Twenty-four of the best all-mountain snowboarders in the world come together at the all-new, naturally enhanced, and feature-laden Revelstoke Mountain Resort sidecountry.
Riders were faced with perfect conditions in British Columbia – fresh powder covering the mountain and no more falling during the event – on a course that combined tonnes of huge man-made features at its freestyle-inspired top with an almost limitless supply of epic backcountry lines down below.
The format saw head-to-head heats between the 16 men and eight women, with each rider having two runs to impress the judges with their creativity, risk, execution, difficulty and overall performance.
The winners from each heat qualified for the men’s quarter-finals and women’s semi-finals at Selkirk Tangiers, which will be broadcast ‘as live’ on Red Bull TV in early April.
Make sure you tune in for the big final to find out your Yeti Natural Selection winners for 2024 on April 4th, 10AM PT / 6PM CET: www.redbull.com/NST
Matchups MEN:
Torstein Horgmo vs. Mark McMorris
Dustin Craven vs. Sage Kotsenburg
Austen Sweetin vs. Ben Ferguson
Blake Paul vs. Mikey Ciccarelli
Jared Elston vs. Chris Rasman
Mikkel Bang vs. Nils Mindnich
Torgeir Bergrem vs. Kevin Backstrom
Red Gerard vs. Travis Rice
Matchups WOMEN:
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott vs. Hailey Langland
Marion Haerty vs. Robyn Van Gyn
Elena Hight vs. Jamie Anderson
Mary Rand vs. Hana Beaman
___
Experience the world of Red Bull Snow like you have never seen it before. With the best snow action sports clips on YouTube and original series, from skiing to snowboarding, prepare for your “stoke factor” to be at an all-time high.
Subscribe to Red Bull Snow on YouTube: https://win.gs/SubToRedBullSnow
Get the FREE Red Bull TV apps for all your devices: https://go.onelink.me/351027264/35a30660
Red Bull Snow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RedBullSnow/
Red Bull Snow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redbullsnow
Red Bull Snow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@redbullsnow
Since the dawn of time the forces of nature are ever present a wild Whirlwind of chaos and change that always seeks balance Through the Ages the Earth froze and Tha sculpting the land the mountains and all of its inhabitant through processes that are still shrouded in mystery we evolved to
Into sentient humans capable of emotion so rational thought and responsible stewardship our Riders who have mastered the board use the full array of these gifts to imbue a personal and Creative Touch on how to draw lines through the forest just beyond the Great Divide nestled by the Columbia River rests one
Of Canada’s finest ski towns Rebel scope Mountain Resort where North America’s longest descent Mighty Alpine bows and endless slades await czy today we’ve gathered 24 of the best snowboarders on this planet each ready to conquer his snowcap Battleground the biggest title in snowboarding is up for grabs and it’s
Time to Bear witness to the next moment in snowboarding history the powder is blower and the terrain is as good as it gets it’s time for the 2024 Yeti natural selection [Applause] Tour Is the beauty of snowboarding absolutely Massive the stage is set one of the most breathtaking competitions STS it history is being made here oh and he is not slowing down right lacing a giant double wi the most prestigious contest in snowboarding the best Riders incredible natural terrain perfect conditions this is the yeti natural selection live from
Revel Stoke Mountain Resort as you just heard 24 of the world’s best Riders are going to be competing over two days today here in Revel Stoke is qualifiers day where 16 men and eight women will be cut down to just eight and four they will then compete in the cirk Tangers
Range for the finals and the winners will take home arivan r1t truck and the NST 2024 winners titles welcome to the studio where I’m joined by one of snowboarding’s part-time Legends and full-time rack on turs Mr Todd Richards and Mary T Walsh uh we’re not entirely sure what the T stands for
For but we like to call her uh Miss tea she’s got a hatred of milk for adults and she doesn’t suffer fools but the similarities end there how you both doing Mary you well so good I’m so excited I’ve been waiting since duels dropped for this day and it’s finally here
Yeah I’m this is like you know it’s the Pinnacle it’s the event I call a lot of events but this is the one that kind of gives me the most butterflies and gives me the most anxiety because I want to do it right because it’s it’s ours you know
This is ours Mark M Morris sat in that seat this time last year and said whether he’s watching whether he’s riding this is his favorite day of the winter so bonified okay we know that the main character a natural selection is always Mother Nature so let’s get stuck
Straight into to The Venue at Revel stug with the onx back country map we can zoom into this venue it’s just on the outskirts of the Revel so Mountain Resort Travis and the natural selection team very very careful to pick a zone that wasn’t going to cannibalize local
Terrain so they’ve worked really really hard on the Montana Bowl here to actually bring out a new section of terrain that’s going to help the resort expand it’s got both an East and a West Zone and Todd it looks like it’s got a blend of everything in it it it does you
Know and they’ve been affectionately calling it The Montana Mattress Factory because they’ve gone in there and they’ve made these you know there’s all there’s big naturals and there’s also like these enhanced features that are like these platforms so it’s a combination of what Scary Cherry brought
But also Jackson Hole so it will cater to the people that want to do the lines and also to the more freestyle oriented Riders and I think that’s that’s a great combo and compared to this time last year it feels like there’s a little more confidence with the Riders Mary oh
Completely Ed I think that last last year was this Behemoth you know the Boulder Park was just a really insane venue this venue is incredible but there’s a little bit more familiarity you know Dustin Craven’s been working on the course with the crew all last summer
To really beef up that uh the enhanced terrain so I think the Riders are really excited okay if you want to take a closer look at the onx backcountry maps you can do uh you can go and download that app it’ll give you full satellite access right now though we can see this
Venue in all its Glory that East St start and the West start two very different zones Todd yeah they are the east side is more very steep West more open more big features that you can hit that have been enhanced but that East Side bowl is the one where if you’re
More of an Alpine favored Rider more of a Backcountry rider that’s maybe where you’re going to want to go to get your lines and and have that more risk reward Factor okay uh little less exposure definitely than last year’s face which is settling the Riders down we can take
A closer look at the course from that Riders ey view now though with the GoPro course preview courtesy the GoPro 12 what up everybody I am Elena height and we are here at the bottom of the natural selection Rebel Stoke course uh just had our first run through it and it
Is insane the venue is super unique this year we’ve got two start zones an East start Zone a West Start Zone and in both of those places there’s tons of different hallways and pop and pillow lines and Cliff drops to hit so it should be a really good Showcase of
Snowboarding we’re calling this the East hallway we got the West hallway down there I really like this side of the course it’s pretty straightforward lots of poppers nice and steep we got a gap jump over here you can see over there there’s lots more platforms to pop off
Of after this roll gets nice and steep lots of cliffs down there so exciting the thing that’s really about this course is that it really is a mixture of all of the natural selection courses you’ve seen before poppers Steeps natural terrain we got it all I’m super psyched to there and just get
