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NYT:
JACKSON, Wyo. — When the mighty elk herds of the West were facing the possibility of extinction from overhunting, settlement and neglect a century ago, people here stepped forward and began what has turned out to be a profound biological experiment.They offered food to the straggling survivors.
NYT story on the mighty Mt. Washington:
Our destination on this cloudy mid-December morning was the top of Mount Washington in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire. At 6,288 feet, Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeast. Thousands of hikers make the ascent in warmer months, most often starting, as we did, at the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Pinkham Notch Visitor Center on the east side of Mount Washington. In winter, the four-mile hike to the summit, which gains about 1,000 feet of elevation with each mile, attracts a hardier lot.But it’s not the height or the steepness of the mountain that impresses most people — it’s the weather. The mountain has a long and infamous reputation: Hurricane-force gusts are typically recorded several times a week in winter, with the winds topping 100 miles an hour at least weekly. In 1934, the Mount Washington Observatory measured the fastest wind speed recorded on the earth’s surface, a stunning 231 m.p.h.
$$$$:
No sport packs as much into eight seconds as bull riding. In Baltimore, the winner, Kasey Hayes, rode for 24 seconds and earned $28,370. That is a pay rate of more than $4.25 million an hour — as if anyone could ride the 1,500-pound likes of Chief of Staff, Walk the Line or El Presidente for an hour, or would want to. Snyder rode a total of 11.3 seconds, earned nothing, and was left to hope — and wait — for better results at Madison Square Garden this weekend. But waiting is what bull riders do most. After his first ride in Baltimore, Snyder had almost exactly 24 hours to think about his second one. First, he had to get rid of the headache.Snyder is a 26-year-old from Raymore, Mo., with a black hat, a dignified air and a nose reconstructed a few years ago by a surgeon who used Snyder’s driver’s license as a guide. That procedure followed a head-to-head run-in with a bull — a brutally common collision known among riders as being jerked down or, more graphically, dashboarded.He was the tour’s 2001 rookie of the year, earning $348,560.54 the season he turned 19. He is now known in bull-riding circles for an ironman streak of 236 consecutive P.B.R. events. Part of each event is killing time between rounds.