Photo by Jeff Nokkeo
The 3rd Annual US Summer Open of Snowskating went off on July 4, 2013 at Timberline Mt. Hood. It was questionable if the event was even going to happen after Starfish Magazine posted in June that the event was canceled due to scheduling conflicts with Premier Snowskates and the Windells Camp. Tim Windell was able to reach out to Danny Sheehan of Ralston Snowskates to make the contest happen. After two years of Premier Snowskates putting on an extremely fun summer contest, Danny had big shoes to fill to live up to expectations.
Photo by Jeff Nokkeo
The Ralston Team along with other South Shore and Hood locals, rallied on July 3rd to design and build a snowskate specific course for the event which included 2 rails, 2 boxes, a huge doghouse feature, a dance floor, and 2 jumps. There wasn’t a rope tow this year, so the course had to be hiked, but it was compact enough that it wasn’t something to complain about.
On contest day, it was interesting to see who showed up. After the misunderstanding about the event being cancelled, many people made other plans and some staple snowskaters were not there. The core Lake Tahoe skaters showed in impressive numbers, a couple car fulls of Washington skaters showed up, after some car trouble, the bad asses out of Minnesota rolled in, add a couple Hood locals, and we had ourselves a contest. Tickets were a discounted $45 on contest day, and registration was $12.
It began around noon, and in an unofficial but seemingly and surprisingly organized manner, the jam moved from feature line to feature line. The contest started on the jump line. Some notable boosters were Alan Gerlach, Adrian Rasmussen, Pat Bonser, Mark Spicolli, Pat Daily, Matt Hightower, and Randi Rae. As expected, the landings didn’t last long and when it was completely done, the jam moved over to the 2 box line.
Alan Gerlach
The first box was slightly down to a STEEP landing, and the second box was slightly up to a flat landing and steepish ride out. Notables on the boxes were Gerlach, Spicolli, and Hightower who all solidly sessioned the boxes AND boosted over them clean with connections to the jump line for full-pull runs. Stevie Evanson and Shag were working Shuvits off both boxes. And, the girls were getting at the boxes too.
Tandem Air
Then once the landings were worked, the contest moved to the rail to doghouse line. This is where the contest was won. Gerlach pulled front boardslides on the rail, across the coping of the doghouse, and a miller flip over the dog house. Spicolli also pulled grinds and a clean no footed boneless. Hightower and Bonser pulled clean grinds across the doghouse, too.
When Danny Sheehan got bored of judging, he jumped on a skate and KILLED it on the doghouse, rails, and jumps. Gerlach and Rasmussen got creative doing tandem airs on the jump line. And, that was the contest winding down. All the participants rode back to the Windell’s Camp for the Awards Ceremony.
Lodging was available for $20 at Windells Camp like the previous years and the entire Camp was open to participants and families, including the skate park, slacklines, dirt jumps, ping pong, tetherball, and all sorts of other stuff to make you feel like a kid. They even opened the kitchen for a barbeque after the contest. Money collected from lodging was all donated back as prize money for the contest by Windells.
After a skate jam and barbeque, the results of the contest were given and it shook out like this:
Photo by Jeff Nokkeo
Photo by Jeff Nokkeo
Overall, the Ralston US Summer Open, turned out to be a great success and enough props cannot be given to Ralston and Windell’s for making this event happen on short notice. Very high expectations for next year considering that way more planning and prep is possible!
