Le Big Lepowski
After leaving Jackson we took off to Salt Lake City yet again. We embarked on the first, and hopefully annual, Big LePowSki at Brighton, UT. The event was started by Black Diamond and Backcountry.com to give participants the opportunity to yuck it up with some of their favorite professionals as well as ski and get some pointers on the art of skiing and riding. Pros from both Black Diamond’s and Backcountry.com’s teams came from around North America to teach and assist in the event. Veterans like Chris Davenport, and up and coming starts like Callum Petit, as well as other like Sage C. Alosa, Cody Barnhill, Julian Carr, Carston Oliver, Mark Welgos, Myself (Toot Toot), and many more.
The day started with the participants signing up for the perspective class in a discipline they wanted to improve on. These included, “Learn to Spin a 360, Air Awareness, See a line and ski it, Steep Skiing, Freeskiing 101, Air Sense, and Drop a cliff.” I teamed up with Sage C-Alosa teaching “Air awareness” in the morning. However, we were challenged with the conditions not only because both he and I are big mountain skiers and the snow was not applicable for big cliff dropping, but the crew we were teaching were on all different levels and abilities. We tried to go through the park, but we were both intimidated by the firm to very firm conditions, se we opted to get our group skiing small lines and dropping smaller cliffs. Given the conditions, it was pretty hard to find anything we were all willing to jump off, but props out to our “students” who were surprisingly stoked to try anything we deemed “safe.” Enthusiastically our group skied lines and pushed their limits, which was made the experience enjoyable, as we were able to see our group progress through the morning session.
After lunch I taught a class called “Choose a line and ski it.” Given the firm snow and intimidating conditions this class was a little difficult to teach, as my group was not really looking to ski a line the way I see a line, yet were all enthusiastic to ski none- the-less. Lines to me involve going through varied terrain with the intent to jump off or avoid cliffs, yet my group was more interested in a line through the bumps or learning how to look at a slope differently.
Either way the experience was fun and the sun was out. The group of athletes and organizer that were involved were all amazing and the stoke level was high. The word on the street is that they (Backcountry and Blakc Diamond) will be doing the event again next year, so stay tuned for you chance to ski with some of the industries icons at the next Big LePowSki.