Shredding backing up exactly what you just said Mary like there was real confidence and a kind of froth in Elena’s voice oh 100% I think the snow is stck perfectly the rider’s been waiting and there’s uh just excitement in the air okay well we can join another two members of
Pretty talented team today uh out on the venue we have the one and only Stan levier up at the top of the course he’s going to give us the Oakley weather check and a little temperature check at the vibe at the top of the Course how’s it going Ed Lee good to see you guys in the studio today’s pretty much as good weather as you could ask for 20° mostly sunny just a little wind 6° as for the vibe I’d say the big discussion is the east side that Lookers left terrain when Patrol got in there
This morning some sizable sliding going on about 40 cm down a March 8th layer definitely releasing in a lot of those Landings so I’d say some Riders might have to reconsider a different route that’s probably the big question will they have to I heard Travis on comms
This morning saying a lot of that is still looking pretty good you can still pick some of it off but you might want to expect some movement of snow on that East Side so you know let’s do it live but uh how are you doing down there
Tber Stan my man I gotta say I miss you brother I miss you man we are down here at the bottom of Montana bowl and Stan what you were just talking about we are actually looking at there is a little bit of avalanche debris Del deliberately set off by the
Ski patrol this morning all the Riders were down here and the majority of them are thinking there’s still plenty to ride in the East face but that’s just how Backcountry riding goes aside from that down here in the Finish Corral I’ve never felt stoked like this at an NST
Event we got a live crowd down here we got some media we got VIPs we are ready to roll when torstein horgmo arrives in the Finish area it’s going to be loud thank you so much Tom you noticed there both Tom and Stan repping The Arc TK
Gear all of the crew kitted out this year and they’ve done two weeks of prep in the back country around Revel Stoke and as you can see from the trees and the course they’ve had no shortage of snow over the last two weeks so good to
Have them kicked out in some decent gear uh now let’s get stuck into the format Todd you can talk us through it to start with it’s pretty juicy day it is going to be a juicy day and and the way this is going to run in the head-to-head
Format it’s it’s going to bring drama and I think that’s what we all look forward to with natural selection not only the terrain providing the drama but also the head-to-head matchups so we come into this thing where 16 men they’re going to be paired off into heat
Of two someone’s going to you know get eliminated today and it’s a big bummer because this this whole field is so stacked with talent and just the way that we have slope style Riders up against Backcountry Specialists it’s going to be insane to see this thing go
Down okay and um Mary I know for in terms of that format like it’s it does favor all of these Riders you’ve got some huge names there but as Todd said like you’re going to wave goodbye to some of them no I think it’s really hard
You know we look at these matchups and they’re like final matchups for everyone but you know that someone’s going to get eliminated as you were saying it’s kind of a heartbreaker before we even start but the Riders now especially going into the fourth year they know a little bit
Of what to expect what the judges are looking for and what they’re trying to do to pick apart and combine their past experience has slow Riders halfpipe riders with the backcountry venue I think that’s what really brings together the uh the strategy here in the format
Okay the right like Mary said on the second third year now of cedo was introducing Jackson in 2022 how do the Riders work around these criteria well it’s it’s an acronym and it’s like but I really think that the execution and overall impression out of all of those
Are going to be the things that factor in the most you can have one move but really if you look at like last year’s winner or any of the runs that Travis has done to take the win it’s that execution of line to make the difficult
Look easy to be looking ahead and seeing features that you can combo together and to do it smoothly while taking that risk that is how it’s going to be done okay unless you’ve been living under a rock I I’m sure you’ve seen these matchups on social media over the last couple of
Days but it doesn’t make them any less impactful Mary we you said it last year these are fantasy league head-to-heads yeah I think the first drop torsan hormo elected to go first with first draw in the in the bracket pick going against Mark MCM Morris I mean that is just
Bananas and then following that we have Dustin Craven Sage kotenberg opposite ends of the of the style Spectrum both very hungry for this course I got to say sweetie up begin Ferg I mean that’s like that’s the one where you think about two you know you got the froth Goblin and
You’ve got this person on the rise that came out of halfpipe and now he’s like this back country and he’s got landing gear like nobody else that is the heat that I looking at to be absolutely Bonkers in this first opening round I the one I’m looking forward to it’s the
Last one of the day is the master versus The Apprentice Travis versus red that one’s going to be an absolute Banger uh we’re going to get stuck into the action very very shortly up for grabs today though we have the boa dialed in award Todd talked about Credo the judging
System the most creative the most unique features from today in the men’s and the women’s will each win $3,000 on the boa dial in award and then just to keep things interesting sko have put one of those eot tax 2025 Sleds on the line for the highest scores in the men’s and
Women’s in qualifying today and then of course there’s rivan up for grabs in the Selkirk Tangers finals day for the Champions uh when we come back we will have the first of the men’s runs for you do not go anywhere [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] all right we’re ready camera speeding we’re 100 here we Go there’s something special about winter every year I get the same feeling winter is coming in it’s one of the best Feelings Hey you Ready let’s good I Welcome back to the yeti natural selection it is qualifying day here at Rebel Stoke Mountain Resort 24 of the world’s best Riders ready to throw down we popped out Todd Richards but in his place we’ve got another snowboarding legend in the studio with us if snowboarding was the solar system then
Eddie wall would be our son not just helping life survive but also Thrive Eddie absolute pleasure to have you here how you doing oh I’m doing wonderful I’m uh I’m literally on the edge of my seat right now uh yeah I’m I I can’t wait to
See what goes down today and look at that beanie what do we call that Dusty Rose yeah I think Dusty Rose yeah I like that it’s an absolute Beauty um Mary we’ve run through the matchups and you mentioned specifically the first one Mark MCM Morris versus torstein hogo
This is an absolute heavyweight Clash of the Titans to kick us off oh yeah this is kind of a hearkening back to slope style at the early 201s right now and to see both of these guys come through that competition field they both have nerves of absolute steal like you don’t get
Much better at performing Under Pressure than both Tor and MCM Morris so it’s going to be wild to watch them go head-to-head and open up this competition okay before we get stuck into the action quick little shout out for 10 Barrel Brewing they have created a beer for natural selection it’s called
