Junior Freeride Tour World Championships Snowbird

Hi TAY community. Sorry for the delay with this post, was on the road 20 out of 25 days in April.

The JFT World Championships were held April 3-6 at Snowbird, UT. Again, I have to start by giving huge props to all the folks who organized the event. The JFT folks, and the venues for the events (Crystal, Squaw and Snowbird), did a great job creating both a fun and professional environment for the athletes to compete and perform their best. And needless to say I saw a lot of great skiing by some of the best Freeskiers in the world.

The Snowbird event had a good sized contingent of athletes from Europe (25 or so), most of which were either French or Swiss, with a few other countries thrown in. That, plus the fact that Snowbird has a regular stream of Euros who ski there, made for a true international flair.

One significant challenge with Freeride comps that I have not really addressed is……….the weather. It goes without saying that the lines these kids are skiing down are best served with good light, just from a safety perspective let alone performance. Of course in addition, the runs cannot be judged when shrouded in fog. That actually makes our mountains (Cascades) an only ok venue because we got so much fog and flat light.

Well, spring time in Snowbird has fog too, and some serious weather. Thus as we awoke on Friday for the first day of qualifying, we were met with a snowstorm. So picture 50+ teenage athletes and another 100 adults all hanging in a room at the Lodge waiting for the storm to clear. A lot of energy there!!

Finally at around noon the weather started to lift and we all headed up to the venue. And for the next 2 hours we had mostly decent weather and most of the athletes got to hit their run. EXECEPT for about 8 boys, including Graham. We all sat there for the next 2.5 hours waiting for an opening, but alas it was not to be.

That then made for a really hard Saturday as the 8 boys who did not compete had to wake up and literally get on the tram, ski no more then about 200 feet (not vert, linear) to the start of the run with no warm up at all. NONE. Then ski a freakin’ crazy line. Hard stuff.

Graham came out of the shoot ok, but by the middle of his run his was skiing very conservatively. That was strange as he likes to “mob” his way down just about any run. We both use ski tracker apps and he routinely hits 60+ mph and I can’t seem to get above 30. LOL. Check out this vid and you see him just kind of casually coming down, not making big swooping turns like normal. Well, that was just not a good scene for Graham, who needs a warm up to get the juices flowing. In fact I was thinking to myself I could be skiing down faster than him right now. And I could tell he lost his flow.

sdrv.ms/107I1UR

Which might have been a problem other then the big 45 foot hit he had lined up for the last hit. He took off good but ended up a foot short and his tails hit some rocks and flipped him. Game over. The afternoon prior, a French dad was drinking a Rainier beer after his son crashed too. He looked at me and said “we just flew 9 hours and spent $2000 to see a fall, so I now I have a beer”. LOL. Man I could have used one right then too but it was 8:30 AM.

Even worse, it left us with virtually no inspection time on the Finals run. So in the 20 minutes that we had to do the inspection, we decided to be conservative and chose a line of the nose the blond cliffs and not over them (the winner took that line). Yet when G hit them it rolled on him and landed him directly on rocks below, knocking the wind out of him and injuring his shoulder. Big OUCH!!

So a really tough weekend, as in the span of 3 hours Graham had crashed on rocks twice. He’s just fine so all good there, but our egos sure are badly bruised. LOL.

Yet, as always, good comes from everything. Certainly we will be more prepared next year.

Even better though, we did find our inspiration for next year. So as I was skiing down to the bottom of the venue that Saturday morning I needed to make a quick trip to the trees and practice my “dangulation” (pee). So I headed in to a group of trees and realized I had stumbled across one of those places on the mountain that is great for many things, like medicine applications.

And better yet, posted on a tree was picture of a bro that was obviously legendary at Snowbird, Stu O’Brien, who apparently was an excellent mogul skier in the 70s and 80s. Stu passed away in the 90s but his legend lives on in the woods at Snowbird. How cool is that??

So check out Stu’s Rules of Skiing. Classic. Words to live by folks!!! LOL. Peace and I will look forward to reporting when next year comes about.

Awesome Griff -- you guys had a hell of a season. Sorry it ended the way it did, but as you say you'll be better next year because of it.

Heh -- Go Big or Go Home -- love it.

Thanks a lot Marcus, much appreciated. It was a great first year and am looking forward to next year now that we skied some of the venues and will have some lines ready to go.

Best part was having a lot of fun and watching these kids do incredible things. The scene is great and these really are a bunch of good kids.

My bad as I also should have given a few shout outs to some of those athletes. First off Skylar Scheid out of Sugar Bowl laid down the best line of the day and IMHO his season right out of the gate on Friday hitting a cliff at top the G and I looked but decided was too risky the first day.

Then, in the finals the following day and skiing last since he was in 1st place, Skylar started his run normally then veered far lookers left to an area where none had gone before. Before you know he comes out at above a 70-80 foot drop, pauses just for a second, the freakin leaps off.

I, out of plain old fear, yelled no. He looked good but he too just barely caught some rocks (it was thin in Snowbird this year) and got flipped, otherwise I think he would have made it. He was okay which was the first concern. Crazy kid that I saw try and pull off some crazy things.

Next is Sam Schwartz out of Jackson who won. He had a great weekend and killed his final run going over the blonde cliffs and landing like it was nothing then hitting a nice fast line out the Ampitheater. It was awesome.

And really to all the athletes, it was great stuff.

welcome back, thanks for the update on G, i will show Q the vid.