IFSA National Freeride Event Crystal March 16-17

Hey TAY brothas and sistas. It's been fun to share with you the adventures of Freeride comps and big mountain skiing. Of course, it can look like it is all glamorous but that is hardly case, as is true with our sport. Sure those pics and vids of us skiing down virgin powder slopes make it look BC skiing is quite glamorous. What is missing is the sweaty pic of us on the way up.

Well the truth of course is that there are a lot of early mornings, filling out liability forms, getting registered online and at the venue, inspecting a run that you either really WANT to just ski or really DONT want to ski (haha), sitting around waiting for the fog to lift, getting cold, hiking as many of the venues are start from the top not traverse line, waiting for more fog to clear and well, so on and so on.

And surely sometimes things do not go your way. This past weekend we experienced just that. After a bit of the proverbial cluster due to the changing weather and fog, Graham and I spied an excellent line yet decided to get risky. One of the challenges, yet very fun, is guessing just how aggressive to get. For example, it is easy to be more conservative the 1st day during qualifiers then "go for it" the next in the finals.

Yet I also sometime underestimate Graham's ability and realized that last week in Squaw. He made the big hit look easy in the Finals and he could have gone bigger. So as noted, we decided to get really aggressive for a variety of reasons.

Well, things didn't go so well. We decided on a pretty big hit right at the top of the venue and then added a 360 to really spice it up. No one had done it, and it would have scored well, like the really big 720 that G was going to try at the bottom of the venue...........if he made i there. :'(

He did not. In fact he blew up on the first hit in the first 3 seconds of his run.......and we were done for the weekend!!!! LOL.

My video technique still sucks and was a bit grainy this past time due to the flat light. Interestingly enough it was picked up by an old sports expose show that we all know and placed in to their intro. Really kind of cool, check out this link:



:>) Ok I couldn't resist. Needless to say it was the agony of defeat.

My actual video is no longer then those 3 seconds in the video. Oh well.

Yet happy to report that Graham has qualified for the JFT World Championships coming up April 3-7 in Snowbird. A large contingent of skiers are coming from Europe and it should be a lot of fun. Look forward to giving you all one more report to end the year, hopefully with good results!!!

pnw crew i know had a tough go as well last weekend, hope the boy rebounds Griff.

free riding on sunday just father & son right? twas a fine o day indeed.
bF

pnw crew i know had a tough go as well last weekend, hope the boy rebounds Griff.

free riding on sunday just father & son right? twas a fine o day indeed.
bF

You got it bro, just free riding on Sunday and man did it feel really good just to ski and ski and ski. I told that to Graham that morning........."sure feels good just to ski". We needed it.

That also played in to our decision making the day before. We decided it would not be a completely bad thing to get risky and if we lose, get to free ski the next day. The bonus was the big punch of great snow!!!

Day one is always the toughest run to strategize. The goal is always to ski on day 2, and ideally if you can qualify in top 10 on day 1 you have a good chance of seeing the view from the podium in the finals. Gotta go big but low risk, build line score and save your uber-steeze for the finals.

PNW crew didn't do badly at all at xtal last weekend. We had a 6th place finish in 12-14 boys, and our 15-18 year olds who qualified moved WAY up to stay in the top 15 in the finals. Unfortunately we had one of our young ladies suffer a pretty good crash and some significant but recoverable injuries. We wish her well.

Those results may not sound that great but one must realize that in those young men's age groups in IFSA events there are typically 50-60 competitors from all over the west in each age group on day 1. Usually about half of them qualify for day 2. A significant portion of those are kids who ski with coaches in structured big mountain program training 5-7 days a week as part of ski academy programs.

With all that in mind our young xtal crew deserves huge props for doing as well as they do. They work their butts off and compete on an incredibly high level. We even see a podium from time to time, and the dad/lad time we get is priceless.

The skiing last weekend at Crystal from all the finalists was absolutely off the charts going huge and fast in Bear Pits and of the Throne. Some of the deepest fields and strongest, smartest, REAL big mountain skiing I've ever seen. It just keeps getting better every year.

LBNL, most of the xtal crew got the call for the IFSA finals in Revelstoke in 2 weeks. It'll be around 300 of the best young skiers around. Film at 11.

Hey bro congrats on the great results this past weekend. There was a large a contingent in all age groups and both male and female which was really cool. Agreed that any top 10 is a great result, and also agree that these kids are some of the best skiers around.

And YES, some really fun to watch skiing. I actually hung out and watched from the top of Saturday which was a great view of the outrageous stuff.

(((((((Healing vibes)))))))))) to your injured skier!!

Nice on the Revy invite!! That's awesome, good luck to all up there and cant wait to see some vid!!