Sick day uh you can get a hold of that anywhere where you get your 10 Barrel beer um your 10 Barrel Brewing Beer that is a tongue twister but up in the Pacific Northwest if you’ve got a 10 Barrel Brewing Pub in your town then you
Can head down there for a special sick day they’ll be showing natural selection live throughout the pub uh across the course of the afternoon so you can join in drink some sick day beer and uh enjoy yourselves yeah sounds like some uh cheap fun I can only think of one thing
Cheap already okay there is the matchup this is the lineup eight of the best to kick us off we’ll then go into the eight women and then the uh final eight men will finish off the day but our first four matchups uh you can see Dustin Craven Sage kotenberg Austin swen versus
Ben Ferg and we’ve got Blake Paul versus Mikey cicerelli but as we just heard from Mary we’ve got this rematch these two met in Alaska in 2022 torstein hogo getting the better of Mark MCM moris that day with arguably some of the best competition snowboarding ever seen right
Now though it’s the turn of one of the Elder Statesmen in the Norwegian SLO style scene T Stein hold mod so settled just doesn’t F pressure or if he does he doesn’t let anyone know and you never see it in his riding here we go torstein hormo
Dropping in you know I think Mary brought up a great Point both torstein and Mark perform very well under pressure some Riders break and some Riders actually get better and so uh this should be very interesting starting off with a nice nice tweaked out method there torstein hitting one of the first
Pillow Fe so clean Landings but first track on all these takeoffs oh a beautiful backside 360 just opening up that side of the entire course definitely went bigger than he was thought he was going to go he had to pull up for that second takeoff yeah he
Went bigger on that back three than I expected him to then looks like a front 180 Landing switch definitely difficult to you know land and ride switch in C oh the half cab double onto that back three over the stack that’s definitely the kind of thing that the judges want to
See right now and that just kind of exemplifies that beautiful video part line writing unfortunately wasn’t able to put the landing GE down so two superpowers of slope style snowboarding through the decades Norway and Canada have produced so much talent but now we get to see two of the biggest
Names from both those Nations going Toe to Toe in the powder torstein opening up it’s you hit the nail on the head Mary that’s exactly what the judges want to see yeah and the thing to remember too is that one tumble like that doesn’t necessarily kyash an entire run it’s the
Full pole Credo wants to see the entire appraisal and honestly dropping in first on a day like this today I think T Stein just crushed it well you could see Eddie looked a little slow up top there we know that everyone else is going to have
A track to follow there now yeah and look at that backside three just kicking things offg goinging massive I thought he was going to actually land before that small tree as he makes his way down doing another little drop there and then let’s see what happens here okay yeah
Just kind of uh catching his no nose doing a front flip but um it’s it’s interesting talking to Travis before the event he look he said like the judges are going to be quite hard on what we classes those setup tricks the back threes the front threes the back flips
Almost there let’s hear from TD down at the bottom yeah we are down here with your first Rider himself Mr Torin horgmo Torin you opted to go first did it pay off I think so I mean I didn’t make it all the way down but uh yeah it’s just blank
Canvas feels good to have no tracks I’m just I’m just here to enjoy it how’s that snow quality up there it’s good it’s a little denser than I expected I thought it was going to be more sort of like that bottomless japanish Hokkaido feeling but uh I think it just settled a
Lot uh but it’s just plenty plenty of rippable well good job buddy excited to see your score come in thank you so much good bit of insight there from torstein uh definitely enjoying the fact that he got to drop first but I think having a bit more speed having some takeoffs the obviously
You want to avoid the the bomb holes what did you call them the other day yeah hot tubs bomb holes swimming pools you know you want to avoid those but at the same time having a bit of purchase on that takeoff for bigger spins is
Probably going to be a bit of a bonus so Mark M Morris xgame slope gold medalist in 2023 X Games silver in 2024 this guy can go out and throw down backto back 16s but then effortlessly transition into the back country oh yeah he’s such an incredibly talented Rider and we’re
Very excited to see him get to ride this because he was uh noticeably absent in Rebel Stoke last year he injured himself right after the DHS like of course getting to go ahead to uh take his spot but great to see him riding uh in this
This time got a glimpse of the Oakley prisms of imp Pur Simon the M Morris is rocking like dappled sunlight on this course at the moment yeah I think visibility is one of the most important things to have when riding terrain like this so we are getting extremely lucky
The Riders are obviously getting lucky all right right there little front side 180 now going switch going to the C 540 stomping it perfectly where Torin did a backside 360 so so far Mark’s run is looking very smooth huge front three and then oh just okay scooting out a little
Bit got bued off a pillow in the landing yeah oh he’s got some snow chasing him proper SL Cloud wow dare I say it it almost looked playful at the top of the run right there for him yeah I think overall that was a solid run um and and again you
Know like Mary said during torin’s run this is different than the Olympics than the X Games you know you can go down in a run you can butt check you can kind of pause and it’s not going to affect your score as much as it would in a normal
You know slope style or bigger competition um so yeah just because somebody goes down doesn’t it’s not doesn’t mean it’s a throw a throwaway run yeah yeah I think the pressure valve has been uh let loose holy cow that’s crazy eh that really very Li okay but Morris you can see the eye
Tiger that thousand yard we were down here with Mark McMorris Mark did you realize what was chasing you down that Hill no I was straight uh sfd looking straight down um I’m surprised it didn’t catch up to me I was like had that high-speed butt check um but I’m glad
I’m out of there and was it more of a Slough or was it a little bit of an avalanche a little bit of both okay how’s it feel uh getting run one out of the way and in the can uh run one was so fun a lot of nerves to dve I actually
It’s just leading up to it’s worse than actually going so it was fun to actually just get on slope and yeah had a good time nice job buddy thanks definitely worth remembering isn’t it that even for these guys so much competition experience between these two but the adrenaline still
Charging before you drop in to an natural selection course yeah I think that speaks volumes when someone like Mark MCM Morris who’s competed in hundreds of competitions over the years stood on multip like hundreds of podiums as well is saying like he was so nervous up at
The top and I and again I mean you know they don’t get to ride this run that was the first time they got to ride down this run and really get a feel for the terrain so uh yeah it’s uh this is like a whole different Beast of competition
And it’s it’s very different to the Heats that we’re going to see from now on everyone else is up at the top there they’ve got phones out they’ve got screens up there they’re going to be watching Those runs so they’ve got a little bit of a barometer of snow
Conditions of takeoffs they know what good they know where they’re heading now so those two runs I think some of the hardest let’s take a look now back at MC Morris’s run you know I really do think like he looked like he was having a good time
