This past weekend Crystal Mountain hosted the 6th annual Silver King Freeride competition at Crystal Mountain. With some of the best in bounds and backcountry terrain in the country Crystal Mountain is a killer spot for a competition venue, just check out Crystalmt.com for more. We had our man Reed Purvis on the seen, competing, and uh, enjoying the after party like the true "all-around" athlete that it takes to survive on the freeskiing competition tour. Here's what we were able to piece together...

Crystal Mountain... pretty sweet eh, yeah... ummm, yeah, oouuuuhhh. Try saying, "Crystal Mountain... changing lives by bringing the best quality snow to you by combing the snow with the most awesome terrain in the mountains into a packaged environment that is friendly and challenging with a slightly polished yet natural feel to it, awesomeness... at the same time." 3 times in a row. Pretty difficult isn't it, it's not as easy as it looks, yeah, surprised you there, you thought it would be easy, didn't you, didn't you... well guess what... you were wrong.

The big mountain event was really sweet this year even with some difficult and scary snow conditions, resulting from the rain earlier in the week that left a frozen and icy rain crust everywhere. Luckily the snow came this week to make the hard crusty conditions manageable while covering all the little rocks so no one could see them. Hmmm. The nice looking takeoffs were really deceptive, with sharp rocks lurking under the newly fallen snow, conspiring to grab your skis and rip them off your feet. Sam Wright was the first to be victimized by these rocks in the qualifier on friday, which were held on the Throne. As he rolled into his air a little too slow, he dry docked on the buried rocks and front flipped off, leaving one of his skis stuck on the takeoff point. About his encounter with the rocks, Sam was quoted as saying, "I feel so violated and exposed by what has happened today. It's too bad there have to be rocks with such bad intentions, I just wish I had seen this coming.(*)"

Luckily, the new snow was making for some much softer (sort of) landings as well, so every possible rock, cliff band, and anything else that could be used to send some air, was. There was an unusually high number of falls on Friday's qualifier, most of which involved frozen ice chunks underneath the new snow and unforgiving icy traverses and ruts.

Despite the conditions, JD Thompson once again threw down in the qualifier this year with a huge over rotated 360 off the lower dead tree feature that landed him in the flats. One way of avoiding the difficult conditions is by turning as little as possible, which is exactly what Zack Barrett did as he aired a feature at the top and straightlined the entire venue to the cheers of his fellow competitors. The day was a huge success with really strong riding from both the male and female competitors and no serious injuries despite the large number of falls.

The finals day was more of the same conditions on The King, a 1500 ft face full of sweetness resulting in very high numbers on the stoke'ometer, with cloudy skies and intermittent low lying clouds. But it might as well have been a powder day, as it was hard to tell the difference by the way everyone attacked the mountain. Almost no cliffs were left un-hucked including the 40-70 foot band at the bottom of the venue. At one point there was an unidentified starfish or UFS (some sort of attempted Lincoln Loop) that came out of nowhere off the 70 footer. Apparently this is the first sighting ever reported of a flying starfish. A witness that wished to remain nameless provided us with this sketch. Once again Zack Barrett decided to send it by launching a 70 foot air, straightlining for 10 feet or more leading up to the edge, lip, or whatever you want to call it.

With very firm but stompable landings, everyone crashed except for the eventual 2nd place finisher who dumped some speed before his air and landed on better tranny than everyone else. Local skier Tyler Ceccanti took 1st with a fast and fluid line down the King that included a 30 foot air in the exposed middle section of the venue, while Laura Ogden once again took 1st in the Women's skiing. Then came the awards ceremony, real exciting stuff.

There were the usual announcements, blah blah blah, and then came the wig party that evening at the Bullwheel. Only a few wigs actually appeared, no one got the memo I guess. But, the ratio was amazing, 80% girls, probably some kind of record... especially with the mixture of Swedish, South American and Japanese. The Japanese girls, on some sort of group vacation, had their cameras out and were shooting teasingly revealing photos of the other nationalities represented, keeping the stereotype alive.

This photo taking frenzy eventually led to a 4 way makeout session represented by girls from Sweden, Colombia, Japan, and Canada. Holy crap this party was ridiculous, what are the chances of this coinciding with the freeskiing comp! Actually, none of this really happened, psych! But the party involved a lot of consuming and relaxation after the nervousness of the previous days competition.

Another epic at the Silver King Freeride, and we'll no doubt be back next year.

The Silver King Freeride at Crystal Mountain is organized by Mountain Challenge and supported by Sturtevant's, Boarderline Snowboards, K2 sports, Monkey Rides, Clearly Lasik, Fuel TV, Sports Legs, Zeal Optics, Scott, Adhost Internet, Nordica, and Phiten USA

Special thanks to John Barci at Mountain Challenge and Tiana Enger at Crystal Mountain.

(*) denotes fake interview

Editor's Note: Judging by the photos, do you think Reed was confused about the wigs and the ratio of girls? Seems to me more people were wearing wigs than he might have guessed...