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Nevertheless, anyone who has ridden Squaw or Whistler – or any mountain with both a good park and good terrain – will know that even a bluebird powder day can’t persuade some kids from venturing out of the park. And accessibility is a big issue too: only a small percentage of mountains have the kind of terrain that can develop high-level backcountry skills.
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An impressionable kid can watch slow-motion replays of his favourite ripper throwing switch-corked 1260s on primetime TV whereas, in the US, big-mountain coverage is relegated to grainy webcasts. It’s not surprising that most kids dream of becoming the next Shaun White, as opposed to the next De Le Rue. As Xavier De Le Rue, Snowboarder Magazine’s ‘Big-Mountain Rider of the Year’ says, “All these years of focusing on the freestyle part of snowboarding didn’t give the young generation a chance to get into the culture of making good turns, which is the key to big-mountain riding.”
With the Dew Tour, X Games and Olympic fever dominating television, and big-mountain lines making only rare appearances in videos and magazines, you don’t see too many kids donning avalanche transceivers and hiking outback. And it’s this side of snowboarding that the masses get to see. Freestyle events – and riders who solely spend their time circling the park or hitting the pipe – have historically garnered more support (and more money) from the industry as a whole. What a good time to revive big-mountain! The scene is young, the venues are improving… it’s definitely ramping up!”īut the long-term success of big-mountain comps is far from secure. Ralph Backstrom, runner-up on the 2010 North Face Masters tour, sees the current upsurge of events as an opportune time for freeriders: “I think the jib and park scene is a bit played out,” he says, “it seems to have reached a solid plateau. In addition, sponsors and organisers stepped in to resurrect the World Heli Challenge in New Zealand and Alaska’s King of the Hill event, after multi-year hiatuses. The Freeride World Tour (FWT) – a mostly European circuit with closed venues, select riders and higher cash incentives – has added two stops to 2011 and introduced a juniors tour for snowboarders seventeen and under.
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The North Face Masters tour, the only multi-stop tour in North America, is entering its fourth year, offers a $60,000 prize purse with equal cash rewards across the genders for podium finishers and had registration waiting-lists – as well as a handful of high-profile pros like Travis Rice and Lucas Debari – at every stop in 2010. Having grown into a well-oiled machine, big-mountain snowboarding seems to be revelling in a period of unprecedented exposure. Then, whether they’re tackling powder, ice or anything in between, they go fast, look for places to jump off things, and put themselves in compromising situations.īig-mountain events may look wild and free, but they’re far from disorganised. Riders typically have a day or two to study the venue and memorise the ideal line, knowing they’ll be scored on line choice, fluidity, air and control (though exact criteria varies from comp to comp). Eschewing the man-made obstacles and freshly groomed pistes of freestyle events, big-mountain freeride contests are held at the apex of some of the world’s most extreme terrain think cliffs, crevasses and bone-breaking rocks. To put it bluntly, big-mountain comps are not exactly a walk in the park. I’m just trying to reconcile my decision to enter this comp, having voluntarily thrown myself to the monster that is big-mountain competitive snowboarding.
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Competition organisers are wrestling with how to let about a hundred riders cut loose over eighty-inches of fresh snow and not have the whole thing slide.
I’m at Snowbird, Utah, in late January, 2010, the site for the first North Face Masters big-mountain stop of the season, and lake-effect snow is funneling buckets of dry powder onto the venue, covering rocks, filling in dry patches, and creating new landing zones everywhere.Īfter a dry start to the season, the twisted irony is that the snow might now be excessive.
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But will the next generation of pro acrobats venture into the backcountry and away from the park?Īs I squint through the hammering snow to analyse the terrain, the mountain looks as if it is slowly inhaling and puffing up its lungs. Big mountain snowboarding is thriving in a period of unprecedented support.īig mountain snowboarding is thriving in a period of unprecedented support.
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