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Transcription of a fragment of an unpublic interview with Kurt “Mountain Man” Steiner. Date unavailable.
KS: How did I get involved in the stone skipping world? That’s a good question because it’s all a coincidence. I never took it seriously, My father taught me to skip when I was 3 years old on the Connecticut River. I saw him pick up a little rock and kind of whip it sidearm fashion, I was trying to replicate what my father did. I usually got two skips max. Yeah, it’s embarrassing to admit that. Stone skipping was just a fun thing to do to kill some times.
February 7th, 2010, about eleven in the morning, the river was still very foggy. They were building this power plant on the other side of the river, they just finished constructing two towers but I could barely see them. I threw my stones about 90 degrees into the water, far from the 20 degrees magic angle, and it couldn’t sink, it kept jumping on the river, it couldn’t stop, I kept throwing stones in different shapes. I rolled one huge boulder to the side of the river, so heavy that I couldn’t even lift it up. [gasp] It was still fucking skipping across, oh man!
Immediately I heard this huge explosion, I looked up and I saw the flames and smoke. Ohh, it was devastating, I must have passed out after I got hit by the blast of sound, when I woke up I found myself lying next to the water, all my clothes were soaking wet. I couldn’t tell whether I was being rescued and pulled out of the Connecticut River or the water splashed on me.
Stones stopped sinking in my hand after that day, so I went professional the next year to earn some money. First I competed in some regional matches and slowly went international, well then you probably know everything after that.
KS: How did I get involved in the stone skipping world? That’s a good question because it’s all a coincidence. I never took it seriously, My father taught me to skip when I was 3 years old on the Connecticut River. I saw him pick up a little rock and kind of whip it sidearm fashion, I was trying to replicate what my father did. I usually got two skips max. Yeah, it’s embarrassing to admit that. Stone skipping was just a fun thing to do to kill some times.
February 7th, 2010, about eleven in the morning, the river was still very foggy. They were building this power plant on the other side of the river, they just finished constructing two towers but I could barely see them. I threw my stones about 90 degrees into the water, far from the 20 degrees magic angle, and it couldn’t sink, it kept jumping on the river, it couldn’t stop, I kept throwing stones in different shapes. I rolled one huge boulder to the side of the river, so heavy that I couldn’t even lift it up. [gasp] It was still fucking skipping across, oh man!
Immediately I heard this huge explosion, I looked up and I saw the flames and smoke. Ohh, it was devastating, I must have passed out after I got hit by the blast of sound, when I woke up I found myself lying next to the water, all my clothes were soaking wet. I couldn’t tell whether I was being rescued and pulled out of the Connecticut River or the water splashed on me.
Stones stopped sinking in my hand after that day, so I went professional the next year to earn some money. First I competed in some regional matches and slowly went international, well then you probably know everything after that.
