The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Conrad Truettner takes third
Crested Butte Mountain Sports telemark team athlete Conrad Truettner stepped up onto the podium at the Grand Targhee Big Mountain Telemark junior competition February 22-24.
Truettner, Asher Coady and coach Mark Robbins headed to Grand Targhee this past weekend for the first competition of the season and were treated to near-perfect conditions.
“It was some of the best snow conditions I’ve ever seen at a competition,” says Robbins.
Day one was held in an area known as Reliable, with plenty of features available for skiers to test their mettle.
“It was a wide-open venue broken up by three cliff bands with the same vertical as the Headwall,” says Robbins.
Truettner picked a fairly conservative line through the venue for his two runs and let his skiing do all the talking, flashing fast and fluid runs to finish the day in second place.
Coady opted to hang it out on the edge a little more and ended up falling on his second run, finishing in sixth place and missing the cut by one place.
Event organizers then opened up an area called Bobcat farther up the ridge for the finals and skiers were met with stormy conditions and even softer snow.
“It was like day one but on steroids,” says Robbins.
The athletes were allowed to inspect the run from the side and from down below but forbidden from skiing directly through. Truettner figured out his route and proceeded to drop in both runs and let it all hang out, stomping both. The only hiccup came at the bottom of the venue on his final run when he tumbled, dropping one spot in the standings but holding onto third place for his first podium spot at a venue on the road.
“He picked a line that included the biggest air he’d ever taken,” says Robbins. “We were really happy that he held onto a podium spot.”
Robbins and Crested Butte Mountain Resort athletes Collin and Seaton MacMillan competed in the adult competition with Seaton posting the top local result, finishing in eighth place. Robbins placed 12th overall and Collin finished the weekend in 20th.
The team closed the weekend with some “powder skiing and air time” at Grand Targhee and will now prepare to defend their home hill when the telemark big mountain series comes to Crested Butte March 21-23 and the 39th Annual Al Johnson race on Sunday, March 24.
