Crested Butte Mountain Resort celebrates 20 years of hosting the U.S. Extreme Freeskiing Championships this week, a truly extreme action sports event that predates the X Games and other extremism in sports lexicography by about four years. The resort bills itself as “the birthplace of Big Mountain competitions,” and it’s…
Breckenridge Ski Resort is getting a good return on investment from its Breck Freeride Team and its stepped-up park & pipe programs: Yesterday, Breckenridge snowboarders Eric Willett and Janna Meyen-Weatherby won the Men’s and Women’s Snowboard Slopestyle contests (respectively) at Snowbasin in Ogden, Utah, the final stop of the Winter…
1. Ladies first! Winter Park is hosting the Burton Women’s Ride Camp and the Gravity Goddess Progressive Ski Clinic this weekend. Gentlemen: If you still don’t have the Valentine’s powder day date of your dreams sorted out, this is the après-ski scene you’re looking for. And, if it’s love at…
The park and pipe crew at Buttermilk is a well-oiled machine after a decade of hosting the Winter X Games, making crazy stuff like Torstein Horgmo’s triple flip, Kelly Clark’s 1080 and Shaun White’s tight pants possible, year after year. And the best part? Each year, Buttermilk’s left with a…
Time for some Time-Wasting Video! Breckenridge-based Celia Miller, a star of the all-female snowboard film Let’s Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow, recently joined up with Ride Snowboards and Denver’s SixEleven Productions for the fifth episode in the Ride With Us weekly video series. Miller and the crew hit Denver’s Ruby Hill…
Ready to climb something crazy and then tell the tale in style? The Jonny Copp Foundation is now accepting applications for its $20,000 in 2011 Copp-Dash Inspire Awards, named in memory of Copp (Boulder’s Adventure Film Festival founder) and his climbing partner Micah Dash, who died in 2009 in an…
We’re #1! Come see the best roller derby league in the country in action when the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls (2010 Women’s Flat Track Derby Association national champions) open their 2011 season on Saturday at the Fillmore at 7 p.m. The bout pits two of the league’s teams – Dooms…
Husband-and-wife photography team Brian Mohr and Emily Johnson are doing things the hard way with their Wild People, Wild Places project: For their most recent adventure, featured on the cover of Wend Magazine’s January 2011 issue, the duo toured Norway’s Arctic Alps for a month using only skis and bicycles,…
Now that the SIA Snow Show is officially over, after two days of on-snow demos at Winter Park following the trade show at the Colorado Convention Center, it’s hard to imagine the snow sports industry ever got away with having this thing in Las Vegas. Anovia Daniels, spokeswoman for SnowSports…
When a product comes along that is so unique, so one-of-a-kind, so different than the rest of the products out there, it needs to be researched. Beardski is one of those products. Competing with the viral “BeardHead” brand of crocheted face masks, Beardski brings a new option to the table…
We sifted through a mess of 893 snow sports brands representing at the SIA Snow Show to find the Colorado companies we love most, then asked them to show off their best boards for the 2011/2012 season. Click through for a fast-forward look at the boards locavores will be craving…
Denver Big Air organizers at the Denver Sports Commission and the LG FIS Snowboard World Cup were right to be upset that top riders like Canadian Sebastian Toutant (aka “Seb Toots”) stood them up in favor of getting in some extra practice at Buttermilk for X Games 15, a scheduling…
In a world where 14-year-old kids are throwing double-cork 1080s, the oft forgotten path of big mountain riding gets lost in the mix or, sometimes, completely overlooked. Jeremy Jones has been at the forefront of that revolution since the dawn of big mountain accessibility. He’s dropped cliffs from Alaska to…
As you may know by now, the SIA Trade show is not open to the public. But Westword was able to get in and get the scoop on some new products that are coming out this year. We got the techiest of the tech, the practical-est of the practical and…
More than 14,000 snowboarding fans turned out for the LG FIS Snowboard World Cup Big Air competition on the Denver Big Air ramp in Civic Center Park, according to the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association’s estimate, about 4,000 more than for the previous night’s ski competition. Take that, skiing! Alas,…
Let’s face it: If you build a 106-foot launch tower and then send competitors — some of them as young as 14 — careening down the face of it on skis towards a big-ass kicker for a competition like last night’s Nature Valley Big Air Challenge in Civic Center Park…
The 100-foot launch tower erected in Civic Center Park for the Denver Big Air competition will see its first official action today at 5 p.m. (doors open at 3:30 p.m.) for the Nature Valley Ski Big Air challenge, a Battle of the Brands format that will pit the ski teams…
It may be that the powers-that-be of Civic Center Park have Denver Big Air, which starts tomorrow, locked down tighter than a low-income high school, but that’s not going to stop the determined winter sports enthusiast from seeing it for free. It is, after all, an enormous ramp in a…
This week the Snowsports Industries of America (SIA) Snow Show is coming to the Colorado Convention Center, where all the major ski and snowboard companies will show off their latest innovations for the 2011/2012 winter season. Here’s one we’d like to see on the showroom floor: The one-off Signal Snowboards…
Next week we have the Denver Big Air competitions, the entire snowsports industry in town for the SIA Snow Show and Winter X Games 15 at Buttermilk. But first, this weekend. Here’s this week’s frozen five: 1. Breck yo’ ass! There’s not really anything specific going on at Breckenridge this…
The Winter Wildlands Alliance brings its Backcountry Film Festival tour to Boulder’s Neptune Mountaineering (633 South Broadway) tonight at 8 p.m…
In less than a week now, the scaffolding will be erected and the snow packed onto the 101-foot ramp that’s been going up for the last week or so in Civic Center Park, allowing a generous handful of world-class skiers and snowboarders to launch themselves to preposterous heights in the…
