After a short break followed by 10 days worth of waiting out late season Colorado snowstorms, the Level 1 crew returned to wrap up their series of Summit County post-season park shoots. Copper Mountain rolled out the red carpet, giving us access to their all-star park staff and the ability to move their remaining piles of snow into anything we could dream up. With a clean slate, our first order of business was to plow the 4th jump in Copper's famous US Open jump line into a super poppy 75-foot stepover style table. Withe the knoll sitting about 10 feet higher then the takeoff, traveling anywhere between 70 and 120 feet put you perfectly on the landing's transition. All agreed that it was the most fun and lowest consequence park jump they had every hit, and their enthusiasm translated into one of the most awe-inspiring jump sessions of the year.
Along with spring shoots of course come spring temps, and battling 80+ degree weather and the slow, sticky snow that comes with it made getting enough speed difficult during the first day of sessioning. However, a quick trip to Breckenridge to visit Purl Wax's owner and base tune guru, Scott Sparks, left everyone with a fresh coat of wax and an extra boost of speed on the inrun the next morning.
Highlights of the session included 14-year old young gun Duncan Adams throwing down every trick he could come up with and then some, dropping double grab cork 5s, cab 9s, and unnatural cab 7s as smooth and clean as some of the athletes on site with a decade of experience on him. Other standouts included 120 foot 180s from Stefan Thomas, cork 9 mute to tail's from Sean Decker, and a half dozen new tricks from Tom Wallisch.
Day three brought about a long-awaited session on our hand-sculpted "true spine" feature, which no less then 20 people spent three afternoons cutting, raking, and shoveling out of Copper's 20-foot tall quarterpipe from the previous week's shoot. The nearly 70-degree takeoff and comparably flat 50-degree landing scared most away, though Ahmet Dadali boosted countless rodeos, 5s, 7s, and 9s, easily 20 feet off the deck, with Duncan charging 180s, 3s, and 5s after him.
Our second stop at burgeoning terrain park hot spot, Echo, a mere 75 minute jaunt from downtown Denver, left us with a unique set of challenges. The previous week's sunny skies and 80-degree temps did a number on what little snow was left, and we were faced with a hillside of equal parts snow and mud. To further complicate the situation, the park staff had been dismissed for the season, and all the rails and boxes that hadn't been demolished by Echo's cat drivers had been put away for the summer. With things looking bleak, the group made the decision to gather up the four separate pieces of Echo's down-flat-down box, rebuild it as a giant flat-down, and drop it into place on the landing of the largest jump in the park. When all was said and done, we ended up with a 53 foot gap to downbox, with a channel cut out after the takeoff, which easily amounted to one of the most impressive jib features anyone had yet to encounter.
For the next three days Wallisch, Ahmet, Mike Hornbeck, Dave Lesh, and Adam Delorme waited through snow, rain, and fog, for brief windows of light under which to throw down. Hornbeck corked out huge 270s, Lesh went after 450 nose grabs, Ahmet threw both natural and unnatural cab 270s, and Delorme tossed a number of flawless cab 270s (to both the flat, and the down sections of the box), and cab cork 630 japans. After mumbling about wanting to throw rodeos on a big disaster feature, and even test-running the idea at another shoot the previous week, Wallisch stole the show with a series of enormous rodeo 450 mutes onto the box (to switch and 270 out), putting an exclamation point on his brief, but impressive spring throwdown.
With a dwindling crew, we spent the last few days of the 10-day park mission back up at Eclipse, where cat driver extraordinaire Tony Distrola had re-shaped the gap to upbox from our previous adventures, and worked with Ahmet and Hornbeck to create a new take on last year's barrel jib by placing a single 5000 gallon water tank on its side behind a 25-foot upbox. While after over a week straight of banging out shots, no one quite had it left in them to go after the massive gap feature, Ahmet and Hornbeck took advantage of the situation and were able to wind things down with a few tricks on the barrel that would have made Corey Vanular proud.
A huge thanks go out to Lauren from Copper, Chris from Echo, and Tony and Michael from Eclipse. Thanks for the support!
Special thanks as well to Asian Tourist/Photog Extraordinaire Erik Seo for the generous "picktcha" contribution. |
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