The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“I think that puts me in as the greatest athlete on the planet”
Take skimo racers, big mountain freeskiers, Al Johnson racers, cross dressers and mustaches, mix them all together and you’ve got your ultimate extreme snowblader.
Extreme snowbladers truly blur the lines between all wintertime athletic endeavors. They are the Molotov cocktail or the Long Island Iced Tea of extreme winter sports (mmm… Long Island Iced Tea).
Time was snowblading was an X Games sport but it proved even too extreme for the X Games and has spent its time since then as a fringe endeavor open to anyone willing to step into a pair of snowblades and push the limits.
The sport is free of any official sanctioning body and therefore allows the athletes to interpret and explore it in any manner they so choose, but in 2006 it was time to create a venue for snowbladers to gather and decide who was the best of bestest. Thus, the Snowblade Extremes were created.
And every spring, these intrepid athletes gather to anoint the baddest of the bad, meaning, the greatest.
Since its inception, the title has been shared like a girlfriend in Crested Butte. Former champions include Adam Westlake, Grant Spear and Ben Blackwood. Blackwood is the most decorated snowblader, winning five of nine possible titles including the last two leading up to this year. His efforts on snowblades are pushing extreme snowblading to a new level and on Saturday, April 4 at the 10th Annual Snowblade Extremes Blackwood did it again winning his sixth title, third in a row. Jimbo Webb also established himself as a dominant blader in his own right, winning the coveted Jeremy Worrell Memorial Sickblade Award for the second year in a row.
“I think that puts me in as the greatest athlete on the planet,” says Blackwood. “John Lennon was criticized for saying the Beatles are bigger than Jesus. I’m going to make that same claim and I don’t think anyone is going to argue with it.”
The competition returned to one of the most unique venues of Crested Butte Mountain, the Paradise Bowl Rock Garden Headwall in and around Paradise Rock. While perhaps lacking in steepness, the venue does offer a variety of features upon which the extreme snowbladers can truly work their blade magic, or blagic.
