At this point I should admit that I hate being the first person to hit a toy, in previous years I’ve been able to rely on Jamie Nicholls or one of the other kids acting as a test rider and I can bow to their judgement with regards to speed, how the kicker’s riding etc, unfortunately though they were all riding in the 2nd qualification group so if I was going to step up and hit it I’d have to do it on my own. I looked again and after a bit of banter with Shiner the Technical Delegate for the day where we argued over the size (I said as far as I was concerned it was 9m as that’s what the plan said, he said 14.5m) I decided it was definitely doable, took a deep breath and dropped in. Straight off the drop in ramp, over the first lip, straight into the kicker (good girl, no speed checks) and up into the air……..oooooops! Yes the kicker was way whippier than it looked and the moment I was in the air it started to feel a bit wrong, my weight was too far back and I was tipping in the air. Anyone that’s been in this situation will know that at this point time slows down, I was a long way up and I realised that my best chance of surviving this was to tip my weight so I was going to fall on my front not my back, bring my arms in, relax and wait for the impact. It seemed like I had a long time to wait as I took up my “frog” position and started to plummet, then the ground hit, I bounced on my front, hitting my chin and then I must have bounced onto my back because I came to rest half way down the landing with my head pointing down and my feet back up towards the kickers. I wasn’t in pain, knew I wasn’t broken but I was totally winded so when I looked up to see people rush in to check on me I signalled I was ok and let them unstrap my board so I could roll over and get off the landing. A huge thanks to the First Aider, Col Mytton and Jools Smith who were all over to me pretty much the moment I’d landed. A pretty impressive feat for Jools considering he was on the run in side of the kicker capturing these shots…..

..he then had to pelt round to check I was alive! Thankfully I was and once I got my breath back I was back up the top grabbing a drink of water before getting back to it (all be it on the 5m kicker). I was quite gutted not to have landed it but I think I impressed (and scared) everyone by giving it a go. For a while I doubted myself and wondered if it was my mistake and whether I’d misjudged my ability, it turns out I hadn’t though as over the course of the 2nd qualification when the guys were hitting it, it became apparent that it was too whippy a kicker and a lot of people came a cropper much worse than I had. Numerous guys ended up visiting the local hospital and quite a few more admitted to being scared. These weren’t poor riders but the cream of the UK and it’s a shame that a quarter of all entrants took a bad fall on the main kicker! I count myself very lucky to have escaped with a slightly scraped chin and some aches from the impact.

All in all it was a fun session, even with the aches I was feeling and I was stoked to qualify for the final in 3rd place. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to hang on to it so finished 4th overall and 1st in Masters, still I figure I can live with being beaten by a 12 year old, a 14 year old and an under 30 year old!

To wrap up the day nicely I had a really nice message that put the icing on the cake and I’m pleased to announce I now have a new sponsor, Laurus. Laurus make handmade face wraps, and I’m looking forward to wearing them over the course of the Winter, not just on the slopes but on my commute to work if it gets cold enough!

I admit to totally wussing out of riding on the day we got there, both Katie Summerhayes and I decided to leave the guys to it, 44 hours with hardly any sleep screamed “accident waiting to happen to me” so I just walked around the slope watching and just chatting to the people who had come up to either watch their friends or just see what was going on at this new slope. The slope is amazing and currently consists of 3 kickers (a knuckle, a 3 foot and a 6 foot kicker) all of which can give you massive air. It was great to see that the locals were already getting the hang of it, with a young lad (the size that Jamie Nicholls used to be) of 9 year old giving 360s a try off the knuckle. There are also 2 boxes, a straight box & a down flat down kink which are placed on the intermediate slope. The slope is also going to be expanded as part of Phase 2 and so the riding area is going to pretty much double and they’re bound to add more jibs to the collection over time. There’s also a nursery slope for beginners to make their first turns on or to tube on.

After a late start on the Thursday we spent the afternoon playing ball and sunning ourselves in the uni pool (after a drive around town to find the outdoor pool with waterslides was closed as school had started) before heading to the slope to ride. I picked up my 150 Humanity Plastictastic, got my bindings screwed in and hit the slopes. After a couple of runs down the main slope to get the feel of the Snowflex and the new snowboard I was ready to start pushing it.

