Kyle Anderson defends 2012 Big Air on Elk snowboard title

Blunck bumped by skier from Breckenridge

It was an all-out rodeo in downtown Crested Butte Saturday night at the Big Air on Elk competition. A handful of athletes got bucked, some got thrown, and some spectators got hurt, but most of the riders stayed “in the saddle” for the full eight-second ride. All of it was in an effort to raise money for the Crested Butte Ski Club. While the sidewalks of Elk Avenue bordering the jump site were packed with fans, others huddled around their computers at home to watch it online.
“We had 1,200 ‘televisions’ tuned in from around the world,” says event organizer and owner of the Colorado FreeSkier Gabe Martin.
Here you had skiers and snowboarders being pulled down Elk Avenue by a snowmobile at around 40 miles per hour to hit a 42-foot step-up gap jump designed and built by Corey Tibljas and Tom Kelly.
The opening speed check practice runs were scary enough as athletes were dragged down the street and thrown into the air like a cat tossed out of a second-story window.
Straight airs reigned supreme in the opening practice runs but by the time the competition was ready to go, it was game on.
Event organizer Gabe Martin, rumored to be a fledgling opera singer in high school, marked the official start of the competition with his singing of the National Anthem, after which it was go time.
The athletes, some from out of town and some homegrown talent, did not disappoint and as they continued to get more comfortable with the jump, they opened up their variety of tricks to showcase.
Pat Goodnough heard about the event at a slopestyle event in Breckenridge and made the trip to Crested Butte to compete. Goodnough admits he was a bit taken aback by what he saw.
“I was definitely thinking it was going to be smaller,” he admits. “I was a little scared, but I figured I had all of my stuff with me so I might as well do it.”
Two-time Big Air on Elk ski champion Aaron Blunck returned to town to defend his title despite nursing a bad shoulder. He found this year’s jump a bit trickier to gauge.
“The jump was definitely scarier this year,” says Blunck. “It was the same size as last year but the take-off either sent you right to the knuckle or way past it.”
Eventually the field of athletes 20-strong was cut down to four snowboarders and four skiers.
Defending snowboarding champion and Crested Butte’s own Kyle Anderson owned his peers on his final jumps, throwing back-to-back “buttery smooth” front-side rodeo 7’s to take the Big Air on Elk snowboard title.
The ski competition was much closer. First there was Crested Butte Mountain Resort ski instructor Esteban Zapiola. Over the course of the night, Zapiola threw a succession of superman front flips and suffered a couple of hard crashes, earning the “Man of Steel” moniker and taking home the Rockstar Award.
“We couldn’t keep him down,” says Martin. “He was fired up the whole night.”
Blunck was the first to step up his game with the title on the line. Adorned in a jacket lit up by Flashflight LED lights, Blunck took off switch to throw a switch 7.
“I just decided I was gonna go for it, go for broke,” says Blunck. “I knew right when I hit the jump, I hit it perfectly.”
Blunck followed that with a switch 5 but in the end he was edged out by 3/100ths of a point by Goodnough. Goodnough sealed the win with back-to-back rodeo hand drag cork 7’s.
To relive the magic of Big Air on Elk you can go to coloradofreeskier.com.