, except into the bathroom, leaving me little time to get some skiing in. I snuck away for a few steep, chalky-turns on McConkey’s, but then had to sprint to the veggie-mobile to get ready for another evening show, this time at Park City’s swanky Sidecar Bar. Sleek red leather couches cradled the attentive audience, with prizes from Clif Bar, Patagonia, Pistil and MSR given out for the enviro-trivia game at the end of the show. Finally we crawled; exhausted, to the RV and roll-started our way down Main Street to help save the starter....More on the starter is coming up in the next update.
