Online Exclusive: Crankworx CO Best Trick

This weekend Winterpark, Colorado played host to the second-annual Crankworx Colorado slopestyle competition. Only about a 2-hour drive east of Denver, the small ski village is easy to access by road or train, but sits at an ear-bleeding 9000-feet on the altimeter. It takes a solid couple of days to acclimate for anyone who lives at sea level--it's hard to sleep, your appetite gets messed up, you have to drink water like a fish and the weather switches from searing sunlight to thunderstorms and back every hour. But all in all it's a fun town and a beautiful venue with a nice selection of chairlift-accessed trails for mere mortals to play on when the rockstars aren't sending the slopestyle course.

Built again by John Cowan, this year's slopestyle course seemed much more fluid than last year's with less pedaling and more braking--the riders were happy to see the improvements too. It began with the same intimidating rock roll-in to road gap, but the ramp had been lowered a little so it wasn't as scary as before. The biggest feature was a huge wall ride at the top of the course with two exit options--one a ladder bridge drop with a sketchy wall ride entrance and the other a step-up into a dish. The biggest trick booters were two huge wooden ramps with dirt landings in the course's middle. The course's bottom had only slight modifications from last year--a step-up to a pedal traverse that set the riders up for a huge ladder drop with a large lip on it. Once in contact with mother earth riders could call it a day or step-up onto some new wooded quarter pipes if they have any energy left.

Festivities began Friday with qualifiers for 24 of the 34 slopestyle competitors. The other 10 competitors were prequalified because of their results last season. After that, the Best Trick competition began. This contest was divided into two parts with riders openly sessioning a middle and lower section for 45 minutes, doing whatever they wanted in that time span. The prize was $2000 cold cash for each session so there was certainly some incentive to step it up.

It took a while for the session to get going; as usual everyone was covering their hands till the end. Andrew Taylor started getting the ball rolling with some huge no-handed flips and Cam McCaul was still warming up with his own crazy corked-flips. Then Cam unloaded a huge superman backflip that really set the bar. Not to be outdone by his Aptos compatriot, Greg Watts stepped up to the plate and dished out a backflip followed by a perfect backflip-tailwhip--one of the most difficult tricks around. Cam responded with another Superman Backflip, which he held for seemingly ever. The only other rider in the mix was Mitch Chubey who, on his second-try, landed a 360-barspin followed by a backflip tailwhip. Mitch didn't land it quite as clean as Watts however, who walked away with the cash.

Reader Comments 

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