Name: Kim Reichhelm, Extreme Skier, on Letterman, April 26, 1990
Uploaded: 2017-12-06T18:21:14.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Kim Reichhelm, Extreme Skier, on Letterman, April 26, 1990' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-12-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Kim Reichhelm, Extreme Skier, on Letterman, April 26, 1990' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-12-06. Transcript available.

i want you to watch this after several years as a member of the united states
ski team and a
professional racer look at this our next guest became one of the understandably
small number
of men and women who practiced the art of extreme skiing was that it was that
it uh ladies and
gentlemen please welcome extreme skier kim reichhelm okay now i know so we we
had to work uh the word
extreme into your introduction five or six times so people would understand
this is not normal skiing or
cross-country skiing this is something beyond what we may be accustomed to is
that correct that is
correct and the clip that you showed is not normal either now tell us about
that where was that and
that was you and were those was that rented equipment that was at squaw valley
in california is that the
the best place for this kind of skiing well in the united states it's one of
the best places the
california sierra mountains have great you know extreme vertical terrain right
and so it's really
you skate up to skate up ski up to a drop off and then just kind of toss
yourself down is that is that
it well yeah you don't toss yourself down but you have to change your ski to be
at the same vertical
that the train is so that you land and don't wipe out like i did in the shot we're
gonna look at some
more uh film of you skiing here and just i guess you can tell us what we're
looking at that's
this is brutal remarkable i have to keep watching this one minute ago now were
you injured when that
happened i um i hit my head in that when i when i fell through those rocks what
happened was i jumped
into the train and the snow broke out from underneath me and i started tumbling
and because the terrain was
so i don't know what that means you keep saying train what is that terrain oh
terrain i'm sorry
but it's like the metro north you just well you can either ski down or get in
the train
uh um uh and okay and we have more footage of this three more and i don't know
let's let's just
take a look at all the footage we have here of this uh with uh greg stomp
productions filming a movie
license oh no man now how fast are you going there when you hit the tree i wasn't
really going very
fast but it didn't matter because the tree didn't move yeah uh and you were you
injured badly in that
spill no i wasn't i really i was not injured at all when i hit the tree
actually there's some audio
in that shot and i was laughing because i've spent my most of my career ski
racing and the fact that i
misjudged the turn and hit the tree was pretty funny and luckily that that i
wasn't hurt i was
the difficult part of that maneuver was after the tree and into a gully and
then i was supposed to
do a re-entry move and my concentration was beyond the tree and i was looking
at um the maneuver that
i had to make after the tree so i wasn't really looking at the tree and i
thought i was going to
miss it now if you skated uh excuse me if you have skied competitively uh on
teams in in college and
uh i guess is it world cup is that the what we're competing uh and it's all
downhill and maybe slalom
that kind of thing uh why then are have you moved on to this because this is
not a an ongoing
series of competitions per se is it no it's not what happened was when i
retired from ski racing i really
wanted to continue to challenge my skiing so i challenged it through more
difficult terrain yeah
but i mean but also it looks like you could really get yourself hurt pretty
badly here can you
make any money at this um extreme skiers some of them do the guys that ski with
um warren miller
and greg stump make some money some of the people who shoot those films that we
always see right the
film that i was shooting licensed to thrill with uh stump productions they we
make some money now do we
have some more film hey what a surprise here we go show us and tell us what
this is this is uh the palisades
at squaw valley one of the first days we're shooting the most difficult part
about making these films is
these are these are the first turns of the morning so you don't have a whole
lot of time to to warm up
first turns of the morning meaning you're meaning this is about um seven o'clock
in the morning before
any of the lifts up now but you you have injured yourself haven't you i mean
you hurt some knee or
thigh muscle yeah i did i have been hurt skiing um i blew out my knee last year
now are there other
women doing this there aren't very many women doing this i think that what
happens is a lot of women get
involved in competition and then once they're done with the u.s ski team they
move on to other things if
they want to pursue in their life yeah i am stayed in the ski industry i
produce a series of promotions
for women called the k2 women's ski adventures so i'm skiing all the time i'm
involved in the industry
so i have an opportunity to ski quite a bit but at one point aren't you going
to look back on this
and say man i'm nuts i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna go into skating i don't know that
seems to be pretty dangerous also
um yeah well uh do you have uh trouble with chapped lips
uh and you're also a windsurfer i understand that's right yeah pretty good at
that where do you
do most of your windsurfing i live up in the columbia river gorge area that's
beautiful up there it is
it's an ideal life yeah i would guess living there it would be hard to believe
that the rest of our
planet might be in trouble yeah well the trees are going away are they really
oh yeah where do they
go they're they're going to japan from what i understand really souvenir
hunters yeah uh pleasure
to meet you congratulations on uh your knees
is this we'll be right back here folks
nice to see you thank you how do the men who do this react to you do they do
you get along all
right with them they're very supportive they are they've taught me a lot
working with those guys a
lot and they don't want to see you they don't dare you to do dumb things oh no
and they discourage
me yeah they help me a lot good for you uh my thanks uh to kim who is right
here and also timothy
up and by the way uh preludge to a kiss at the helen hayes theater on broadway
what is this it's
a play he's doing is he doing it now oh right now it's currently in production
so if you're over
there go see it uh tomorrow night on the show carol burnett and the cowboy junkies
good night everybody
Thank you.