freeskiing world tour

the freeskiing world tour is a ski competition that has 6 stops throughout the ski season this year the tour hit: la parva, chile / revelstoke, canada / telluride, colorado / crested butte, colorado / kirkwood, california / snowbird, utah. i have watched the tour when it has come to snowbird many times and this year i decided i wanted to enter the qualifying event at snowbird. my friend cait talked me into entering the one at telluride too. a week before telluride, i chickened out and decided not to go. competing for the first time at a mountain i had never been to before got to my nerves. i worked all season both in the gym and on the mountain to improve my skiing and i would say i did. maybe not to a competitive enough level, but i definitely improve.

without getting into too much detail, the comp works likes this. there is a start gate, and a finish gate, and a boundary of where you can ski. you decide where you want to ski between the start and finish and are judged on 5 categories. line choice / control / fluidity / form & technique / aggression & energy.

my day to ski on the qualifiers was march 17. the snow was not good...as is typical for qualifying day on west baldy. icy bowling balls and daggers. my mentality all morning was to get down the mountain without falling. for some reason when i started skiing my mentality changed, and i just wanted to ski really aggressively and charge my line. unfortunately that didn't last very long. about thirty seconds into the run i had a spot i had to come out of with a little speed and i just couldn't hang onto it. i fell and lost a ski...maybe both. after getting back into the bindings i decided to keep skiing my line and ski it well. unfortunately i hadn't quite skied it with that speed and missed the spot i meant to go to which sent me into a very fast run out into the the moguled flats. once again loosing control and a ski...or two...and my iPod shuffle. even though i totally sucked it up, i was happy when i crossed the finish line. over the next few days though, my mind kept going back to my horrible run and it took me a bit longer than expected to shake it. i am way glad i did it despite the out come (which was last place, did i mentiont) and am still contemplating if i want to enter it again next year or not. at least i know the only worse i could do is DNF.

my friend Cait made it to the semi-finals! i was so excited for her! unfortunately she fell on that run, but she's still the #1 ripper in my book.

after cait's run in the semi-finals at snowbird

brady / cait / john / steven / taylor

west baldy the snowbird qualifying event venue

and where i totally blew it

Subaru Freeskiing World Tour Highlights from Subaru Freeskiing World Tour on Vimeo.