My run at the Crested Butte Junior freesking championships. Let me know what you think!
Crested Butte Junior Extreme Freesking Championships from Leo Ahrens on Vimeo.
Tag Archives: comp
Junior Freesking Nationals
12 MarHi all! Update time!
So Snowbird held their first ever Junior Freesking competition this week and it went a little like this:
—The first day junior competitors traveled from near and far to scope lines and inspect the snow conditions. Kids from Colorado, California, Wyoming, Washington, Utah and the likes all met in the iconic resort known as Snowbird. All picked out epic lines on the said venues and the stoke level was through the roof.
—Day 1 of competition… did not happen:( because Utah, notorious for very heavy snow storms, greeted the foreign juniors with a huge storm!
Due to the extreme conditions they canceled day one and decided to hope for better conditions on a more visable run the next day.
The venue announced: Former FWT qualifier run, Tower Three
—Day Two but really Day One was to be held in TWO FEET OF FRESH POWDA!!!! Besides hour long tram line delays the comp went off without a hitch. The age groups were split in four ways: 12-14 boys and girsl and 15-17 young men and woman.
The youngsters killed it, showing that age shouldn’t matter. My team mate Grant Howard laid down a super solid run taking second place and a former team mate from Alta, Riley Rose, killed it and took the top spot.
The older boys and girls or should I say men and women, put on quite a show for the crowd! Everything from faceshots to 70ft+ cliffs were sent to perfection, bringing up the question if these kids should really be considered juniors? My team, the Snowbird Freeski Team raised the bar right out of the gate along with top names like Miles Honens, Mike OG and North Parker. A super final was held to give the top ten men a chance to Battle it out for top spot. My team filled seven of the ten spots and I was sitting in first place! Something happened in our heads because every one threw down! Henry Gates sent easily the biggest air of the comp pushing it to the hundred foot range! John Collins skied super fast and strong laying down a run that earned him the infamous sickbird belt buckle. I skied a super fast and solid run with two good sized airs. After a long day of competition the results were a snowbird sweep!
3rd - Taylor Lyman in third!
2nd - Jason Astle took second!
1st - And I won first place!
Crested Butte Ballin’
21 FebThis is kinda a boring post but bare with me. Sorry for the lack of photos
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DAY 1
So the trip started out on Monday morning at the Snowbird main office parking lot. We loaded the bagel buggy (team van) and headed out on the open road.
Our destination: Crested Butte, Colorado.
Our purpose: to compete in the Junior Extreme Freeskiing Championships.
Who are we: The Snowbird Freeski Team - Neil Howard, Grant Howard, John Collinson, Sam Cohen, Ryan Thaxton, and me, Leo Ahrens.
The drive was long and somewhat boring but we made the best of it. We arrived at a multi-million dollar mansion that we would be sharing with the Western Sports Academy for the next week. Pulling up to the house our van got stuck. It took us at least two hours to get out and we broke a window in the process.
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DAY2
Inspection/Registration day.
After skiing one run we quickly found out that Crested Butte is very rocky! We did however pick out some great lines for day one of competition.
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DAY3
Day one of competition.
Our venue for the first day was Sock It To Me ridge. It would be host to the juniors and master competitors. This is how the comp went down:
Grant Howard, being the youngest competitor of the comp skied a solid, smooth run and placed eleventh.
John Collinson, the former young gun winner from Telluride qualified in 6th place putting him in excellent position to take the top spot.
The rest of the team and I had some minor bobbles in our runs and we qualified around 25th. Everyone was super stoked to make it through and couldn’t wait to put on a show for the next day.
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DAY4
Day two of competition.
Our venue for day two was the infamous Headwall. It would be host to the juniors day 2 and the qualifier for the adults. This is how it went down:
Neil Howard crushed his line and scored the second highest score of the day.
Sam Cohen skied a fast line with a big air off box rock moving him up to 17th
Grant Howard skied super smooth and clean bumping him up to 7th place with all the older kids.
John Collinson ripped his line a new one and tied for an impressive second place victory.
Going in to day two I new it would be hard to come back from 25th so I had one thing on my mind; SICKBIRD! I skied a simple line into the same cliff Sam hit. I threw a double backflip and stomped it right to my feet. The bummer was that I ended up falling about 200 feet after the cliff. My double earned me a sickbird nomination! Then later I was given the North Face Young Gun award!
I could not be any more stoked on my Crested Butte Experience.
Super delayed post
15 FebAlright, I have been really really lazy and have not posted in a really long time. So with that said I am going to do a very brief recap of what I have been up to. This will probably be out of order but you get the idea.
So this season I am taking school off for about three months (Nov 24-Mar 9). This way I can ski all day, every day during some of the best months of the year. The first month we ( little cottonwood canyon) received a regular dose of the drug scientifically known as ”snow”. I tried to keep my addiction on the down low but word got out.
Here survelance cameras caught me feeding the habit.
Others tried to keep it a secret too but many where caught red handed, as shown by the Alta photo of the day archives
The one major down side to the start of the season was the very high avalanche danger. It basically brought all plans of going out of bounds to a hault. Even skiing in bounds was scary at times. On December 14th an in-bounds avalanche took the life of a local woman at Snowbird. For me this was very scary because my ski team and I had been skiing that same area all morning long and the slide happened right after we went to lunch.
As the season rolled on the conditions started to improve and as of today everything is basically back to normal. I continued to seek out fresh pow, big airs and fun jumps. I also spent some time at Park City learning new tricks that I can take into the back country. One of my favorite accomplishments was my first double back flip attempt. I didn’t quite land it, so now I am determined to try it again. After weeks of messing around it was time to back into competition mode.
This year I am taking part in the IFSA Junior Freesking Tour. The first stop I attended was Stevens Pass, Washington. The first day of competition I hit a little cliff into what seemed like fresh snow. When I landed I punched through and ended up washing out. This put me into something like 17th place for the next day. After watching the rest of the competitors run I was able to decide on a better line choice for the next day.
Day One
I ended up skiing my line really well the second day and received the highest scoring run of the comp. With the second day points added up I was able to move into a tie for 5th place. I also received a ravid raven nomination (similar to a sick bird nomination).
With Stevens done my next stop is Crusty Butt. I mean I am off to Crested Butte. I’m looking forward to fresh snow and hopefully a fun venue!
Day Two
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