Lintilhac, Runcie hit Red Bull Powder Disorder in South American comp

Louise Lintilhac takes fourth out of stacked women’s field

While most Buttians are still debating the softball strike zone and shredding sweet single track on their mountain bikes, some just can’t get winter out of their systems.
Louise Lintilhac and Tom Runcie are two such Crested Butte residents. The pair recently traveled to Las Lenas, Argentina for the Freeskiing World Tour’s first ever Red Bull Powder Disorder, an invite-only freeskiing competition held in the middle of the austral winter. Lintilhac placed fourth in a field featuring the top female freeskiers in the world, including ski film star Ingrid Backstrom, while Runcie held his own and placed 20th.
The Red Bull Powder Disorder was the first competition of its kind on the Freeskiing World Tour, breaking the mold of traditional big mountain skiing competitions by integrating man-made features on the venue.
Athletes arrived in Las Lenas, some after nearly 48 hours of continuous travel on overnight planes and midnight buses. Las Lenas was in the middle of an epic Andes storm that dumped nearly two feet of snow all over the ski area, which had been experiencing a particularly low snow year. Unfortunately the storm also brought high winds, some gusts recorded at over 100 km/h, which shut down many of the lifts accessing the upper elevations of the mountain. As the venue for both days was to be accessed off the highest chair, this did not help the athletes in finding their ski legs after several months off.
When Las Lenas was finally able to get the lift spinning after an epic wind hold, skiers were treated to a mix of snow conditions, from windblown powder to slab and even slushy mashed potato snow at the lower elevations of the venue, due to the unusually warm temperatures that came in with the wind.
After an inspection day the competition was ready to get under way but again, wind jammed up the works. After what organizers termed an “aggressive holding pattern,” the resort was able to get skiers up to the venue during a temporary lull in gusts. Lintilhac was the second skier of the day on course, aggressively airing off the first man-made kicker and stomping her landing in the wind-slabbed powder. She quickly made her way down into a tight gully and hucked a ten-footer off a small volcanic rock spire back into the center of the run. Linking turns down through the slightly refrozen slush at the bottom, she skied her way into fourth place.
“That was probably the worst snow I’ve ever skied during a competition,” Lintilhac stated, noting that the nearly 2,000 vertical feet of the venue made it pretty difficult to hold things together the whole way down.
Runcie, known more for his technical skiing skills than his freestyle tricks, proved that he could still hang with the newschoolers, throwing down a 360 off the first man-made booter on the course and quickly flashing his way down the second man-made feature, a 20-foot hip jump, nicknamed the Wu-Tang booter for its somewhat technical take-off and landing.
Runcie aired it out, crossing up his skis in the air before stomping the landing. Due to the low snow year he was unable to ski many of what he calls “squiggle straight-lines,” tight technical slots between large rocks that many competitors overlook in favor of wide-open slopes and large hucks. Runcie finished the day in 20th.
As the day progressed the weather got even worse and the next day dawned even worse, forcing organizers to call a weather day. This proved to set the trend for the following day as well, as the third day of the competition dawned blustery and gray, with ominous clouds at upper elevations of the mountain.
Nonetheless, organizers were determined to make something happen and spent the entire day loading athletes into small, cramped snowcats in an attempt to get them up to the upper mountain in order to hit a man-made kicker at the bottom of what was to have been the second day’s venue. Even that proved to be too ambitious as the weather socked in and visibility was reduced to less then 100 feet at most times. After nearly eight hours on venue, the competition was called due to weather, making the results from the first day final.
Guerlain Chicherit of France took the overall honors for the men, followed by young skiing phenom Johnny Collinson of Utah in second and Chicherit’s fellow Frenchman Julien Lopez in third. Jackson Hole’s Crystal Wright was the women’s winner, with last year’s tour champion Angel Collinson in second and Rebecca Selig of Vail in third. Ingrid Backstrom came in fifth.
The next Freeskiing World Tour event will be the Chilean Freeskiing Nationals held August 18-21 in Valle El Arpa, Chile. Lintilhac, who recently moved to Vermont to attend graduate school, will not be there, as her classes start that weekend. Runcie will be in attendance, joined by fellow Buttians Will Dujardin and Matt Evans.