It stormed all night last night and into today. In fact, it started snowing even harder throughout the day with high winds reducing the visibility up on top of Snowmass’ blustery peak.  Low vis, high winds, dumping snow? Sounds like the Colorado Freeride Champs to me!

It seems that every year Aspen/Snowmass tries to run this competition, it is inevitably put on hold due to weather.  While new snow is never a bad thing, it draws out the pressure of a competition weekend for everyone involved.  While the big guns in competitive freeskiing are currently battling their own weather delay in Kirkwood at the North American Freeskiing Championships, the regional riders and first-time freeskiing competitors here in Aspen are confronting their own set of pressures and concern.

This competition over the years has seen a slew of shredders who have all made the leap from no-name greenhorns to FWT veterans with dozens of comps under their belt.  Many big names in competitive freeskiing earned their chops here at Snowmass first, before taking their skills to the road.  So you can bet there are a number of first time competitors who are losing sleep, two nights in a row now, over their respective line choices and the fears associated with a leap into this new realm.

And for us judges – Kiffor Berg, Buck Erickson, Riley Gessle, and myself – the delay means a juggling of venue choices, line scoring issues, and questions as to how we’re to stay warm during tomorrow’s forecasted blizzard.  Hopefully, we can start the comp tomorrow and avoid having to score the Champs as a one-run comp.  Yeeesh!

With a first run down the infamous Headwall/Angle Gully complete, the junior competition in Crested Butte is nearly indistinguishable from the adult competition, which is itself held only a few days later. Over seventy athletes representing the who’s who of freeskiing mecca’s in the North American continent – juniors aged 12 to 17 – converged on the rocky, punchy, skied-out venue to navigate through to a moguled run-out. As we have seen in recent years, the younger talents donning the freeskiing culture’s neon bibs are surely carrying the torch, exhibiting the fluidity and style we have come to appreciate as their natural understanding of the mountain’s undulations.

The fall-line, billygoat-to-straightline run-out technique of yesteryear is a fading standard, as kids are seeking takeoffs and landings where edge-to-edge control is pertinent to respecting the exposure below. Tricks are almost as much a completion of a well-executed turn, that soft pop accelerating the shift in direction into a smooth 360, as they are a maneuver calculated and trained for. Most of this terrain is read by eye only, and hasn’t undergone any inspection by any terrain park manager or liability advisor, which means that these juniors are using the skills they hone back at their respective home resorts to negotiate the varied snowy terrain. It is impressive to see the confidence they skied with into each feature, and how strong their landing legs were as the moguled finish tested them through to the very end.

Parker Olsen, the 16 year-old from Aspen, worked with me to find a good line through Angle Gully, and with a technical entrance and high-speed exit, it made for quite a ride. Parker skied clean, but had a little bobble (more like a hip-check) halfway through his run, and the judges definitely docked some points on that one. With a score of 28.37, Parker narrowly missed the cut for the next day’s final run, but he kept his head high and is counting this as a learning experience. Good thing too, because he’s entered into the Aspen/Snowmass Colorado Freeride Championships this weekend; his dad signed the parent release form so Parker can compete with the adults.

After a couple of days freeskiing the Butte and watching some of the junior and adult competition runs, we packed up and left for Aspen. Unfortunately, I missed out on some of the powder skiing from the recent storm due to a tooth/gum infection. After a delirious and stormy ride over McClure Pass back into the Roaring Fork Valley, we parted ways and I found myself hunkering down on my girlfriend’s couch with a raging pain in the side of my face. Five tooth extractions later, I am surviving on smoothies and vicodin, and preparing to judge the CO Freeride Champs tomorrow. Yeeeesh.

Sending 'er for the old TatsVan

You may or may not have heard of the old TatsVan.  She was a trusty wagon, fit for hauling adventurers of any capacity.  Her time was spent on the open road, in search of nasty road conditions, with which she proved her mettle time and time again.  The dings and dents, scratches and rust – she always took a beating with such grace – nothing could mask her innate ability to make friends and keep her seats filled with travelers of the ski and raft bum kind. 

Well, it’s been a few days since this year’s Telluride Freeskiing Open finished up and crowned new champions for the 2008 season. Griffin Post and Hannah Whitney each threw down a series of runs throughout the two-day event to solidify their spots at the top of the podium.

The big news of the weekend came out of Aspen, which Frankie and Pauldo (the gracious announcers) dubbed the “Ripper Factory” for all the talent that has recently been coming out of the woodwork. John Nicoletta and Adam Moszynski came in 2nd and 5th, respectively; it’s great to know that the people I get a chance to ski with on a regular basis can rip so hard AND do it when the pressure of a competition is on. So proud of you guys, and the rest of the Aspen crew will be out in force at the rest of the competitions for the season, so watch out for the “Ripper Factory” to set a new standard in your home ski area.

In other news, my first day run sent me into the air in a sideways hangtime and my dream of a successful weekend was cut short by a hard impact into the middle of the main gully of Genevieve (the first day venue).

The following video is the first episode in a series I like to call Man vs Mountain. Each episode will be one of my competition runs from the US Freeskiing Series this year. Enjoy!

Drew Tabke, America’s best hope for a running title in the Freeride World Tour, took on a strong finish in Sochi, Russia this past weekend. Finishing a strong second behind freeskiing and newschool skiing legend Henrik Windstedt, Tabke is well on his way to establishing himself as the future of this sport.

Check out the Freeride World Tour press release here. Yeah Tabke! So proud.