Powder Photo Archives
The 10th Annual Subaru North American Freeskiing Championships continued today with the semi-finals on Kirkwood Mountain Resort’s Cirque. Yesterday’s 62 qualifiers joined 31 pre-qualified World Tour athletes in a stacked international field.
PHOTOS BY KEITH CARLSEN/MIS
Photos by Keith Carlsen/MSI
The 10th Annual Subaru North American Freeskiing Championships kicked off today to open the final weekend of the Subaru U.S. Freeskiing and Skiercross Series and the Freeskiing World Tour. Over 90 competitors—15 women and 77 men, including 25 snowboarders—charged through howling winds to qualify for tomorrow’s semi finals.
I stumbled out of bed at 6:30am on Saturday morning after two kegs of beer and one hell of a St. Patty's Day party. After three and half hours of sleep I somehow made it out of bed and woke up my buddy Aaron. It had dumped 46 centimeters over the past 5 days and it was finally bluebird. After two hours driving up the Sea to Sky highway with a coffee in one hand and Ibuprofen in the other, we finally got to a very packed Whistler mountain. The avalanche report for the past few days had been moderate with a weak layer of snow about a foot down. We decided to take our chances and head for the glacier.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when we got to the Glacier Express on Blackcomb and our buddy Mathieu was not impressed. He had been waiting for us for nearly two hours. Finally we were at the backcountry gate and started the trek out to Decker bowl. By the time we got to the top of our first line I felt like a new man, I had finally sweated out most of the beer from St. Patty’s day. We took a pretty casual line down into the valley but it was fresh, deep, and sweet.
Once in the valley we traversed to the base of Decker and slowly crept up and around the side of the mountain. About a hundred meters from the top, a front started to move in. We grabbed our gear and got moving. When we got to the top, the clouds were in and we were losing visibility fast. We found a safe entrance into the bowl that avoided a massive cornice, dropped in, and Mathieu took the first line. It was untracked, deep, beautiful cold snow –some of the best lines of my life. We ended up cruising back in-bounds around five o’clock and had the mountain to ourselves. The weather held clear and we had just enough time to get a beer and watch the sunset from Longhorns Pub. These are the kind of days that can wash away just about everything and can even make Monday morning manageable. - Michael Alexander
Epic day? Fun tour? Send photos and stories to tess@powdermag.com.
