Early last week some friends and I made a last minute decision to go and hit a certain “played out” gap jump in Grizzly Gulch the following morning. We got a relatively early start and got some cool views while hiking up in the dark.

 

The Moon setting over Mt Superior -photo by Chris “Shifty” Shifrar

 

Once we got to the jump, we got straight to work fixing everything up and getting it prepped to hit.  We had to reshape the lip, then pack out the in-run and fix a massive hump and compression near the bottom of it.

 

That’s a long way to pin it on the drop in, hope it’s fast enough - photo by Chris “Shifty” Shifrar

 

 

All set up, just about ready to go - photo by Chris “Shifty” Shifrar

 

Once everything was set up and we watched our snowboarder friends do a couple speed checks, Balken and I booted up to the top of the in-run to get things started.

 

Eric Balken opening it up with a lofty corked 360 - photo by Chris “Shifty” Shifrar

 

I was next with a 720.  Big jumps are fun. - photo by Chris “Shifty” Shifrar

 

Sean Kelly representing for the snowboarders - photo by Chris “Shifty” Shifrar

 

Unfortunately, right after the first hits a headwind came in that made it impossible to get enough speed so we had to call it.  It has been really warm and sunny ever since, so the snow is completely baked and we have to wait for more snow to get another try.

 

Hopefully it snows again soon- Balken is hungry for more…

 

The day after this jump session, I skied in the US Freeskiing Nationals at Snowbird and qualified in third place. In the semifinals I picked out a pretty burly line, but misjudged my trajectory on the first air and got spanked.

This is what happened:

 

Miraculously, both my Night Trains and I are ok.