Feb 9th – 10th Subaru Telluride FreeSkiing Competition

A great competition was witnessed this past weekend in Telluride, Co. The venue held more snow than last year, but it was still rotten. The last snow in Telluride arrived a week previously and had transformed into the typical San Juan Mountain snow pack – rotten and sugar. The venues for the competition were not previously open to the public which did save the snow for us, the competitors. The qualifiers were exciting with some amazing athletes holding on while essentially straight lining the entire venue. Oddly enough, these thrilling, but non-technical lines scored higher than athletes that truly skied scary, consequence ridden, lines. Paul Zaleski had chosen such a line, but was not able to ski it as quickly as he hoped. See him by following these links. [1] [2] I skied my line and did well. I qualified for the finals and was placed 31st in a field of 72 male competitors [Day1 Results].
On the second day of competition I was very excited about my line and had chosen to ski very fast and aggressively. Unfortunately then rotten and variable snow had other plans for me. Infact, my run made the blooper section of the finals day video available [here]. Instead of airing over the entire shoulder of the venue, I lost the required speed and got tripped up on new growth trees sticking out of the snow and ended up diving down the rocks head first. I landed in an explosion of snow and continued down the venue unscathed. I ended up falling again, and ruined my fluidity, control, and technique scores. Two of the judges recognized my line score and my aggressiveness, but with bottom scores in three categories I ended up dropping to 40th place overall [Day2 Results]. I did make the Photo of the Day on the Telluride website. [See for yourself!] Or you can view BOTH of my runs from the competition!!

I am excited to learn that I do have the ability to compete with the worlds best fixed heal free skiers as a Telemarker. With this new motivation I look forward to training more and my next competition.