ACG FEATURE - PART TWO

MONTY MAYKO INTERVIEW

So were you wearing those heavy European style boots in the early days? 
I was indeed. The breakthrough for me was a very challenging mountain on the British coast and it was the first time I took a pair of Magmas, which were half the weight of the traditional hiking boots. They were light enough to stick them in your pack then put on your rock shoes and climb. You’d save so much energy and they were the ones where I went ‘Bang! This is really different!’ This was before I’d started at Nike so I knew they were onto it. John Roskelly was an example of athletes almost shouting at you ‘You need to do something!’ He was right.

When did you start going out to Moab?
I probably started going in 1980. We went through a phase of boys’ weekends over there. Everybody enjoyed doing a little bit of everything. Tinker was one of those, and his brother, Tobie. I can remember the typical weekend, we would all try and do it as cheaply as we could. The goal was to go down there and back for $250. We’d split the car and the food and ship the bikes down. We’d get to Salt Lake City at night and then we’d pile into a rental car and we would habitually cheat and lie about how long it would take. I’d say ‘oh, we should budget five hours!’ They’d say, ‘I did it last time in four hours’. And the gauntlet would be thrown. People would be racing through the desert at 90 miles an hour.

I thought of another story when I saw Tobie the other day, how he told me when he was little his grandpa had his eye poked out by a bear. Tinker’s listening to this story and you know brothers, he says, ‘Are you crazy? (Everyone laughs). That never happened!’ And they’d argue back and forth. Tobie claims it’s all technically true. You need those long road trips for male bonding. The very, very first boys weekend was the one that you have the picture of.