Snowsports Media Flies High
After a few successful spins off the mini-ramp, I click in to a pair of 170cm, circa-1990 Blizzard skis that nearly blind me with their splashes of fluorescent pink, yellow, and green. Inching out onto the ramp's surface, I stare down at 40 feet of menacing plastic bristles while being pelted with the ramp's automatic sprinkler system. Hop, turn, and point; I'm on a one-way roller coaster, no turning or stopping allowed. Hitting the end of the ramp, the world slowly rotates back-too slowly. Which way is up again? Why is the ground the same color as the sky? Smack! I'd just been paddled by an angry gym coach, swallowed a gallon of water, and had my eyeballs relocated to the back of my skull. But, with the pool's ingenious aeration system to break the water's surface tension, the crash was kinder than snow.
In the end, most of the participants got their huck on quite admirably. Kendall Card, of The Canyons, was a back-flipping machine. Ski Utah's own Nathan Rafferty consistently started higher on the ramp than almost anyone else and entertained all with his monster lawn-dart attempts. POWDER's Derek Taylor was dangerously close to stomping a Lincoln loop, while POWDERMAG.com's own, myself, dialed in a solid back flip. Many of the snowboarders were stomping off-axis spins and flips, while the ladies of Ski and Skiing were spinning 360s to their heart's content.
The Utah Olympic Park runs camps throughout the summer under their Freestyle Lives Year-round (F.L.Y.) program. The one-day Freestyle 101 camp has four dates remaining, and under the expert direction of coaches such as Chris "Hatch" Haslock and freestyle aerialist Emily Cook, these are affordable huck-dates not to be missed: August 31 and September 7, 21, and 28. For more information, e-mail the park at uop_sports@yahoo.com or call 435-658-4200.