Words & photos by Jason Mousseauamp;lt;!--
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The Telus Triple Challenge at Blue
Mountain is usually covered by Mr. Bishop himself, but since he is
extremely busy with improving Newschoolers for you guys, I was sent
on a suicide mission to his stomping grounds where I learned many
life lessons, but most importantly that the Triple Challenge is an
event you don't want to miss. The adventure began Tuesday when my
ride realized he no longer had room for me or my gear, and that I
would have to find another way up. Luckily I was able to scramble a
lift with Mike Ness and Dom Laporte (thanks guys) who gladly offered
me a spot in their beat up Subaru. I had never met them before, and
the fact that they were willing to come pick me up and spend the next seven hours with me says a lot about our us freeskiers. To me, skiing is
not just a sport but a whole community which is always eager to
welcome new faces and friends into their life, and by the time we
arrived at Blue Mountain I had two new buddies which I didn't have a
few hours before.
at about 3:00 am, we all quickly passed out as we had a big week
ahead of us and wanted to stay well rested and healthy. The format of
the Triple Challenge was pretty simple. Practice and registration for
the slopestyle started on Wednesday morning, slope was all day
Thursday, the rail jam was Friday and the exclamation point of the
competition was the big air on Saturday.
skies and scattered rain and snow, which isn't the ideal slopestyle
conditions but we made our way to the hill nonetheless. Once we got
there, the beautiful event staff reminded us that slopestyle practice
was canceled today and that they posted it on their website the prior
evening. That meant that we wouldn't be skiing all day, so we decided
to practice something other than slope, drinking. We quickly piled
into the car and headed to Mac's to pick up a few cases of beer and a
couple packs of rolling papers, and the rest is history.
Ironside for providing a place for everyone to party, because without
him there would be nothing to fill the gap in this article. For those
of you who don't know what a shoe is, pull out your pen and paper and
take note because I'm about to teach you something which not only
will prove useful the rest of the ski career, but will make your
non-skier friends gag with disgust. So it's pretty simple, doing "a
shoe" consists of taking off your dirty stinky old shoe, emptying
the rest of your beer into it, and chugging it like a champion. Why
in the hell would you do a shoe you might be asking? When you commit
a party foul and get called out for it, or if you call a false shoe
on someone else, in which case you must do the shoe out of his or her
shoe.
Enjoy them. Hate on them. Oh and since I'm such a nice guy, I figured
I'd let you guys in on a little secret...there will be a Max Hill
interview coming soon, and you definitely won't be ready for it.
odd experience. First of all everyone's memory was a bit shady, but
the craziest part is that it was dumping outside and the weather took
a complete 180 from the previous day. Even though a lot of heavy snow doesn't make for the most ideal slopestyle conditions, it was still much better than rain,
and everyone on the hill was stoked that Mother Nature had one last
surprise for us. Athletes were given an hour to practice before the
amateurs and women had their qualifying runs. The run for most people
consisted of a down rail followed by a 4-jump line, with the
option of hitting a very long I-beam or barrel bonk instead of the
first or second jump. The pros then had a chance to throw down their
best out of two runs hoping to make it to the finals.
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Since there was a lot of time to chill
in between qualifiers and finals, we decided it was a good time to
get some faceshots, along with a few lifestyle shots. Here they are.
fooling around in the powder for a while, it was time for the pros to
throw down and they each had two chances of putting up a dope run. Hugo
Pelletier was keeping it steezy with super smooth tricks and in my
opinion had the nicest switch 9 tail on the final jump of the day.
Props to Mike Ness for being the only competitor opting out of the
first two jumps to hit the I-beam and barrel bonk, unfortunately for
him he literally hit the barrel and had to throw away his run. By far
the stand out skier of the day was Sandy with solid rail tricks, and
banger jump line which was filled with cork 7's, switch 9's and regular
cork 9's. Everyone gathered in the Cascade room to hear the results,
and here they are:Men's ProSandy BovilleJon HarrisHugo PelletierFemale ProGillian McGiverJen CrichtonJessica WarlMen's AmateurZack HellreichMatthew WilcoxGary Klutt
shout out to Blue Mountain and the Grand Georgian Hotel for hooking up
some pimp accomadations for me and the crew! We would have been
sleeping in the car if it wasn't for you guys.The next day was
the rail jam, which had 2 hour "jam style" practice in the morning
followed by the finals at night in front the village crowd. The
features were a very long and high flat bar, and a street style DFD
flat bar.The level of competition was extremly high, with the amateur's
spinning on-and-off the flat bar and disastering the DFD.
six person chair running right under the rail course was the perfect
showcase for weekend warriors and joey's alike to see that you don't
have to snowboard to hit rails. The pros had their chance to throw
down, and the Quebec crew brought the heat with the first 630's out and
spins onto the DFD. Since these were not qualifiers but just practice,
everyone took it fairly mellow and saved their big tricks for the
finals. The skies were blue however
so we all decided to cruise over to the slopestyle course and shred the
park for a few hours. If only it was like this during slopestyle, it
would have made for a much nicer competitions with less issues and more
consistency. Either way people were just stoked to be riding the
beautiful Blue park with all their homies. 
