by Andrew Zwicker on Wednesday Jul 13 2011
Riding the rodeo over Red Mountain - Andrew Zwicker photo
In one fell swoop, Olympic-sized opportunities were cracked open for Rossland last week (and indeed for young skiers and snowboarders the world over) as the International Olympic Committee announced the inclusion of three new ski and snowboard disciplines beginning in Sochi, Russia for 2014. With the addition of slopestyle skiing and boarding as well as parallel alpine snowboarding, Red Mountain, the Red Mountain Academy and RSS received an opportunity to take a big switch D-spin forward.
Slopestyle, long an X-Games staple, is a series of judged runs through hits, lips, wedges, rails, boxes and typical features found in ski area’s terrain parks built to a high level with multiple routes and options. Skiers and boarders are traditionally judged on speed, style, difficulty and amplitude.