Raph’s Blog (unedited as Raph intended!)

We left Silverthorne Wednesday last week, had a quick gas stop and proceeded to Aspen, Co. Its a pretty short journey, we traveled through the Vail pass so most of the journey you’re surrounded by cliffs and mountainous terrain. Once out of the Vail pass we had a brunch break in Glenwood Springs which is a reasonably small town that smells like Rotarua Then headed to Buttermilk, Aspen.

We climbed out of the Everly’s ute, my coach and chauffeur I jumped into the back feeling very tired I put on my ski pants and grab my bag, we head to registration for The Aspen Open.

We are amused by Ryan Read being as sloff like as usual while we stand in the waiting line. we make it through get our pass and free swag and off we go to ski, Booyah.

We head up to pipe training its the longest pipe i’ve skied and one of the highest at 22ft the unfortunate thing was i had been training in break and coppers 18ft pipe which was a bummer but i got used to it after a while.

Training went ok i didnt really get my run, but all in all Everly said it was a pretty good day.

We rise at 6:30 on Thursday morning in The Comfort Inn’ in carbondale 30 minutes out of Aspen, I got showered and dressed slowly and walk to the breakfast room, i have a terrible athlete’s breakfast one orange was all i could digest. We meet up with Everly and head to Buttermilk Deb(mum) goes and gets my Bib for me while i put my boots on.

Ev, Hugo and I head to the Pipe for a half hour training to be honest i was having a terrible time training, I just wasn’t stomping but the time past quickly and i managed to get one more run than most people. I decided to try a cork 9 but i didnt stomp it, but still I got my confidence back with them doing them.

I headed back to the chair where Everly was standing he was amped that I did that.

I was first running which I was bummed about at the start, but Everly enlightened me on how sick it was to be first on a fresh pipe nice and soft, so anyway we headed up and 5 seconds after i got there they said drop! that was sick, nothing to think about no butterflies, so off i went dropping in the pipe as fast as i could and threw a Flare first hit followed by a straight air to cork 5 then straight air to cork 9 but crashed which sucked but i was still stoked we headed back up and the same again i got the to cork 9 with flying colours then when i went for it i tryed to grab tale but that made me flip more so i ended in a 5, that sucked so i followed it up by a right 5. I get to the bottom pretty upset I didnt stomp my run, Deb was delighted, but she didnt understand you loose alot of points for repeated tricks, oh well i ended in a 12th or 13th in my heat not good enough to qualify.

Hugo and me decided to ride Snowmass as my next 4 comps were there. I had the Double halfpipe and slopestyle on Monday and Tuesday.

Friday we took it easy at Buttermilk Saturday we went to snowmass it was probably one of the sickest days here, yet we started off on sticky boxes and boring jumps then endulged in fresh knee deep pow. Its amazing how not to many Aspeners ride the trees! There where log drops rock drops rollovers intense lines and so on, at one stage there was a cat track that i liked to boost off on one of my attempt of it i launched off spotted my landing as a small tree so i freaked but somehow managed to grab it in mid air and miss my stuff. It was amazingly sick day.

The next day i went out with Kirsten fellow team summit rider for half the day till Everly got back from Aerials divisionals where Ian one of team summit took out both of the events in it which was sick. i was trying to get used to the jumps but i really didnt like them, I didnt mind the rails and still had fun.

The next day we got out at 7am and headed to Snowmass for Pipe that whole day I didnt stomp one run I always fell on my nine but some how i came out with a third place which I was pretty stoked about that .

Next day we got out at 7am again. i wasnt feeling the course at all I did 3 runs in training and got one spin over the first jump but other than that nothing, I opted to do one run just so i could get my points for Junior Olympics so i did octo 3, to nose butter 3 off the knuckle, to hand drag 3 and stomped. which i felt was the sickest run i could of done I was happy, so instead of doing my other runs i went and took photos.

So it was a pretty exhausting but fun week but now Im sick so that sucks but stay tuned for my next post raph.

Raph
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