This 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.