That was just uh definitely very big sorry this is toin we talked about you know the or Torin mentioned the blank canvas opening up the entire course and the pros and cons of doing that having free reign picking your line but then like you said everyone else being able to study based
On how it went for these two it’sot okay scores coming in oh what a recap on my card I’ve got marked slightly ahead here but let’s see yeah 64.5 73 for McMorris so we had those instabilities the falls in there but the judges know they’ve got to keep their
Power to drive we’re going to see I think very low scores for those kind of middling runs I think they’re expecting to see big heavy hitting runs today and talking of heavy hitting runs these two Mary you flagged it in the pre-ot we’ve got two very different kinds of Rider Dustin Craven Sage
Kotenberg Craven is in first he and his crew built 40 platforms across the Montana Bowl through the summer he knows this venue better than anyone he would could seeed he has got an advantage was it back three there we go yeah solid backside three off that one of the first big
Pillows and then a nice method making his way down kind of checking his speed a little bit there that is one thing that these Riders always have to make sure they’re doing is navigating their speed and he’s in one of the more Central zones on the west side of the
Face here so a lot steeper a lot more exposure and this is what Craven eats for breakfast isn’t it big pillow lines love that combination of the more freestyle centered and that massive oh my god wow that was enormous that was huge that was massive and again I think think that’s he was
Just going for you know what the judges are really looking for you can pop around and do whatever you want off of those pillows but when you get into massive Cliffs and drops like that the judges are going to reward you heavily uh unfortunately he didn’t land it uh
Cartwheeled a couple of times and fortunately missed uh a tree in the landing too so uh yeah I’m curious if he’s going to try to take that same line again do you think he popped out further than he thought do you think that was bigger than he wanted to
Go no Cen I’m not sure good you know I mean it it honestly just looked like he was going for the the big the big dog line good to see the helmet to feature again this year he’s gone for the hockey hockey helmet hockey helmet very Canadian of him he’s
Expecting a fight in the Finish area so there was something up top there that we was obscured I might have been a front three into back three yeah it was hard to see from this angle with the trees but let’s look at this recap oh my God gosh that is absolutely
Massive he was either a little bit too short or a little bit too long wasn’t he he landed right on the edge of that last lip yeah he was very close to Landing that very close down to T-bird let’s hear what Dustin’s saying Craven that was ridiculous dude I’ve
Been thinking about it a lot seeing as you know Mark and Torin went to the West face far Riders left did that change watching those two drop did that change your mentality mindset or run choice at all no I just I’ve been playing that run the whole time so I
Didn’t really change my mind otherwise it’s too crazy you spent a lot of time this summer putting hours and hours into building this course how satisfying was it to finally drop in on what you helped create yeah I was sick I mean every time I landed I was like a this is awesome
And then obviously when I didn’t land I was like oh that sucks well congratulations buddy way to way to crack it off thank you thank you bird uh Craven give himself migraines he admitted last year staring at that Rebel Stoke face so I think he’s been doing the same thing
Again this year back up to the top and it’s another previous natural selection winner Sage kotenberg we can go in for a gear check now on what Sage is rocking yeah I’ve been on K2 for four or five seasons now and they’ve been really supportive of everything uh the board
That I’m going to be riding think most likely going to be the antidote looking at the course yesterday we made it actually for the 2022 tour of national selection the Jackson Hole bald face in Alaska year and we just looked at the terrain and broke it down and what board could
Really hammer out all of those events and that’s what we came up with it was a really fun process and something special to me and yeah I really enjoy riding it’s one of my favorite boards ever now having K2 natural selection ponying up together is rap because I I
Like doing the events and obviously R&D a lot with K2 so big things to come for sure super proud to have K2 as the official snowboard partner of natural selection and has it Sage unveiled the antidote at Jackson Hall won that event and it sold out instantly on course now
Sage kotenberg Jackson Hold 2022 winner this is a big moment seeing Sage come back to Natural Selection tour Rebel sto for the first time I mean his riding his his oh okay starting things off right there back three finding on that second hit a huge another big back three
So we in back three then it looked like a stalish then another back three still just popping down some of these pillows let’s see what he gets into in the lower part of the course here he put together a really eclectic crew to ride with
Being out with j hanis and go in Jackson Hall and it shows in that riding oh beautiful butter right there and you know it was it’s hard to tell but that bottom part of the line he did was EXT very very steep so that was like wasn’t necessarily a cliff drop but
If you look at that close and maybe we’ll get a replay it’s I mean his tail was essentially just dragging down that entire face so um yeah you know trying to find a little steep terrain at the bottom for me this is a rangefinder what
We know say is capable of just got the back threes he’s just feeling out the size and the distance on these takeoffs I agree I think that Sage is a really dangerous Rider in this venue in particular because I think it suits him very very well the freestyle element the
The natural train at the bottom I think this is kind of uh made for his style drone almost going under let’s see if we can get that butter on the Drone insan be interesting to see you know Sage stayed on his feet so you know you would
Assume that he might get a a higher score here but you just never know 67.2 that’s why you own the big bucks Eddie yeah so Dustin with a bit of work to do he he hung his entire score on that last feature Mary right to and the thing is
Like what I want to know is is he going to go back and try and take that line again because I mean or is it played out now that he’s already hit it once to me Craven reminds me of the type of Rider that it’s like he either wants
To be first or he’s going to be last like he he’s not he doesn’t have like a dimmer switch in my opinion he’s just all out and he’s going to Stomp and it’s going to be a massive score or you know he’s just not going to stomp he’s going
To fall and that that that’s it he’s the type of guy who throws all his cards on the table and and and that’s that this is the first of two days but the lineups the matchups are so heavy that you can’t lay back on any of it you’ve got to come
Out Dustin actually said it like if you don’t lay down your best run in this first round you’re going to be and you don’t make it you’re going to be waking up for months not having nightmares about this so look at this heavyweight matchup after heavyweight matchup Austin
Sweden versus benur this is an all you can eat buffet of Back Country Masters yeah it’s some of the some of the matchups you know I I kind of like okay this Rider might outweigh that Rider uh but these two honestly it could go either either way they both are
Extremely skilled at this style of terrain and uh I’m very curious to see who comes out on top after this first run Austin swen dropping in looks like the sun is uh even out better so visibility is high which is great another Rider stok to welcome back
