The Easter Bunny Invitational

In a recent survey conducted by the ski industry of the world, contests were said to be the biggest new trend infreeskiing. This winter over 238 contests were held in North America alone.Well us at Rage decided to get involved in put on a ground breaking contestdeep in the Utah backcountry on Easter weekend, hence “The Easter BunnyInvitational”. Four of our top athletes, Kyler Cooley, Dylan Natale, Ian Cosco,and rookie sensation Mike Mertion were invited. Two filmers were brought tocapture the action.

This location was so secretivethat Ian Cosco had to be blindfolded each morning on the way out to the spot.The rules were simple, each athlete was to session 5 features found in thebackcountry. At the end nominations were to be given out for best and worstmoments of the session, and one athlete would be nominated for the grand prize,The Golden Egg award. A strict schedule was followed on each of the 3 days

6:00am wake up call

6:30am Smiths sponsored breakfast, fresh bagels and donuts,blindfold Cosco

7:30am Trailhead set up, bathroom break

9:30am First Feature

1:00pm Lunch Sponsored by Smiths Bagels and sandwiches

1:30 Second feature

6:00pm trailhead departure

7:00pm Dinner, provided by Café Rio, Subway, and Chinese(not recommended)

8:00pm Retreat to the plush room 107 at the Comfort Inn

10:00pm Lights out

Each day we were treated by perfect Utah weather and besidesa couple of slednecks our contest went off in isolation in the backcountry.Listed below are the awards given during the contest.

Mike Mertion

Worst Diet: After a frightening Chinese meal Mike procededto head over to 7/11 to purchase and consume a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, A bigbag of our patch kids, and a 2L bottle of Gatorade. Roughly a 2000 caloriesnack. The next morning he was rolling on our trailer complaining of stomachpains.

Best Reach: Mike likes doing no grabs but when asked to graba ski the result is unorthodox variations that left us mesmerized.

Ian Cosco

Worst Hair Style: Look at the pictures, its selfexplanatory.

Best Highmark: When asked to do a quick hillclimb Coscoglanced at a mountain peak andproceeded to out climb cliffs, trees, stumps and other obstacles. We allexpected disaster but were bewildered on see him return with his snowmobile.

Dylan Natale:

Worst Goggle Tan: I only wished I had a picture of his gapergap forehead glow and a sagged tan line that for some reason is real slanted.

Best stomp ability: For some reason no matter how tilted orcaught up Dylan gets he always gets his feet underneath and stomps. Even whenhe over rotated and landed facing backwards.

Kyler Cooley

Worst Gas consumption: Being from Montana makes you either ahippie or a redneck. Kyler’s positive attitude makes him a hippie but hissnowmobile and truck gas milage of 3mpg makes him a redneck. He might berunning 750hp out of both machines but is it really worth it with these gasprices.

Best Jump ability: Kyler has been skiing real well and thistrip was no different. He killed it earning the coveted “Golden Egg” fordestroying four out of the five features!

When the snowfinally settled (literally) and all the awards were given out. We all agreedthat the first ever Easter Bunny Invitational was a complete success.

Big Thanks to our Sponsors: Smiths, Comfort Inn, Café Rio,and Sigma snow sleds

Stay tuned for the 2009 EBI

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