TPM Episode 321: Mike Marolt, Ski Mountaineer, US Ski Hall of Fame Member
The Powell Movement
Mike Powell
4.9 • 860 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2023
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While Mike Marolt is a US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame Member and a badass ski mountaineer, he never really had a pro ski career. He makes his money as a CPA. Ski-wise, Mike did so many incredible things, at high altitudes-without using oxygen, sherpa, or drugs, but he was always treated like Rodney Dangerfield. He and his crew never got the respect they deserved. On the podcast, we talk about the Marolt family roots in Aspen, his identical twin brother, college baseball, and his incredible resume full of American firsts in ski descents, and more.
Mike Marolt Show Notes:
5:00: Hunter S. Thompson's rocket, Jennifer Aniston, Michael Jordan, and his dad, the Olympian
12:00: Aspen's dark event, having an identical twin, Independence Pass in the summer with his dad, and the Aspen School District Outdoor Education Program and trip
22:15: Best Day Brewing: All of the flavor of your favorite IPA or Kolsch, without the alcohol, the calories, and sugar.
Elan Skis: Over 75 years of innovation that makes you better
24:15: Climbing at Kastle Peak at least 300 times, Jeeps, and being a clean-cut, church-going kid who drank beer
37:00: College baseball, studying accounting, the unwritten rules of climbing from his era, Denali, Logan, and learning how to suffer
38:00: Stanley: Get 30% off sitewide with the code drinkfast
Peter Glenn Ski and Sports: Over 60 years of getting you out there
40:00: First trip to Asia with Ed Viesturs, his first time above 20,000 feet, and Ed inspiring him to bring skis on future trips
49:00: Not cool enough for big-time ski or climbing sponsorships, getting enough hate online that there was a betting pool against them living through Shishapangma, and people questioning him (and his group) being the first North American to ski an 8000-meter peak
55:00: Going got Everest with a chip on their shoulder, how not getting it impacted them, climbing, Choy Oyo pure style and Everest not fully pure style, and then his thoughts on supplemental oxygen (which he doesn't use)
67:00: Not bring his skis on the summit bid, getting stuck in lines, and then getting cold and turning around
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have a seat on your porcelain throne. |
| 0:02.3 | It's time to talk some shit on the Powell Movement. |
| 0:13.5 | Welcome to the Powell Movement. |
| 0:17.1 | I'm your host Mike Powell, |
| 0:18.4 | and this week, if you didn't watch Travis Rice's Natural Selection |
| 0:21.8 | event, you missed out on the best event in snow. |
| 0:25.2 | The venue that they had at Revelstoke was absolutely mind-blowing. |
| 0:28.9 | So many features and so much snow, and the format and the coverage of natural selection |
| 0:33.0 | is second to none. |
| 0:34.5 | I mean, the infrastructure that they're creating in the middle of the backcountry |
| 0:37.6 | is so incredible, and it's really a credit to the vision and the attention to detail that always |
| 0:43.2 | happens when Travis Rice is involved in a project. There are just some people who are cut from a |
| 0:47.8 | different cloth, and they always deliver above and beyond what is expected of them. Travis |
| 0:52.2 | Rice is that guy. While there are arguably |
| 0:55.1 | skiers that have the kind of talent that Travis has, no one seems to have the vision or drive that |
| 1:00.1 | he does. The force that is Travis Rice single-handedly has done more than anyone in the past decade |
| 1:05.6 | to keep snowboarding awesome. And oh yeah, on top of that, he won his own event, which was expected, but the line |
| 1:12.9 | that Travis took, well, it just shows what a talented madman that Travis Rice is. If you didn't |
| 1:18.4 | see the event, I highly recommend checking out the replay, although there is nothing quite like |
| 1:23.7 | seeing it live and free on the internet. So while Travis Rice is everything that is |
| 1:28.1 | cool and great in snowboarding, my guest this week is a guy that should have been a bigger name in |
| 1:32.6 | the outdoors and especially ski mountaineering, but he wasn't cool enough. And while that's purely speculation, |
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