WESTLOCK — Close to 100 skiers of all ages took part in the 2024 Freeslope Frenzy skiing competition hosted from Friday to Sunday, Feb. 9-11, at the Tawatinaw Valley Ski Hill.
This competition was the second in a club competition, with the first taking place at Banff on Jan. 26-28, according to Freestyle Alberta’s website.
The Tawatinaw Valley Freeriders were the hosts of the Freestyle Frenzy, and were joined by teams from Edmonton, central Alberta (Red Deer), Jasper and a couple of teams from Saskatoon.
“It was quite a well-attended event,” said Julie Dunlop, whose son Nicolas Pelletier is a skier with the Freeriders. “We had lots of team spirit, we had lots of positive energy.”
Friday was effectively a practice day for the competitors, many of whom had not been to Tawatinaw previously. (This was not an issue for the Freeriders, who practice out at the hill every weekend and effectively have “home hill advantage.”)
Saturday saw skiers compete in slopestyle, which Nicholas explained as going down a trail with lots of rails and boxes before hitting a big jump at the bottom.
“You have to do it twice and they pick your best run,” he said.
Sunday saw the skiers compete in moguls, which involves manoeuvring along three lanes of short hills before finally hitting a big jump at the bottom.
“If you’re looking at the mogul, the left side of the hill there is the smallest jump, and the middle jump was the medium size. They had the large one closed, but even still, some did some pretty fancy backflips and things like that going down the mogul,” Dunlop said.
The weather on Sunday was sunny and warm to the point of almost melting, but Saturday’s temperature proved to be a bit chillier, which resulted in the snow moving a bit faster than expected and a couple of mishaps.
Luckily, no one was seriously injured, Dunlop said, adding the skiers had to re-gauge their speeds to account for the colder weather.
There was also a large banquet on Saturday, which Dunlop noted afforded the opportunity for the kids to get to know each other better off of the slopes.
There was also a silent auction featuring items donated by many Westlock and Athabasca businesses and organizations, who also sponsored the competition itself (along with some Barrhead area businesses.
“We were very lucky that we had a lot of community support,” Dunlop said.
In terms of results, Nicholas said he felt a lot of the skiers “really pushed themselves compared to usual.”
In a lot of cases, they were helped out by the advice of the coaches, and it was nice to see all the support skiers were given.
"Just before my second run, my coach said that since I had a really good first run, he said that it really doesn’t matter anymore, just to push myself to go faster, go bigger and maybe try something new on the jump at the end,” he said, adding that he ended up doing a “spread-eagle” off of the jump.
Dunlop said she was also really pleased to see that, when they weren’t competing, the skiers were going down the other runs at the hill.
“That’s kind of what you hope for: the kids having an ongoing love of the sport,” she said.
