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As the competition was not held today, last night there was some partying going on. Most everybody, including the riders and the crew, gathered to a restaurant called Trikoni in Krasnaya Poliana ski resort for a dinner and some drinks. The place was quite nice and the food was excellent. I did not stay that long as I first of all was quite tired form riding, but more importantly weather forecast for today was very good. So, I wanted to go to bed early so I´d be able to wake up early too.

Looking out the window in the morning I saw that the forecast was right: it was perfectly clear sky, no clouds nor wind what so ever and I rushed to get ready for riding. I did not quite make it to the first chair, but there was not that many people going up when the lift opened, and only a few competitors made it up early. Aniina and Kaisa joined me and we rode couple of nice runs in the same trees I´d been riding earlier. Then we headed over to the same run that the girls did with Steve.

FWT Sochi contest slope is in good condition

What they had told about the run before, that it was super good, proved out to be true. The slope had nice steady 30 to 35 degree incline, perfect for going fast, and the snow was rippable. Even if the snow was somewhat more compact than yesterday it was still pure powder and even with a snowboard I was sinking into it a fair bit. At times it was plowing overhead, blocking visibility completely for seconds.

The descent was maybe about 400 meters high, and there was all kinds of fun features, like banks, lips and rocks that we could play on. As I´ve been held back by a pretty bad heel injury since 05 I haven´t had too many proper pow days, and it was great being back on the real stuff.

The bottom part of the route was a narrow river bottom with fairly steep wall above it, on the opposite side from our descent. The place is definitely a terrain trap of worst kind, and I´ve heard that there has been some serious avalanche accidents there. Luckily it seemed that most everything from above had slid during the night, as there was big piles of fairly fresh looking avalanche debris. The snow that had slid into the gully was still fairly soft, so I figured it must have slid only a couple of hours before. We only had to traverse the bottom for some minutes, so I felt pretty secure about the whole deal. Nonetheless, it was still a bit spooky, even if riding at the bottom was still a lot of fun, too.

Riding the FWT contest slope and hearing some bad news

Sometime around 2 pm Anni and Kaisa decided to go have a look at the contest slope. I hooked up with three other girls, Jamie Burge, Anne Enderud and Charlotte Hagen for one more run in the same place. For myself this last run was the best, as I did not fall once and managed to pick a nice way down through the trees with some fun jumps, I even managed to stick a nice little double jump line and made it to the bottom of the run through some really tight trees really fast. I was stoked.

I was beat too, and I had to call it a day. Which I would have had to do anyways as the lifts closed. It was rad to be able to do a whole day without any real rests and ride quite hard, and I felt really satisfied. What brought my feelings down a whole lot was the news that I got, about Ruth Leisibach. I learnt that Ruth had hurt her knee pretty badly. She´d been riding in the trees, of course, and had hit a branch hidden in the snow: her board went under it and she went over it, and the branch did not give in. Instead her knee did. Ruth had managed to ride, or rather slide down from the site of the accident without outside assistance, so it was not super bad, but it had been really, really painful. Ruth is a really strong girl and a rider, one of my favorite snowboarders for sure and it is all too bad that she got hurt, as she just had recovered from an injury. She was taken to a hospital in Sochi, and from there she will be flown back home to Switzerland where her knee will be operated. Let´s hope it is not really serious and that she´ll be back on her board soon.

From the mountain I, along with everybody, headed over to Hotel Vertikal, where we had judge´s meeting, PFB meeting and rider´s meeting. As the forecast for tomorrow is very good as well, and as all the security work on the contest face was done today by the guides, the organization committee had made a decision that tomorrow is game on! Meaning we have to wake up really early and head up to the mountain already 7.30 in the morning.

There still is a fair bit of all kinds of organizing work to be done in the morning, but the plan still is that the first rider drops in on the comp face 9.30. The weather forecast says the temperatures will rise quite a bit during afternoon, which has an negative effect on snow stability and so the contest must be over by 1 pm. This means that everything must run without a hitch, really smoothly, so we must be ready as early as possible. Hence, wake up call is around 5.30. Which in turn means that I gotta go to sleep more or less right now. Anyways, it is exciting to get to see and judge my first FWT event.

Unfortunately I forgot to charge the battery of my camera yesterday, so I could not take any pictures today. Luckily the organizers have hired Jancsi Hadik, one of the very best ski photographers in the world to shoot pictures for your viewing pleasure and they can be checked out at the Freeride Word Tour website.