My first reaction to the new snowboard was that it perfect, it’s got plenty of spring and pop for ollies and is a lot flexier than I’m used to but without feeling soggy. I headed up to the kicker drop in and had a chat with Wayne Taylor about drop in speeds for the big kicker. I’d decided to go all out and hit the big one first off because I knew if I hit the 3 footer I’d be too scared to step it up, especially if I stacked it.   So after a couple of ride -throughs over the knuckle to get the hang f the drop in and feel the gradient of the run out I went for it. Dropped in, quick speed check and straightened up for the main 6 footer….up the kicker, in the air and I landed! I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised that the 150 handled the landing without any problem at all, and even more importantly there wasn’t any chatter on the run in either. I spent the rest of the evening working on various grabs and just trying to go bigger each time.

Friday saw us riding again and I was even brave enough to give a FS180 a try on the 6 foot kicker. I landed cleanly, but girly legs took over half way down the landing and I sat down. That was my only spin off the big kicker of the trip (it just felt a little on the large side for me to keep spinning on it) but I did get some good spins off the 3 footer while I was there.

Saturday was the big opening ceremony and it was seriously hot out there! So hot in fact that I put my riding shirt in the bucket of ice with the water in it to cool it down before we hit the slopes in the early afternoon sun. After the sky-diver had landed on the slopes and skiied down the hill I was the first over the kicker….it seemed like a good idea to volunteer to go first initially as it meant that when we started doing named tricks I’d be at the front to do a straight air (rather than being at the back and getting stuck with a 1080!), but as I was waiting to drop in it dawned on me that I was going to be the first person that the waiting crowds (of around 3,200 people) would see. All went well though and although I had a hand down on landing I managed to stay upright and not stack in front of everyone watching or get squashed by the riders who were following me in in quick succession.

After some “Trickology” to show the various tricks possible on skis and snowboards we had a quick team comp. I was part of UK 2, consisting of myself, Will Smith, Matt Macwhirter and Wayne Taylor. Unfortunately UK1 (Jamie Nicholls, Andy Nudds, Woodsy & Katie Summerhayes beat us in the crowd vote and went through to the final against on of the US teams. UK 1 were amazing and won the crowd vote overall. Their run can be seen in this video shown on the local news (in which I also feature!).  It was also great to have Dragon Goggles Team Manager, Sam Nelson, acting as half of the MC crew, it meant that there was someone there who knew our names and what we were doing and made sure we got plenty of shout outs and support from the crowd.  Russ Shea from Dopeshots was also on hand with his trusty camera so hopefully there’ll be some shots from him of us doing our thing.

We rode again on Sunday and as it was after the opening I think everyone was pushing it a little bit more, the pressure was off and people were less worried about hurting themselves. I used the time to keep working on big hits and grab variations and I had a great time. Katie stepped it up to throw down some massive 720s on skis and all the guys were putting in some huge spins. Everyone who hit it agreed that it’s the best kicker we’ve all hit and certainly the best kicker on Snowflex.

Unfortunately all good things have to come to an end, and  so we left Lynchburg on Monday morning and headed to the airport following a quick tourist stop off in Washington, where we saw the White House and the Washington Memorial. Arriving back in the UK yesterday it was great to log in to Facebook and Twitter and catch up on the buzz of the opening and the excitement of all our new friends. It was great to meet everyone from Liberty, the US Team and my boys from Humanity! We were all made to feel so welcome and I can’t wait to see how everyone progresses over the coming months.

Thanks again to Brian, Terry & Wayne for making this trip possible and for taking an old girl like me along with the kids. It meant a lot to be included and I hope I did you proud!

Here’s another movie from the team at Liberty University, great work from Hannah & Ena, I can’t wait to see what else you come up with.

And here’s my Flickr set of the trip

I’m typing this post while exhausted and full of Chinese food, my reward for all the snowboarding I’ve done this weekend.  We spent last night at the new Snow Centre in Hemel Hempstead, it opened a couple of months ago and yesterday was the first time we’d had the time (and money) to check it out. When it first opened the Friday night freestyle session was £50 for non members, thankfully they’ve dropped their prices so last night cost £31.50 with my SCUK membership.  I’d heard good things about Hemel, every-one’s been raving about the snow quality so as I was going to be at MK SNO!zone all day today we thought we’d do the Hemel session, stay in a hotel to save mileage on the car and then drive up to MK first thing this morning.

