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Great Outdoor Games staff 19y

Day Two notebook

When a tree falls …

Sitting next to the timber stage is a death row for wood: a white, plastic tent where dozens of logs, spray-painted and numbered, wait in puddles for their turn under the axes and saws.

The ESPN Great Outdoor Games this year will use about 25 tons of cuttable wood, and it was all trucked in from Wisconsin by Kickaxe, a lumberjack forest consulting company that selects the trees, oversees their preparation and maintains them for the games.

The 80 blocks of sawing wood are Eastern white pine, from seven trees; the 152 blocks of chopping wood are big tooth Aspen.

The bottom 30 or so feet of a felled tree are sold for other purposes. The softer wood higher up is cut and groomed to eliminate knots, as much as possible. The logs are labeled by tree and section so they will be as similar as possible for each heat of an event.

"So you can't say, 'I drew the lemon block and my buddy over here got the pumpkin,'" said DJ Aderman, who along with Andy Bonicatto runs Kickaxe.

So the wood will stay relatively fresh and moist, it is kept in a makeshift pond under the tent. Wood chips are sprinkled atop the logs, to help trap the moisture, and periodically an event organizer will water the whole mess.

The water is recycled and hosed back on top of it, so the water won't turn the surrounding desert soil into mud.

Elevated heat

Women's Endurance gold medallist Peg Engasser said she wasn't bothered at all by Reno's 4,600-foot elevation.

"Some people have mentioned it, but I live at about 4,000 feet (in Cortland, N.Y.) so I didn't really feel it," she said. "The dry air probably bothered me. I've had some nosebleeds because it's so dry."

Both Engasser and silver medalist Michele Bolstad said the heat was more of a factor than the elevation.

"When you're breathing hard and you breathe in that heat, it makes it harder," Bolstad said after Thursday's semifinals.

Engasser said she was happy the gold medal contest started at 6 p.m., rather than in the heat of the day like the preliminary events did. The temperature on the timber stage Thursday was well over 100 degrees.

"I think it helped mentally," she said of the evening start. "I just stayed in the shade all day and just tried to stay cool."

Mistaken identity

Topwater bass fishing guru Zell Rowland was methodically working his Rebel Pop-R chug bait across the surface of Folsom Lake when the lure's forward motion was suddenly interrupted by a splash and slurp from below.

With a sweep of the rod, the hook was set and the fight was on.

Thinking the tug on the end of the line was a bass, he gingerly played it until the fish was near the boat. Much to his chagrin the fish was not a bass but a rainbow trout, which do not count in the scoring of the Bass Fishing event.

Fourth time not a charm

For Ed Smith, consistency is a bane.

For the fourth time in the four-year history of the Great Outdoor Games, the fourth-generation logger placed fourth in Tree Topping, losing in the bronze medal round by just more than four-tenths of a second.

"Fourth is starting to suck," Smith said.

Off season catch

The conventional textbook of bass fishing wisdom says that bass, like most other creatures, procreate during the springtime. Florida bass fishing pro Shaw Grigsby disproved that theory on Friday during the Bass Fishing event.

The fishing was so good that Grigsby's teammate Gary Klein mused the day would be complete if he could only visibly spot a spawning fish on the bed and ultimately put it in the boat.

Dismissing the comment as a joke, Klein was surprised to here his partner a few minutes later announce the joke was reality. Roughly 20 feet below their boat in the crystal clear water was a spotted bass on a nest.

Grigsby, a sight-fishing expert, free-spooled a drop shot rig to the spot and proceeded to catch the fish. The fish was boated and became part of the dynamic angling duo's seven-bass limit, the only complete catch of the day.

Youth & experience

Brian Bartow finished with a bronze medal in Tree Topping on Friday, on relatively little sawing training, but he's getting back into the groove. As recently as three weeks ago, his father, Steve Bartow, who finished eighth in the event, beat Brian in competition.

"Once he gets going, I'm not even in his league anymore," the elder Bartow said. "He's 24, I'm 52. It's hard to compete with that. Experience just don't go that far."

Big air, big leagues

At least two competitors in this year's ESPN Great Outdoor Games Big Air event are used to competing in big-time competition.

But rather than standing on a dock and directing their dogs through the air and into water, these handlers are more accustomed to standing on a mound of dirt and directing curve balls through the air in a baseball game

Milt Wilcox, handling Sparky, pitched for the Detroit Tigers for 12 years and Chris Litwin, handling Kiki, pitched for a while in the Atlanta Braves minor league systems.

No time to slip

Wade Stewart had a close call as he tried to tie off atop the 65-foot Tree Topping pole in the quarterfinals of the event Friday. His right spur slipped out of the tree, forcing him to scramble on the tie-off.

"A lot of guys might panic," he said after winning the silver in the event. "I'm used to once in a while working and something slips, and you don't panic."

Stewart climbs constantly in his tree service. So he's comfortable - at least comparatively, considering the peril.

"Just being on a tree all the time, some people don't have the luxury of that," he said.

Gaining altitude and recognition

The Great Outdoor Games is a prime vehicle for athletes in the outdoors to gain recognition in their respective disciplines.

That recognition started early for one Big Air competitor. Skeeter, a black Labrador handled by Terry Casey of Parker, Texas was featured on the front page of the Dallas Morning News Friday.

That's some fine recognition, but it wasn't limited to that. On the flight from Dallas to Reno, Skeeter was enjoying his "celebrity dog" status and riding in the cabin. Since the flight originated in Dallas, many of the travelers were reading the paper and began to recognize the Black Lab.

The paper was handed around and it wasn't long before everyone on the place was aware that a Big Air dog was on board.

The revelation went over so well that Skeeter was applauded as he de-planed.

Toe the line

Tree Topping gold medalist Greg Hart avenged his finals loss of last year by upgrading to a peg and raker saw, a quicker cut than his M tooth.

He regrets that the sport has become, to some extent, an arms race. But he also said he was tired of losing.

"Last year, Wade came up with this new saw and for the first time ever, he beat me sawing," Hart said. "And I knew it was because of that saw. And I hemmed and hawed about it.

"I always hate that, because traditionally lumberjack sports were the man against the man. You work together all day and its, 'Hey, I can outsaw you, I've been doing it all day.'"

Guy German, who pioneered the toe spurs that nearly every competitor now uses, said that in the 1980s, the M tooth surpassed the peg and raker in popularity. Now the peg and raker is back. So the improvements are nothing new.

"(Toe spurs were) one of those things that if you didn't adopt, you were going to put yourself at a distinct disadvantage," German said.

Even a purist such as Ed Smith can't ignore the modern gear.

"In high-powered shows like this, I have to resort to the toe spurs," said Smith, who regrets that the sport has gotten away from its roots. "I don't have a lot of experience with the toe spurs, but they definitely make a difference."

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