Looks like some pretty burly conditions as Carston Oliver (qualified 3rd yesterday) has gone down as well as Taos’ female 2nd place finisher McKenna Peterson. Hopefully everyone is okay.
Here is some video of the top 6 runs from yesterday (including Carston’s) and some of the falls (courtesy of Superhuman Mag).
Here is the helmet-cam video from my qualifier run. The count -> 2 spreads and 2 airs (bottom was a double) too me exactly 60 seconds top to bottom. I think I’m going to start spring break and just begin training myself to point the whole venue. Go for a Tatsuno style straight-line.
Welcome to my best attempt to live-blog day 2 of Qualifiers at Snowbird’s US Freeskiing Nationals.
Day 1 was pretty gnarly with snow conditions being hard to predict. Snowbird’s Nik A., Kyle W., and Chuck M. all took falls during their runs.
The women should be starting soon and I’ll update this post as that goes down.
I’m running 64th of 68 or so and I’m hoping that means the snow will soften up by the time I run-
—11:05a—
Ladies have wrapped up. looks like a lot of coral reef snow on west baldy.
—11:07a—
#2 in Taos Abbott Smith (sp?) just took a couple hard falls
—11:59a—
Daryn E. just took a hard fall at the top and is not stoked in the slightest
—12:36p—
Carston O. just killed it down the center section of the venue!
—3:16p—
Made it down my run in one piece! Not sure if it was enough, but I’m glad to be down. Insanely variable snow on West Baldy-
—4:45p—
Bummer judges didn’t think I had enough speed through my line. ended up 36 of 64 :-/…I need to ski faster
Good luck to McKenna, Carston, & Tim tomorrow on Silvy
I figured the drive back wouldn’t yield much in the way of usable trip report photos, but what was supposed to be an 11-hour drive through the desert turned into a 14-hour junk show in all things sketchy-
