Dew Tour course preview

The Dew Tour athletes are dialing in their final tricks on the last day of practice before one of the world’s most epic ski and snowboard competitions kicks off on Wednesday, Dec. 10.

Dew Tour events begin tomorrow at 9:30am, with a full day of semi-final events for our female athletes. The schedule for Wednesday includes:

• 9:30 to 10:30am: Snowboard women’s superpipe semi-final.
• 10am to 11am: Ski women’s slopestyle semi-final.
• 12:30 to 1:30pm: Ski women’s superpipe semi-final
• 2pm to 3pm: Snowboard women’s slopestyle semi-final.

Today we had a chance at a preview of the halfpipe and slopestyle course to check out some of the awesome features that were built by the Breck Park Crew in collaboration with Snow Park Technologies. Watching athletes practice boosting out of the 22-foot superpipe, constructed by Breck Park Crew’s own Nick Simon, was a sight to behold. Today, athletes were jumping anywhere between five and ten feet out of the pipe, but we can expect to see those numbers rise later in the week, as many of the world’s top athletes are capable of reaching heights above the coping of 15 feet or more. Not only does that place them high above the superpipe lip, but increases the risk of crashing down on the flat top of the pipe, as it means they are a whopping 37 feet above the center of the pipe.

In the slopestyle course, athletes dropping in from the start tent are faced with three urban-style stair set rail features, and four massive jumps. The first stair set showcases a down rail on the right, a down rail with a kink at the end in the middle of the stairs, and a flat-down rail on the left side of the stair set.

The second stair set feature has four rails with a plethora of options to link in-between them. On the right side is a flat rail, which ends at the top of the stairs, forcing athletes to either jump off the rail, over the stairs, or to jump on to one of two down-rails that traverse the stair set on either side of the flat rail. On the left side of the stairs is a box, which starts out flat then takes a kink downward as it moves down the staircase.

Following the top stair set features are two large jumps that lead athletes into the third rail feature. On the right is the Breck wallride, a wall-like feature for athletes to jump onto and off of from the side. In the middle is a red, flat-down kink rail. And on the skier’s left side is an arching box.

To finish up the course, athletes are rocketed into the sky by two final, massive jumps before coming back down to earth. This week will be packed with huge tricks, great style and maybe even a few for the history books. We cannot wait to see what these athletes bring to the table, and we hope you will join us for the epic-ness that is about to unfold.

-Nick Pease