To the tour with a very nice top uh back three at the top Austin sweeten returning after a year hiat yes front three so we got back three front three the front three was off of a pillow nobody has hit yet see what he’s got off
Here deep and a bounce on that Landing held on to it well and again a the way he navigated his speed he was going so fast and here we go solid drop unlucky on that one pretty heavy Landing I mean he’s got legs of Steel velvet castle that unbelievably long run
From sequencer the quick movie from last year he’s he’s phenomenal at dealing with like he’s got such strong quads to not be able to stomp that it’s a little bit of a surprise but one of the biggest noses in that west side of the venue okay and another thing that
Torstein had mentioned earlier is that he expected the snow to be a little bit more uh light a little softer a little bit more powdery you know so that could also be a factor of why uh a few of these guys aren’t stomping these Landings maybe the snow is a little bit
More quirky a little thicker than they expected in The Landings 5 in 25 cm of fresh snow last night on top of a decent base lovely little tailbone front side air held on to that so well I mean a solid first offering from Austin to I think putting down like like multiple
Freestyle hits at the top is going to set him up nicely in terms of uh Bend dropping next okay let’s hear from Stan up at the top of the venue yeah how’s it going guys up top just now a lot of the Riders meeting with the head Patrol as the head Patrol
Was really pointing out where those areas on the east side were sliding meaning a lot of the Riders actually had to make a last minute pivot switch over the West Side obviously not ideal some of those Riders studying those east side lines a little heavier little bit of a
Plot twist uh switch up at the end but these guys are the best and uh so far everyone’s been really hyped to see the snow conditions as they’ve been watching I think we’re uh right on track for an incredible show thanks Dan great bit of
Intel there I mean as far as the venues go west a little more freestyle East is probably the more exposed the more big mountain orientated so the West might be a out of the two the West the easier one to Pivot to yeah and I think I mean this
Is part of the nature of being in the back country I mean this is one thing that we haven’t really seen the last few years of natural selection in terms of needing to mitigate during event essentially but this is part and parcel for all of these Riders when they’re
Doing this when they’re filming when they’re out there on their own normally yeah and I mean what Stan just said is a is a huge thing to take into consideration because when you’re studying these lines over and over and over and you’re you’re you’re getting your landmarks in check and like where
To pop from and ex exactly what to do when you have to change that at the last minute and switch from you know in this scenario the east side over to the West Side uh I mean that can be devastating to an athlete well I reckon Austin just
Did that and you saw he was able to pull off regardless super impressive okay Ben Ferg look at that stair could melt ice cream with that he looks so focused doesn’t he okay it’s our third of eight qualifying rounds first runs here at the yeti natural selection in Rebel Stoke a
Leviathan of big mountain riding Ben Ferg dropping in wow that was a great word and he is a leviathan some of the best board control in all of snowboarding routinely a top competitor at Natural Selection Ben Ferg just heading Way West oh massive pop on that
Method and so much snow up top there b Barling through that lovely crosscourt okay making his way over into another Zone that hasn’t seemed to be ridden yet which I know the judges are going to be looking for front three off that pillow stomping it that was nice
Did well to kill the rotation there got on his heels a little bit but super clean run for Ben Ferguson you know what he stayed on his feet so that’s saying a lot uh especially when we’re we’re comparing it to some of these other runs so yeah benur is probably going to put
Down a solid first run score here taking off a little pressure going into run number two do you know what I like about that as well the centerpiece of the run for me was that huge method up the top no that was absolutely a beauty and
Interesting we saw later in the Run how he went oh there’s that method again that looks so big but we saw him down later avoid the kind of enhanced natural train in favor of the natural line he did so well there just to use the tail to stop that
Rotation yeah I think the judges are really going to like that front three and reward it with a solid score scratching down nice to get the first one out of the way dude yeah right with so much pow too it’s like just like after a feature just kind of like dude
That whole something else poed your score should be there guys okay 63 for Austin 54.5 for Ben F great illustration of how those Falls if they’re inconsequential are not going to wreck your line so more intensity bigger tricks from Austin swen the judges using the creativity and the risk factors of
Credo are judging criteria to boost Austin swen above Ben Ferg so bit of work for Ferg to do this is a rematch of Jackson Hold 2022 these two have met before and Ferg got the better of Austin Sweden then but I think as a kind of casual lay person watching on the
Strength of Austin swen’s content that he’s put out this winter I had Austin slightly ahead when I was when I was previewing this heat well you mentioned before you just can’t argue with velvet Castle I mean that was one of the most consequential and Progressive Backcountry runs that we’ve seen maybe
Ever I mean definitely ever with him and Travis so he’s coming into this you know well warmed up yeah yeah and I also think that that is a great example of what the judges of how the judges are looking at this riding like they are going to reward you for pushing the
Limits and not just staying on your feet you know Ben had a solid run stayed on his feet the whole time but again Austin Austin squeaked ahead of him uh just because of of kind of the powerful lines that he was choosing okay he for Blake Paul versus Mikey cicerelli uh this is
These two have met before again in Revel Stoke last year so they know each other certainly the terrain might favor Mikey CIS a little bit more but the back country Prince Blake Paul here repping ride snowboards another proud official snowboard partner of natural selection he’s already started
Prototyping Pro Models but he’s on the algorithm today little bit of cber with an early rise in the nose he he makes all snowboards look like magic carpets though doesn’t he’s such incredible style yeah we’ve you know we always talk about Blake as being one of the lightest
Riders on his feet he’s so light he makes everything look effortless and uh I think he’s been compared to a bird like having you know air in his bones because everything looks like he’s uh has helium so wild cat beautiful melon you don’t see many of those these days
And then a tail grab just cross caught on that platform did well to get that down deep snow on that takeoff yeah front side three getting almost completely lost and covered up in the air we heard Austin comment at the end of the last run nice to get the first one
Out of the way and it feels like a lot of riders just range finding with this first one yeah that definitely seemed like that watching Blake Paul because of the multiple straight errors in the top of his run obviously the wild cat at the beginning the three at the bottom but I
Think this is him just kind of testing the waters a little bit to uh get his line down to the bottom perfect wild cat over the tree steep terrain there like you said it way steeper than it looks in there yeah wow yeah that front that was actually from that angle that front
