Words by Jeff Schmuck

Photos by Jeff Schmuck, Jenny Naftulin & Dave Amirault (http://www.freeskier.com)

Day two of the Salomon Jib Academy Finals just wrapped up here at Mammoth Mountain, California.

After yesterday's all-out shred sesh in the Unbound park, the athletes and kids hopped back into the shuttle buses and made the trip down the road to Bishop to cap off the first day of the event with a killer game of bowling, where good times were a plenty, as is always the case with that glorious sport.

The Dumont rips bowling alleys like he rips the pipe

Seth Warner in fine form

Emile Bergeron & Henrik Harlaut...check out Henrik's bowling kicks

The weather then took a bit of a turn for the worse this morning as the dreariness that was supposed to hit us yesterday showed up late and slowed this morning's proceedings to a snail's pace. Everyone sat down to enjoy a nice breakfast before throwing a Macbook party in the lounge while gazing out the windows at the mountain and waiting for the high winds to slow and the clouds to pass.

breakfast time

the infamous Digi Dave from Freeskier heads up the Macbook party

Mammoth

Right around lunch time the renowned California sunshine came out and slowly but surely everyone made their way out on to the hill to rip the park a new one.

early in the day a bit of an old school fest commenced. Cody Cirillo & Torin Yater-Wallace were doin' the bug...

Jib Academy head coach Tommy Elingson was busting out some mean spreads...

Dumont threw down some fronts...

...and Symms brought out the daffy

On top of the wind continuing to be a factor throughout the day the snow was rather sticky which caused things to be a touch more mellow, and as a result some of the bigger jumps were left alone, but rest assured that everyone in attendance was having an absolute ball throwing down on the rails and again on the jump at the base.

Noah Killen...whoops!

Torin Yater-Wallace

Seb Eaves

Seamus Flanagan

Spencer Milbocker

Brendan Wall

Jamieson Irvine

Nick Martini

X-Dragon

Originally there was a private sunset shoot scheduled for today on a mammoth (get it, mammoth?) kicker at the top of the mountain, but unfortunately the weather put a kibosh on that until tomorrow, at which point it's sure to go off, as nothing but sun is in the forecast for the new few days.

Mike Douglas with the SS Crew: Seamus Flanagan & Willie Borm

Once the skiing was all said and done for the day the crew settled in for another nice meal before attending a seminar put on by the man, the myth, the legend...the Godfather of freeskiing, Mike Douglas. Mike gave an extremely insightful and well-done speech called 'Putting the Pro in Professional,' which included 10 important points on what it takes to become a professional skier and how to stay one. Needless to say, the 16 Jib Academy winners were hanging on his every word and undoubtedly will never forget the advice given from the man who has been more than instrumental in making the sport what it is.

Stay tuned for continued daily coverage on all the super happy fun times that are going down here in Mammoth at Salomon Jib Academy Finals, and in the meantime, head on over to http://www.newschoolers.com/jibacademy and check out the sweet photos and blogs from the kids, along with two pimped-out new features: a Salomon Jib Academy Twitter feed that everyone here has been regularly updating, and most excitingly, our live webcast chat, where over the course of the next few days various Salomon athletes will be sitting down in front of a webcam and the chat where you can ask them questions that they'll be able to answer live and on camera with full audio. The first chat went down earlier tonight with Sammy Carlson, Nick Martini, Mike Clarke and AJ Kempainnen (along with some cameo appearances from Willie Borm and Seamus Flanagan), and tomorrow evening the one and only John Symms, Matt Walker and a host of others athletes will take their turn answering all of your burning questions. So check it out!