The first thing that hit me when we arrived in reception was the view of the slope, you can see it through a glass window behind them, it was shorter than MK but on the plus side shorter means more laps per session.  They had a rail and kicker line set up on half the main slope (with half being clear for non-freestylers) and then a bunch of toys on half the nursery slope as well.

The snow was definitely different to MK, finer and less granular and it was running well speed-wise, so well in fact that despite dropping in low on the kicker I almost over shot the landing!  I spent most of the night on the kicker, none of my friends were really hitting the rails on the main slope, so I figured I’d give the gap kicker a try.  It looked pretty whippy from the lift but it was a pretty smooth take off and once I’d got the feel from where to drop in from I had a really good session.  As ever, Jools was on hand to take some photos, so I set about doing some tail fishes (it’s the first opportunity I’ve really had to do them since I set up this new site) and then some shifty mutes.  I really did want to spin over it but the gap and the rutted run in meant i didn’t quite believe in my ability and the fact that I wasn’t going to catch my edge.  the park crew were doing their best to maintain the kicker but when you have 20 or so people hitting it solidly it’s always going to be tough to keep it perfect.  I did have a play on the rails and boxes on the nursery slope as well but 3 hours on the kicker had taken it’s toll and I wasn’t really feeling it by the time I made the switch.

It was a fun night and it was good to see friends (Doc & Street) I hadn’t ridden with for ages and I can see us heading over to Hemel once a month to see people who don’t make it up to MK as regularly as I do.

So after a rough night’s sleep in the hotel (smokey smelling bedroom leading to the invocation of Premier Inn’s good night guarantee) we hopped in the car and headed up to MK SNO!zone for another Maverix One Day camp.  This was my third full day with them and I was looking forward to it, on the drive up I planned out my “want list” for the day and during the pre-session briefing listed it as “all four 180s on the kicker and spins on and off rails and side ons”.  Once again we started on the kicker and after a couple of warm up runs I started spinning.  First up was the frontside 180 and although the spin itself was really smooth I had my arms in a perfect ballerina pose over my head….never a good look!  Thankfully as I settled in to it I became a bit more relaxed and managed to get my arms down and get a FS180 indy.  Next up backside, again I was a bit flayly initially but managed to get a BS180 mute.  I finished the morning session by stepping it up and riding switch, nailing Cab1s and switch BS1s, no grabs this time and I need to work on hitting the kicker a bit faster switch but that will come with practice.

The afternoon was a rail session, we started on the box and I managed to get FS180 on and Cab180 on, this was the first time I’d tried spinning switch on to a box.  It’s was Coach Phil’s suggestion and I was stoked to land it first try.  We then moved on to the long rail (switch frontside boardslide!) before heading up to the side on gas pipe.  After a few hits to 50:50 I managed to nail a couple of backslide lipslides.  Considering I’d been riding for about 5 hours by now I was pleased my legs held up and I didn’t clip the front of the pipe and I popped my back leg over the pipe before boardsliding away….after my second of these I called it a day, no point in riding too hard when your legs are getting shaky, that’s when accidents happen, and with the first leg of the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series next Saturday I wanted to stay firmly in one piece.  I was especially keen not to repeat the run where I’d slide half the length of the corrugated gas pipe on my bum!

All in all it’s been a brilliant weekend, I managed to get about 8 hours riding into 24 hours and nail a load of new tricks into the bargain!

Here’s a slide show of my kicker shots from Hemel:

The full set, including Sam Cullum, Lon Canu, Jake Terry, Mikee Chen & Duncan Carr

Here’s a shot Jools took of my second run in the Big Air at the Brits. After landing a clean Roast Beef for my first run I went for the nose grab on my second. As you can see I didn’t quite get the grab but I still cleared the knuckle and rode away clean!

Considering I’ve previously bounced nicely off the knuckle and fallen I was stoked to get two clean runs in qualification. I was even happier (and a bit sad as well) when I discovered I’d missed qualifying for the final by one place.