Three looked a lot gnarlier than the top angle so yeah that was uh okay let’s go down to T-bird who’s with Blake now I’m down here with none other than Blake Paul AKA prdy himself pry recently you shocked the snowboard world man you made a big sponsor switch up how’s that
Snowboard ride on this course today uh it’s riding pretty good yeah fortunate and honored to join the ride team recently bunch of Team Riders and mentors and people I look up to on the program and yeah I didn’t fall yet so it’s work so far but yeah it’s good to
Have some new energy under the feet on the course nice buddy how’s it feel to get that first one out of the way what does that do for kind of your mental state and taking the pressure off uh it feels feels really good I feel like there’s like a long buildup it’s almost
Like a whole year since the last one you’re like what’s it going to be like how’s what’s going to happen and then you drop in and ride and it’s just like snowboarding there’s you know it can only be so difficult or strange but uh it’s also just super fun so this this
Course ride’s a lot more fun than last year nice job buddy Blake Paul everybody one of the most wonderful thoughtful and humble human beings you could ever wish to meet yeah of course that was just snowboarding wasn’t it we can all do that yeah just snowboarding yeah yeah
Ripping skater too I have to I have to point out I’m not surprised I talked to him about the strength that we’ve seen in his riding recently and he said like I’m 30 now I’ve got some man strength U Mikey cicerelli some of the most impressive video parts of the last
Couple of years for me I think his part in the the sun came out the Burt movie unbelievable this guy’s got 12s in the back country I think he was maybe a little intimidated by the venue in Revy last year I think this gives this venue could really let him shine this
Definitely plays to likey strengths I mean he’s one of the most exciting guys to kind of cross the bridge from slope style into the back country in the last couple years okay carrying some Pace down here the track offering a little more speed now starting off sorry you go no all
Good good yeah solid backside three nice St fish there originally named by uh Tony Hawk who invented that stale fish grab in Japan or actually I think it was in scand oh oh just over the front there little over the handlebars but he’s held on to it into this steep exposed section
Same as Blake Paul interesting Blake got the front three off that yeah so you know straight air off the same exact thing that Blake did the front three they both or actually and Mikey you know wasn’t able to stay on his feet a little bit of a
Tumble there halfway down the course so if it were uh if it were my guess you know I I I think Blake’s going to take this round but again I’m not a judge I’m just a commentator and judges have a very difficult job and they are also
Looking at this in uh in quite a different way than uh than we are commentating look at that 3,000 wats small you can power rivium with that so good in there got big okay so you called it Eddie apples for apples on this run almost we saw Blake
Put the wild cat down there Mike’s gone with the back three yeah and this is where things oh no yeah he Stomps this one good bit of size on that one as well hacks into that big heelside carve then here we go the back three
That side angle is cool you can kind of get more of an idea of the distance that they’re traveling boys wait nervously for the scores here I say nervously Blake looks pretty calm doesn’t he looks like he could be napping very short okay Mikey just mind riding back into
That so these first runs we’ve seen all of the Riders just mind riding you’ve seen all of the Riders just trying to get a feel for the snow trying to get a feel for these features they’ve had a lot more visual inspection they’ve been able to walk
Under some of the lips up at the top it’s a more concave face so you can see a lot of the features a lot of The Landings but still a lot of riders just trying to get that first run under their belt and then I think with some takeoffs
Hated down some tracks and then we’re going to see some of those bigger spins come out crowd starting to gather down at the bottom here at Montana bowl and revel sto Mountain Resort at the moment Mark MC Morris leading torstein hogm Mo Sage kotenberg leading Dustin Craven Austin
Swen ahead of Ben Ferg and we have confirmation of those scores Blake Paul ahead of Mikey cerelli no surprise there but uh I think that Dustin Craven say I mean they’re all going to be close but definitely Dustin has the power to really reel sage in if he can land
One of those big runs yeah I want to I want to see Dustin land that drop so badly I hope I hope he goes back to it again now there is a bit of a you know there’s a landing Mark in there bit of a
Bomb hole so we’ll have to see if he goes for the same line if from what I know of Dustin and his writing I feel like he’s going to go back to it and uh I just want him to stomp that it feels that our first match up torstein versus
Mark that feels like the Kiest to me at the moment those two very very close oh I agree and I think you know no one’s safe going the second runs there’s no tiebreaker here it’s going to be the highest scoring of both runs and I think torin’s coming out firing and Mark is
Well with Mark in the second spot so yeah no no safety here right now okay we are on the first day of the Yeti natural selection here in Revel Stoke but we’re going to take a quick look back now at the road to Revel Stoke powered by
Rivan oh another one first night in Tokyo got into Japan today just got a couple of the crew going to roll out to BOS going [Applause] Up that was fun yeah oh yeah it’s the switch here we are super fired up to see what these guys do with the terrain here in on M go 3 2 1 drop it’s a big morning here in cres of view Colorado we’re in downtown crest of at the beautiful scarf Bridge Lodge we’re about to load up in the Tucker this is beautiful Country Dude choking on it we are here at crested but Mountain Resort we did the Austin sweeten versus red Gerard duel now they want to come up and help the girls out so we got a crew up here it looks awesome we’re fun look at this are you kidding Me hell yeah finally on site in Durango Colorado we’re expecting a ton of snow we so good to see you this is like so amazing Purgatory treating us well super deep we got an incredible match up here at Red Mountain it’s one of the most anticipated duels because of the Riders who are Involved we are packing up right now NST duel we done going to Rally this up to Yeti natural selection Rebel sto and we’ll keep it rolling safety is our number one concern with these events and Onyx gives a number of tools that help keep our Riders production crew and staff safe in
The back onx back country also makes it really easy for all of the teams within natural selection to share information rather effortlessly with like literally a click of the button we can share an entire project file BRS everyone up to speed I think it’s an amazing tool to facilitate safe [Applause] [Applause] Adventure [Applause] when the perfect power exists it’ll be Fusion a never-ending River of energy to tap into at any moment it will be carbon free radioactive free and power everything on Earth and when that perfect power exists we’ll deliver it with the flip of a Switch some time on the snow let’s go do it another good one Hey what’s up everyone it’s Travis and cam here you might have already heard but we dropped an amazing Marketplace app called cendy last year it’s Buy sell or rent adventure sports gear anywhere in North America two action sports legends there camzin and Travis Rice uh they’ve set up
Sending an online marketplace where you can buy sell or rent your gear so turn your gear Into Cash you can also find all of the exclusive uh Rebel Stoke Yeti natural selection merch on the sendy site so if you want to go and find any
