Riding Glaciers in June
June 27, 2017
Your heart is pumping, the wind is blowing with rage, you look over the edge of the wall, calculating, meditating, hoping not to fall. You look at the starter he points at you, you scream and flex releasing every ounce of energy, you point your equipment straight and launch of the cornice!
Riding big mountain events is like bull riding! A bull rider has 8 seconds to ride the beast, the free rider has 80 seconds. The beast is going to buck you, shake you, and be unpredictable. If you go down it will be a show for the crowd either way.
The RMA Freeriders recently made our way up to Bear Tooth Pass to ride an unique and exciting mountain at the top of the pass called Bear Tooth Basin. Bear Tooth is a diamond in the rough, you buy tickets out of a trailer at the top of the pass. Bear Tooth has two toe ropes that take you all the way to the top where you can drop huge cornices and cliffs. The avalanche cookie fields were also very fun to play in! Some of them were the size of a small car.
On Saturday the 17th of June, Bear Tooth Basin hosted The Freeride World Qualifier Competition. Early in the morning it was very cold but we all were excited to have blue skies! Professional and amateur riders from everywhere flooded the event to test their mental and physical skill sets. The competition started around 11:00 am by that time the snow had warmed up a little bit and was ready for competitors to send the cornice.
RMA Freeriders Nicholas Acord and Dillon Featherstone competed in the snowboard category. Nicholas had a nice half cab melon off a ten-foot cornice, lined up two cliffs, and sent the kicker at the bottom with no falls. Nicholas came in 6th place with less than two points between 6th and 1st place this competition was tight. Dillon came in 10th place with a great cornice drop and a few big airs on the face but lawn chaired off the jump taking away some of his air and style points.
The competition was a great success, meeting all the different athletes and ski companies was a great experience. We would like to thank Tom Winters and his team for creating this event it was awesome, Great Job!
