words and photos by Julie Weinberger

It was not warm today. In fact, it was flippin' cold, snowy and even a little windy. Still, two heats of over 60 skiers each took to the US Open course with a vengeance in hopes of getting their chance to throw down along side the invited athletes in Friday's slopestyle final.

Espen Linnnerud

Throughout the day, landing the jumps seemed to be number one on everyone's mind. With flat light, knowing exactly where you were in the air seemed to give many skiers some trouble. Also, because of the falling snow, decking out was a little too common. Luckily, tons of riders who weren't dropping soon kept slipping the course to keep it as fast as possible.

Henrik Harlaut

Ian Williams

Luke Nutting

As you saw in the slopestyle preview article, the six rails definitely give a good variety. Unfortunately, the jumps are a little on the small side. But, with the falling snow, that�s probably a good thing. Even with the jump sizes, skiers were still busting out good looking cork 9s and Kangaroo flips. On the rails, we saw some 270 disasters on the flat-down and lots of 270s on and off everything.

Mitch Derr

Patrick Hollas

Tim Russell

Looking at the forecast, the weather for tomorrow is supposed to be partly sunny. So, that'll give the day 2 qualifiers a break. But, don't get too excited, snow and wind return on Friday, and are supposed to stay for the weekend. I guess we're used to our warm, sunny days at the X Games.

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