Locals compete in Canadian Freeskiing Championships

Louise Lintilhac shreds her way to fifth place overall

Four Gunnison Valley athletes made the trek north to Revelstoke, British Columbia January 5-10 to compete in the second Subaru Canadian Freeskiing Championships, with Crested Butte local Louise Lintilhac skiing herself into a fifth-place finish.
Randy Evans, Alex Reidman, Scott McBrayer, and Louise Lintilhac arrived Wednesday, January 5 to a full-on blizzard. Competition in the following day’s qualifier event led Lintilhac to a third-place finish for the day following Revelstoke locals Nicole Dirksen and Tatum Monod. Reidman skied a strong run but was unfortunately eliminated from a highly competitive field of female athletes. All through the women’s runs it continued to snow harder, forcing the organizers from Mountain Sports International to postpone the men’s qualifiers until the following day. Despite the delay, Evans skied a strong run on Friday, January 7 sticking a Lincoln loop off one of the cliff bands and earning himself an invite to day one of the main comp.
Saturday dawned snowier than the day before with a low-lying cloud obscuring the venue in Revelstoke’s North Bowl area. After several hours of delays, the organizers were once again forced to post pone the competition for a day.
Finally on Sunday, January 9, day one of the Canadian Freeskiing Championships was ready to go. Carbondale native Scott McBrayer, now skiing out of Crested Butte, joined Lintilhac and Evans. Revelstoke’s North Bowl area is a competition venue like few others: one giant cliff band wrapping around the mountain with few entrances to the main bowl below without mandatory air. The women ran first, with Lintilhac choosing to arc turns down a steep rocky gully, airing a ten-footer and traversing to another ten-footer before skiing the trees at the bottom of the venue with ease, showing off her East Coast roots. Her performance was good enough to earn her a seventh-place finish and a spot in the field the next day.
McBrayer went into the day with two plans, one of which involved a 15-foot gap to a tail tap that, once he skied closer to it, looked a whole lot less feasible than it had during inspection. He instead chose to point it over a double-stage cliff. The landing proved a little too soft as he touched down and it sent him over the bars, good enough for a 37th-place finish but not good enough for an invite to day two. Evans meanwhile went huge over a peppery jagged cliff band but augured in at the bottom, double-ejecting from his skis and getting an official DNF from the judges, though he was fine to ski out to the bottom.
The Canadian Freeskiing Championships in Revelstoke is the only stop on the Freeskiing World Tour that features a helicopter assist to access the second venue, something highly coveted by the athletes on the tour. On Monday, January 10, after two days of delays and five days of snow, the day broke clear and cold for the officially out of bounds run on Mackenzie Face. Ski patrol had their work cut out for them as they heli-bombed and then ski cut the 1,600-foot vertical face, releasing large slides that nearly wiped clean the skier’s right side of the venue and depositing avalanche debris nearly all the way to the lake that served as a staging area and spectator viewing. Consequently the face had what can only be called “variable conditions” for the seven women and 20 men who were slated to compete on it.
Lintilhac skied first out of all the competitors, arcing GS turns through the top pitch before hitting the rollover leading onto the cliff-strewn main face. The snow changed considerably from the top, lower-angle pitch to the next, steeper, pitch where ski cuts had released several slides. Lintilhac lost a ski mid-turn and managed to ski to a stop on one ski. She hiked back up to her ski and finished the run, but had lost too much elevation to ski her planned line, winding up with a low score on the run.
“The snow just ripped my ski off,” she said afterward.
Not so lucky was the woman following her, Sara Mancuso of Tahoe, Calif., who lost a ski above one of the Mackenzie Face’s larger cliffs. While she managed to stop, the ski didn’t. After abortive attempts to rescue the ski, Mancuso and RMR ski patrollers gave up and delivered a pair of demo skis via helicopter, allowing Mancuso to ski down.
This set the stage for remaining female competitors, all of whom crashed, save for Leah Evans, the eventual champion. Tatum Monod finished second with Nicole Derksen in third. Lintilhac’s cumulative score for the two days was good enough to earn her a fifth-place finish overall.
The men’s competition finished with Lars Chickering-Ayers taking the top spot, with Drew Tabke and Spencer Brinson finishing second and third respectively.
The next stop on the Freeskiing World Tour will be a World Tour Qualifier event in Jackson Hole, Wyo. from Thursday, January 27 to Sunday, January 30 before the tour comes to Crested Butte February 17. For more information and live event coverage, check out www.freeskiingworldtour.com.