CB Mountain Sports Team season in full swing

Junior comps in Crested Butte this weekend

By Than Acuff 

Despite the low snow year so far here in Crested Butte, the energy remains high on the Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST) as they have been hitting the road hard to compete at competitions across the West and prepare for a big couple of weeks coming up including defending their home mountain with the Junior Freeride tour coming to Crested Butte Thursday through Sunday, February 26-March 1.

“It’s always so impressive to see the progress and level of stoke among the kids and coaches,” says head freeride coach Mark Robbins.

The CBMST has 65 kids in the u12 age group, 65 in the u15 age group and their biggest number of participants in recent years, 35, in the u19 age group.

“Our team in the older age group is bigger than ever,” says Robbins. “We’ve always had big numbers at the younger levels and it’s great to see them sticking with it and now we have this huge squad of high school athletes and they’re doing great.”

“I expect each athlete to enjoy freeride competition, travel and camaraderie between all athletes,” says freeride ski coach Montana Wiggins. “We’re all one big freeride family.” 

Training has been limited but the coaches and athletes have adapted working on skills by running gates in alpine racing discipline and hitting the jump park once that opened as tricks are now necessary tools for success in the freeride competitions.

“The kids have been throwing down in the jump park and that trickles into freeride skiing,” says Robbins.

“Historically the CBMST always performs well on low snow years,” adds freeride coach Evan Marcus. “Instead of the excitement of new terrain, coaches and athletes spend a large deal of time diving into technical focuses helping to sharpen our fundamentals and execution of high-level skiing.” 

While a lot of the CBMST athletes have been traveling throughout Colorado for nine 2* regional events so far, seven were thrown into the deep end in January to compete in a 3* IFSA National event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

“That was the first time they ever skied double black terrain all season,” says Robbins.

Fast forward a month later and it looks like they’re getting their feet underneath them as they headed to Telluride for a 3* National event February 20-22 and six CBMST skiers stepped up on the podium. For the young guns Sol Hausdoerffer won in the u15 women’s ski event, Alpine Leonard finished on top and Caleb White in fourth place in the u15 men’s comp.

Meanwhile, Brie Polster won the women’s ski u19 age group with Atalaya Hausdoerffer joining her on the podium in fourth place and Tobin Mueller led the CBMST boys with a third-place finish in the u19 men’s age group.

The CBMST u15 snowboarders Lily McElya and Lahna Hartigan placed third and fourth for the girls while Hobbs Caler, Shiloh Stephenson and Sullivan Reese placed first, second and third respectively.

“I’m blown away with how our athletes are riding given the conditions and terrain we’ve had to train in,” says freeride snowboard coach Ian Ash.

“We had an absolute blast in Telluride,” adds Wiggins. “It’s always nice to have fun and success in Telluride. Our athletes had such a great time and were able to showcase all their hard work throughout the low tide season we had prior to the storm this week.”

Recent snows and the diligent work of the Crested Butte Professional Ski Patrol have opened more terrain for the CBMST athletes to work with and just in time as the season really ramps up in the next couple of weeks starting this week. There will be a 2* event here in Crested Butte with u12 freeride athletes competing on Thursday and Friday, most likely on Resurrection. Then the u15 and u19 athletes take over the hill on Saturday and Sunday with hopes to get onto the Headwall and/or Hawks Nest depending on conditions and coverage.

In addition, some of the CBMST athletes head to Snowbird for a 3* National event this weekend with more headed to Alyeska next week for another 3* National competition.

“Now that more terrain is open at the resort, we can now transfer this strong technical foundation to the components of freeride training,” says freeride ski coach Emma Latta. “I do feel that we will see some good results at Alyeska and Snowbird. For some athletes who are attending, smart skiing will be essential at these competitions. We have athletes right on the line to qualify for nationals, so it will be important for them to finish towards the top of their category.”

The 2* regional comps and 3* National events continue through March and then the season wraps up with the North American Junior Freeride Championships at Kicking Horse in Canada April 3-8.

“We have a good feeling we will bring some athletes to Kicking Horse,” says Wiggins. “Brie Polster skis smart and continues to listen to her coaches and stand on podiums. Anika Mueller took fourth place at Copper a couple weeks ago and Alpine Leonard has Snowbird coming up and with a good finish there he might punch his ticket to Canada. We have many athletes that will continue to raise the bar and punch their ticket. We’re only halfway through the season with plenty more action ahead.”