Of that gear come on Mary give us some modeling technique oh look at that Eddie’s got the cap dial as well we’re good I like that one uh click the code and you can go and turn your gear into cash and you can find all of this merch
Okay now it is time to get back into the second runs of our first eight men’s qualifiers and back up at the top of the draw it’s it’s that superpower matchup of Canada versus Norway Mark MC Morris versus Torin hogo at the moment MC Morris leading I think it’s 73-
64.5 very very tight this one and both of them equally capable of throwing down an absolute hammer on this second run let’s go and see how torin’s doing up at the top there looks like he’s really finding a center right now he’s got this you know eyes closed finding that inner
Piece I’m sure before dropping into uh some some Artful chaos he’s uh been bestowed the ultimate uh honor as a pro Rider this year as where he started prototyping his Capital pro model which I I listened to him on um his YouTube was just like I am so
Pumped on this it’s a totally different direction super stoked on how quickly the process is happening for him as well because for some Riders Riders it can take an entire year can’t it but he said he’s I think he’s on second or third model now and it’s gone really really
Well so few places better to test out a prototype than right now here today well what’s more and more interesting we heard from Sage earlier on he built the antidote specifically for natural selection so I can land a C Cab n in power if I need to I can deal with the
Speed of a big face like scary Cher Cherry but then I can land a 40-footer in Alaska if I need to and more and more of these Riders looking for a board that can handle all of those conditions so torstein hogo one of I I counted it up I
Think there’s seven of them in this 16 person lineup who’ve got pro model so it’s pretty rare this is the best of the best there’s only seven of them have got pro model so it’s a rarified club okay lot of pressure on torstein right now he’s got a few points to make up
He’s got to find a minimum of another seven points to even re in Mark’s first run here you heard the double beep of the GoPro there we’ll see that P the angle when you watch the highlights but right now pressure is on hog Mo to deliver interesting to think about too
Is not only if you make it through this first round are you making it to uh the the Cel Tanger stage but you’re also securing your spot for the next year of the tour if you don’t make this first cut your status on the tour in 2025 is
Up the air yeah you’re you’re ined yes at the very least let’s if you even get the invite back sound the commit out on the committee this year 35 names cut down to eight for Jules okay Torin hogo on course first of our second runs here at reel
Stoke looks like he’s headed back to the same zone or general area doing a method over that massive Red Bull Banner kind of taking his time making his way down probably eyeing out a backside side seven stomping into a front three and also stomping that perfectly so so far this
Is probably one of the strongest runs we’ve seen today front one it’s riding switch over that pillow half C back three stay up oh just getting held down there in that deeper not wow top half of that run real purpose real intent and he looked so calm he looked like he knew exactly
Where he was going classic toin a comound that looks like a film par yeah to be able to stomp that back seven how he did uh especially again since they haven’t been hitting this course is incredible and that was high up in his run too I mean that’s one thing that
Credo the judges really want to see is they want to see consequential tricks when it could potentially endanger the rest of your line if you weren’t to land it you know one of the details I most enjoyed there was the front one switch pillow drop to half cap
Yes it’s pretty easy on paper but in practice in deep steep terrain wow that was just great amazing you know I really felt like it really just looked like he knew exactly where he was going the terrain read and the on the on sighting for that based on the study looked just really
Really skilled the urge the temptation to flick round to forwards off that pillow must have been huge but he crosscuts that one straight onto this next no back three oh a little over rotating and sinking into his kind of heel Edge and then flipping over okay
Let’s throw down to T-bird and here from tourin torstein you obviously stepped it up on that second run what was your mentality after run one going into this one uh I just wanted to do just flow a little better get the first run Jitters out and just yeah get into some
Tricks uh and then yeah wanted to rebate the last feature but the whole entire like the debris just went over all that snow it was like didn’t uh feel like yeah I just didn’t get get the feel for that that’s a pretty complex final feature there it’s kind of like a j saw
Puzzle a lot going on in in that little Zone yeah yeah for sure uh and uh yeah this that stability of the snow has been a little iffy too so that’s why we’re seeing this H reactiveness happening or it’s pretty reactive I should say uh which
Makes yeah when it slides this this the snow sets up so so fast um but I enjoy the crap of that run anyways we enjoyed watching you thank you buddy good job really interesting to hear torstein talking about that the snow was moving with him off that takeoff and
It’s like trying to balance on a bike standing still at that stage so there’s that half cab straight onto this nose oh he tapped the tree oh wow that’s what kicked you noticed it kicked him forward off the tree yeah and I think also what he’s saying too about some of
This Slough setting up some of these slides setting up is that when you’re watching this it just looks like it’s all perfect super fluffy soft snow but at the end of the day there’s a lot of variable snow conditions in there uh even though it looks perfect there’s a
Lot of hard snow there’s some ice Boulders there’s some chunks in there that can throw you off very easily okay so Oakley and Burton supporting Sparky two Browns who are part of the natural selection industry Alliance they support snowboarders and by supporting natural selection they supporting snowboarding okay front one coming into
This first kicker switch [Applause] all right going switch front side just the half cab he got a big lip coming up down here double wild C held on to it he’s back up he’s back up yeah that’ll be interesting to see how the judges score that and then into a nice
Front side three but the double Wildcat very risky maneuver do you know what I love about that killed hardly any of the speed super flow through this section triple wow oh my God that was so big wow that was pure pinball wow top to bottom Mark
M Morris oh my gosh see Mark Morris I feel like he performs the best when his back is against the wall and it wasn’t even against the wall in that except that you cannot let your guard down around torstein we need bibs in here there’s Jaws on the floor and saliva
Everywhere Martin Morris just bounced between I think it was definitely three maybe four takeoffs and the last one was huge that was enormous I mean this venue is so impressive for that freestyle top and that just natural bottom I don’t think there’s any doubt Martin MC Morris just took torstein to
Score that is that is Revenge for Alaska semifinals in 2022 wow that was incredible I mean honestly after he recouped from the double wild cat I don’t know if he made another turn he kind of just like went straight down the entire mountain look
At the size of that oh my God that’s a contest M that was definitely a contest mate on the back it was more that he just popped out of that turn didn’t he okay so front three here we here we go pinball this where stops turning he’s
