In early March, the BSF Freeskiing team traveled to Truckee, CA to compete in their final Futures Tour event of the season. Little did we know that we were traveling there during the start of the “snowpocalypse”. Myself and 6 athletes flew to Reno, managed to fit all of us and our bags into an Expedition, and drove to Truckee to stay for the week.
The stoke was high as we drove into Truckee, unsure what the week ahead would look like. The following day was our first and only day of training. Unfortunately, the weather moved in and they canceled training at noon, and shortly following the entire mountain closed. They were worried about roads closing and people getting home safely. The next morning we woke up to complete whiteout conditions and 34” of fresh snow and no signs of slowing down. There was so much snow that Northstar Resort didn’t even open. We decided to go explore around the hills of our rental house and found a great spot to build a jump. This turned out to be one of the best days of the trip as we hiked and hit the jump for hours in the snow! (See video below.)
The next day the resort opened and we did not have training or an event, so we were able to ski pow all day under bluebird conditions. Unfortunately only a couple chairs were open and the terrain was fairly low angle so it was tough to ski, but still fun! We had a relaxing evening and talked through our runs because the following day they were going to be packing in qualifiers and finals all in one day.
The group all skied very well! A standout moment for me was seeing Eli Irby persevere through tough training. He was in a bit of a mental slump and was pretty tough on himself. After a good conversation, he found a way to break through and ended his training looking like a completely different skier. It was the best skiing I had ever seen from Irby! Rylan Messnar and Anders Fanning qualified for finals and Soren Fanning missed the bubble spot by half of a point! Rylan and Anders were put into a 2 run final format with no training. With shade moving in and after a long day of qualifiers, they both skied very well!
This was a trip for the books, and one we won’t soon be forgetting! Thanks for following along.
Cheers,
Cody
