Even though as the crow flies, the postage-stamp town of Tenna, Switzerland, isn't far from historic resorts like St. Moritz and Davos, Tenna is a one-horse town, one-shop, one-school, and one t-bar town. And that t-bar, the only ski lift in the whole valley, was on its last legs. But rather than let it die, locals raised enough money to update it and then went a step further: They built the world's first solar-powered ski lift.More on GrindTV: Snowboarder survives avalanche thanks to airbag
It's more than solar-powered, in fact -- it's a smart investment. The Tenna lift generates 90,000 kilowatts a year, or three times the juice needed to run the lift, and the extra power goes back into the grid, which makes money for the town, which can pay residents back.
So what happens to the 82 solar "wings" when it dumps? Not a problem, because they rotate to follow the path of the sun in the sky and can be tilted to perpendicular during a storm, so there's no load and the snow slides right off.
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At $1.5 million, the project wasn't cheap, but considering the cost of a new or updated lift anyway, plus the open skies above most ski lift pathways, it's a no-brainer to use that area to offset the energy use. Other resorts might not gain 300 percent efficiency as in Tenna, where their modest lift shuttles 800 folks an hour and has a fraction of the energy requirements of, say, a high-speed quad, but if the offset is even a quarter of the energy used for shuttling people uphill, that's a lot less carbon going up in smoke. - Michael Frank
Starkell, who died Saturday at 79 after a struggle with cancer, was as famous for his stubborn demeanor and frankness as he was for his many remarkable exploits.
Paddling was tantamount to freedom for Starkell, who was orphaned as a child and raised in foster homes. At one of the homes was a canoe, and Starkell recalled that his first paddling excursion was on a creek that flooded in the spring.
Patagonia ambassador and store employee, 
s to experience and learn about the landscapes and cultures of the regions, as well as, to see how they can share their understandings of the current environmental, social, and economical happenings throughout. 
Tuesday afternoon the snow community was hit with the shocking news that one of their own had been seriously injured. Sarah Burke was training at a Monster Energy training camp in the Eagle Superpipe in Park City, Utah when she took a severe fall injuring her head. Witnesses say that Burke spun a 540, landed it at the bottom of the pipe, then "whip-lashed sideways" from her continued inertia. She was air-lifted from the site and taken to a hospital in Salt Lake City where she is currently in a coma.