shredding the park all afternoon, everyone went back to get a little
bit of rest, put some food in their bellies and get in the right state
of mind. The setup for the rail jam was the same, the only difference
is that the snowboaders and skiers rode together this time. A huge
crowd at the bottom of the course kept everyone motivated to throw
down, unfortunately I am a broke-ass photographer and don't have the
proper flash setup to shoot at night, so you guys will have to make due
with some below-par photos.
all was said and done, Jamieson Irvine finished first followed closely
by a large group of skiers that could have taken the big check home
also. Sandy Boville kept up his winning streak by coming in second and
throwing some tech tricks on both the features, while the Quebec crew
held it down with reg 270 on's by both Mike Ness and Martin Bullet and
switch lip 270's on by Dom Laporte. Max Hill kept things fresh as
usual with switch butter 2 in and some dope follow cams with Matt
Brindisi, who had the most gangster 270 on 630 out I have seen in a
long time. Mac Jones was also going big, spinning 450 disasters on the
DFD, unfortunately the landing was really close to the end of the rail,
so there wasn't much you could do once you hit the last kink. Big props
goes to Jessica Warl for shredding hard and pushing herself and the
other girls by being the first one to hit most features, and being the
only one to try a 270 on. Here are the results.Men's ProJamieson IrvineSandy BovilleHugo PelletierFemale ProJen CrichtonSteph BoinqueJessica WarlMen's AmateurReid MceachranMatt WilcoxJordan Innes
was the big day. The Blue Mountain park staff did an amazing job at
building a behemoth of a jump which measured 75 feet to the sweet spot,
and the take off was 25 feet and 12 feet high. Local hero Dave Bishop
guinea pigged it with a MASSIVE daffy way too deep for his own good.
The crowd quickly began growing at the bottom of the jump, and riders
were getting stoked to hit such a beautifully sculpted jump. 
I continue, I'd like to give a shout out to Jessica Warl. This girl
destroyed it all week, and was the first in her category to hit the
jump. Most people would follow up a test jump with a 180 or a 360, but
Jess did a switch 180 before 90% of the male athletes had a chance to
hit it switch. Unfortunately she overshot the jump later in the day and
was unable to compete in the finals at night. Since there were only two
other girls, they were rewarded first and second place for their tricks, while Jess got nothing. Even though she was unable to
compete in the finals, I felt it wasn't fair that they did not reward
her third place (instead there was only first and second) and most
importantly did not even receive any props. So here are your props
Jess, get better soon and get back to killing it as usual. 
know I sort of have a biased opinion here, but my favorite skiers to
watch of the day were the Team Quebec train which consisted of Hugo
Pelletier, Martin Bullet and Dom Laporte. Hugo was the first man
throwing down super laidback lazyboy three's and five's, followed by
Martin's extremely clean rodeo 5's and 7's, and finished off with Dom's
switch spins. Take note aspiring big air skiers. Dom Laporte was a last
minute scratch for the Saturday afternoon big air comp, as he did not
get invited, didn't have that many results, and didn't place so well in
the first two events. He also never did a switch 7 until Saturday
afternoon, where he did his first switch 7, and then switch 1080, and
then (spoiler alert) switch 1260 tail.
air qualifiers ended up turning into big air practice, as all
competitors got invited to the night time showdown which consisted of a
3 hour jam session where the skier or boarder with the best trick took
home the $3500 first place cash prize. Everyone stepped up their game
going bigger at night and getting huge reactions from the crowds.
Again, sorry for the fairly shitty photos, but if you really want
better ones feel free to send me a check so I can buy the proper flash
equipment. Thanks guys.
all was said and done, Dominic Laporte took home first place with his
first switch 12, with Mack Jones coming in a close second with a
stomped kang flip and Jon Harris with flawless switch 10's. Many
athletes and spectators, including Dom himself, thought that Mack
should have taken home first with his kangaroo flip, but they both knew
that all they can do is ski and the rest is up to the judges. Being the
great competitors they are, they were both just stoked to hit a massive
jump in front of a big crowd and go home with a pocket full of cash.Men's ProDom LaporteMack JonesJon HarrisWomen's ProGillian McGiverJen Crichton
usually I'm not a claimer, but as most of you guys know I'm fairly new
to this whole photography thing and have only been snapping photos for
the last few months. When I arrived at Blue, I noticed there was a
photography showdown which awarded cash prizes for the top three
finishers. The only problem was that you had to have printed photos
ready, and I only had two hours remaining before the deadline. Not having
a proper laptop or printer, I scrambled like crazy to put together four
photos and print them out on shitty 8 x 11 photocopy paper from an
office printer. I gotta say, they didn't really compare to some of the
giant framed photo posters of some of the competitors, but it was
enough to snag me third place and $200 (which was later spent at the
bar). Props to Richard Roth (http://www.rothphoto.com) for taking home first.Here are the four photos I entered:
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