The Natural Selection Tour’s Ski Event Is Finally Live! But Was It a Success?

Marcus Eder sends, despite the conditions – an NST requirement. Photo: Natural Selection Tour

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When Parker White dropped first into the Alaskan spine wall that served as the venue for Natural Selection Ski, I thought to myself “ouff, maybe NST’s luck has run out?” The snow at the top was horrible — glazed ice punctuated by breakable crust — and it looked for an instant like Parker might hook a ski and tomahawk down the closeout couloir on the riders’ right boundary of the face.

Of course he didn’t. The NST model is to invite the best athletes in the world, and Parker’s no exception to that rule. He made it off the more southerly aspect and into the pow on the shadier side of the spines, connecting a massive drop, a laid-out frontflip and surfy turns that got him down to the bottom of the 1,800-foot venue in one piece. 

“It feels really good to be at the bottom,” he said to Tatum Monod in the finish corral. “And the snow, it’s marginal but it’s still good.”

With that, he radioed up to his fellow athletes that, as long as they picked the right aspects, conditions were good to go. I’ll spare you the play-by-play so you can watch the broadcast for yourself. But what followed was an absolute master-class in terrain management and full-throttle sendage in the face of questionable conditions (final results below).

Skiers, man. They’re a whole other breed. It would’ve been interesting to see how NST’s roster of snowboarders would’ve fared on the face in those same conditions. No doubt they would’ve plowed through the breakable crust more effectively. But with only two edges to work with instead of four, the icier parts of the course would’ve claimed a few riders for sure, especially on their heel-side edge. And, spoiler alert here, I’m not sure we would’ve seen anyone attempt a double-cork 1080?!

Impressive, to say the least. But it wasn’t easy for everyone. All four women were thrown around by the conditions. And it was definitely one of the first times in NST history that a winner was awarded for just chugging turns down the face. France’s Manon Loschi, who ultimately took the win, definitely made the finals venue look like a lot of fun. But I personally thought her run lacked the capital “R” for risk in NST’s “CREDO” judging criteria. The girl’s got great style though, especially considering it was her first time skiing in Alaska, and she locked into a better flow than her competitors.

The best part of the day was that the athletes who made it through the opening round were rewarded with wayyyyyy better snow on the finals venue. And the change in conditions seemed to give the riders an air of superhuman invincibility. Watch Craig “Weazy” Murray’s winning run and you’ll see what I mean. The whole final between him and Canada’s Sam Kuch completely redefined what’s possible on a pair of skis.

“Getting to spend two weeks in a wild location with everyone created a totally different atmosphere than you see at other events,” said Murray. “Everyone came together as a team rather than competitors. Skiing with such a range of the world’s best skiers was unique. Dropping into the final with one of my best friends was beyond comprehension and the cherry on top.”

So, in spite of the warm weather that struck the venue before comp day, the event was definitely a success. The athletes and crew camped out at the foot of the face for almost a week, so just getting everyone in and out safely was a feat unto itself. But as usual, the action was captured by some of the best image-makers in the biz and edited down into a super entertaining broadcast (as long as you’re into double corks, impossible transfers, sluff management, and riding that looks like it came straight of next year’s ski movies).

“We know a lot from doing these events and we know what we have to do to put on a great event, but this is our beta year,” said Travis Rice in an interview before the competition. “So we’ve taken a lot of feedback from our athlete ambassador group. We have Mike Douglas working with us on that program, who’s a ski legend, and we’ve got this group that really, really cares about skiing, have committed their lives to skiing and have their own visions and ideas about where skiing is going to go.”

Not to mention that skiing versus snowboarding is one of the most embarrassing beefs in the history of sport. So I thought it was rad to see our skier brothers and sisters take a crack at the format that Travis has worked so hard to create.