Aaron Blunk opens halfpipe season on fire

“That was a serious game-changer for sure”

by Than Acuff

fter a summer of skateboarding, mountain biking and some gym time, Crested Butte local Aaron Blunck entered the 2018-2019 halfpipe competition season feeling better than he had in a long time.

“For the first summer in the past four, I wasn’t injured,” says Blunck. “I felt stronger, well-rested and stoked going in.”

While Blunck has always worked with U.S. Ski Team halfpipe coaches the past several years, he also looked to one of his halfpipe peers, New Zealander Peter Olenick, for some input on his halfpipe run planning and trick selection for this season.

“I knew it was such a good call to work with him,” says Blunck. “It’s a good, fresh restart and he is always two steps ahead of everyone else.”

Blunck joined Olenick in Austria around Thanksgiving to put the finishing touches on his double cork 1440 and to devise a plan for the first competition of the season, the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix at Copper Mountain, December 3-8.

“We got that trick dialed in Austria and he convinced me that instead of trying to fit five hits into the shorter pipe at Copper, to just go bigger and go with four hits instead,” explains Blunck. “That was a serious game-changer for sure.”

Blunck stepped into the qualifier refreshed and ready, and won that day to head into the three-run final as the top seed.

“I was definitely a little nervous,” says Blunck. “I’ve only qualified first a couple of times and I usually fall. I like to go into the final in sixth or seventh position.”

But rather than spend the day between the qualifiers and finals stressing, Blunck spent the day ripping groomers and finding powder stashes blown in by the typical I-70 corridor winds. The day spent skiing for fun had Blunck right where he needed to be as he entered the finals. After scoring an 80 on his first run, Blunck sealed the win on his second, scoring a 96.25 out of a possible 100 points,

“It eased my mind to just go ski and have fun,” says Blunck. “Honestly, it didn’t even feel like a comp.”

Three days later, including another relaxing day of skiing with his girlfriend, Blunck was back at it again as he headed to Breckenridge for the first stop of the Dew Tour.

The Dew Tour event started with a day of team competition before the halfpipe individual comp, but with a twist, a modified halfpipe. Instead of dropping straight into the halfpipe for the standard run, the modified halfpipe has a fin-like feature athletes must hit before dropping into a shortened halfpipe and then come out with another unique 26-foot vertical wall feature to hit before the end of the run. Basically, it’s a mix of slopestyle and halfpipe.

“It made for a really cool contest,” says Blunck. “Definitely a different type of halfpipe for sure. Normally we show up and have our runs figured out but this is a completely different atmosphere and you have to figure things out along the way. It’s stressful but really cool.”

Furthermore, Blunck was one of a handful of athletes invited to test the new layout, as well as one of only 10 athletes invited to compete.

Blunck joined his Head skis teammates to place third in the team competition on Thursday, December 13 and while the extra day of competition can wear on the athletes, Blunck saw it as an advantage for him as he was headed into the individual event on Sunday.

“It made you get into competition mode right away,” says Blunck.

A day off and a day of training then had him set to go for the modified halfpipe finals on Sunday, December 16 with a few questions still hanging out there for all of the athletes.

“It was really hard to know what the judges wanted to see,” says Blunck. “I figured where you could really make up points was on the modified features and that they’re probably looking for creativity.

Blunck’s first two runs were rough, including crashing hard on his second run, knocking the wind out of him and rattling him a bit.

“I could not believe I was not that injured,” says Blunck. “It’s such a tight course, you have to be perfect on every hit.”

It came down to his third and final run and after shaking off the crash and dialing in his plan, Blunck dropped in and posted a high enough score to move him up into second place in the final standings.

“I was able to pull it all together,” says Blunck. “It wasn’t the run I wanted but it was good enough for second place so I was stoked.”

The halfpipe competition circuit now takes a break until the X Games in Aspen January 24-27. In the meantime, Blunck has a team camp in January but will spend the other time enjoying skiing, including a possible film session with Matchstick Productions, spend some time skiing in Crested Butte as well as “a quick trip to Canada to ski some pillows.”