Freestyle Competition Sends Silver Spinning Mountain Makes Extreme Sport As Safe As Possible For Skiers

Music was blaring from the speakers, the sun was blazing in the sky, and Gabe Lauper was right where he likes to be.

On the edge, and past that.

“It’s just more fun,” the 24-year-old Coeur d’Alene man said as he explained why soaring freestyle is superior to regular old ski racing. His buddy Nick Bopp pointed out that even snowboarders - the gonzo guys and gals of the slopes - would be avidly watching Saturday’s regional freestyle competition at Silver Mountain.

“When you’ve got snowboarders watching you, it’s nice to rub it in their faces,” said Bopp, 20.

Freestyle skiing is taking off at Silver Mountain, which built its Big Air ski ramps in the Chair 4 basin this winter. The approach, jump and landing areas are designed to Federation of International Skiing standards.

Big Air is supervised and open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

The idea is to make an inherently dangerous sport as safe as possible for the sport’s thrill-seekers.

“They’re going to jump anyway,” said Patrick Deneen, who is in charge of instruction on the hill.

By next winter there will be ramps designed especially for inverted skiing, providing the right angle for those who want to go head-over-heels. The resort will also co-host a summer camp for freestylers at Mount Hood in July, expecting to draw high-flying skiers from around the nation.

Twenty-five skiers competed in Saturday’s aerial competition. Another 14 will face off in today’s mogul contests. The third type of freestyle event is acrobatics, or ski ballet.

That was Mark Williams’ event when he was in the World Cup competition as part of the U.S. ski team.

“There are up to 30 tricks,” said Williams, Silver Mountain’s freestyle program manager. Tricks like the double-twisting pole flip and 900 axels, in which skiers launch themselves off the ramp and spin two-and-a-half times before landing.

Eleven-year-old Pat Deneen, Patrick’s son, was doing simpler tricks on Saturday.

“I’m going to do a spread, a twister and a twister-spread,” said the Kellogg boy, whose 15-year-old sister, Amy, was also competing.

Young Pat has his sights set high.

“I’m shooting for the 2006 Olympics.”

What does it take to become an international competitor?

“You have to join a team like we have here and do a lot of hard work,” Williams said. “It also takes a little luck - the right run, the right trick, the right competition.”

Silver Mountain has four ramps of various sizes. They’re sculpted snow packed on a plywood base. The tallest is six feet, and is 40 feet from the landing hill. The hill is steeply sloped to lessen the impact. Until that design was perfected, the sport had some serious liability problems, Williams said.

“People were building jumps with flat landings, and skiers were breaking their backs.”

These days, Williams said, more people get hurt in mogul competitions. Those skiers navigate around and over Volkswagen-sized bumps, their legs pumping like pistons. They’re judged 50 percent on form and line, 25 percent on height and 25 percent on speed.

Aerial competitors are judged 20 percent on the height they reach, 50 percent on form and 30 percent on their landing.

It’s still largely a male sport, although more girls and women are taking an interest, Williams said. There were five women in Saturday’s aerial event.