Like three oh just totally misses that last you think he’s going to hit something but he just carries on down I wonder if that’s a little bit of a lesson from just watching Boulder Park last year I mean that was excellent navigation Mar MC moris take about that was spectacular
To that’s a good recap I tell you what if you could bottle adrenaline right now you just squeeze Sparky and whatever juice comes out is it oh yeah it’s chicken there I was trying to yeah I got back yeah the debris just went all over that where funnels in I’m
Sure you felt that oh yeah so we’ve heard from a few of the Riders now a lot of snow moving around on this face and they’re starting to feel that debris in some of the Run outs so that is a factor 78.2 for torstein 73 for Mark so
Mark does not I totally called that wrong so toin second run the 78.2 will stand so toin will advance to finals day in cirk Tangers our first of eight battles is settled Torin looks grateful for it big big run so maybe those instabilities up top cost Mark harder than we
Thought yeah I mean you know again we talk about the judges really wanting to look at that full appraisal and I think that’s what they they really liked about t torin’s for run I for me I I really enjoyed I felt like Mark certainly in the middle of his
Run was at Travis speed there was no there you said it Eddie very little speed checking yeah I mean again the judges are looking at this in a totally different way you know we’re kind of trying to just see some tricks and call this out they’re taking the whole Credo
Judging uh criteria into consideration so again I’ve been a judge in a lot of competitions and it is very difficult and again sometimes people will will talk about it and they see it in a different way I think had Mark stomped the uh the the double Wildcat I think he
Would have been on the top you know you have to remember torstein did that amazing backside seven I think that really helped him out a lot true yeah i’ for it’s so easy one R eclipses the next eclipses the next and we’ve heard from the judges before they’re doing no
Practice judging just like the Riders are doing visual inspection this man has more of an advantage than most but he is under the pump now against Sage kotenberg he needs a big score here he rested all of his hopes on a big pillow line at the bottom of his first run so
He needs Redemption here oh seven coming up a little short on the landing it looks like kind of catching his heels going backside three I am so curious if he’s going to go back to the zone that he started uh off with his first run looking in another front
Side three there I mean you were going to see Craven had to send it from the very top new Sage is coming up right behind him in the lead from the first run okay so he is coming back into that zone he’s on top of something steep here a lot of
Exposure yeah and this is incredibly blind for the Riders see that there’s a perfect view you cannot see what’s below you so very risky and I think this is something the judges are going to love to see oh wow free fall out of that stack from Dustin Craven big cloud burst
On the exit so he stayed on his feet and that was pretty that I mean that was impressive that was n but you’ve got two factors balancing each other you’ve got this incredible feature and then you’ve got the hesitation and the line break to the flow that it took to get
There plus the front seven instability up at the top where he came up couldn’t quite get the rotation round this is again where you know we pay homage to the judges and say that I don’t envy them in their position uh if if we haven’t mentioned it yet actually the judge’s lineup is
Ludicrous Chad opom is in there still one of the greatest snowboarders on the planet there’s that back Tre into the front seven no not much setup time on that front seven here’s another view at that really steep he’s like just kind of controlled falling all the way down it
Looks amazing and again I do I you know I think the judges are going to reward him heavily for that bottom section of the line because it is so blind and it’s a lot it’s you know it’s very difficult okay over to you T-bird Craven that one’s got to feel good buddy was
That the one you wanted yeah it was nice I mean compared to last run I kind of didn’t go as hardcore as I did but uh last time I landed on my head so yeah it feels pretty good what’s going through your head is you’re navigating through
All that stuff and you finally make it to the top and kind of realize you’re exactly where you needed to be uh I mean you feel good about it you’re like yeah I’m not going to die well it comes with the hockey helmet but it feels like the gloves just came
Off for that run yeah Sage might have to give H here nice job buddy casual as ever Craven and t- bird rocking the Black Strap Balor clavas there super light super warm antifrost technology go and get yourselves one of those if you’re heading anywhere cold this winter part of our industry
Alliance again Dustin Craven always so understated at the bottom of the course Mary oh totally also I got a point I love that last hack he gave before arriving in the Corral that was just wonderful two PBS of sea four in that turn BL up okay Sage kotenberg up at the top
Certainly he was leading this heat 67.2 to 51.2 but Craven I think has improved his score and it’s it’s C Sage is definitely not safe right now no not at all and and again I do believe the judges are going to reward those steeper more natural lines towards the bottom
Then they are you know maybe a front three or a back three off of one of the pill the naturally built pillows okay Sage kotenberg about to Pilot that K2 antidote into Montana Bowl here at Revel St Mountain Resort all the tech that K2 had at their fingertips plowed into one
Board when the board’s one thing but the pilot is something else entirely s cot SOI Olympic gold medalist in 2014 natural selection Jackson Hall winner in 201 22 this boy can make a snowboard move he is mocking into that oh set down the landing perfectly okay back to back three we
Went front three back three this feels really crisp at the moment very fluid so far no hesitation no slowing down no sketches let’s see what he gets into in the bottom well you can see what he’s getting into into in front of him some big noses here he’s playing Craven at
His own game he wants something big and steep it looks like he’s getting it lot of exposure this is a good example of how a competitive snowboarder reads a situation he knows he has to do this to be Craven and he knows once he lets that
Edge go he’s off oh oh my God DP to it holy moly that was just an upping of the atie with that three oh snow snake jump up and B his tow Edge oh no but I don’t even know if that will come into play So
At the bottom I think the judges might just say okay you’re at the bottom on that one that was brutal yeah he was so far past the landing that’s fine but actually I hope he’s okay cuz that was actually looked like a pretty violent Tommy at thumbs up right there wow it
Was a it was the classic if you’re skating when you fall off in the fat platform shoulder charge the other tranic went straight into a oh here we go strapping is drop I thought it was going to be impressive if he just did a straighter off of that
Cliff and I I had no idea he was going to back three that and the he stomped it perfect I think this is uh going to be a big score and what I love about that is any of us doesn’t matter whether you’re about to do a back three off a giant
Pillow stack or whether it’s something really basic like taking on your first air you can tell Now cast your mind back to say getting into position at the top of that stack he was like the adrenaline like he was way outside his comfort zone he knew he was he was reaching for that
One I mean the strategy here is really quite apparent I think just as a viewer but again Eddie I was the same I thought he was just going to straight air and just kind of like just Gap that huge and to throw a back three off of that I
Didn’t see that gosh I couldn’t see that thing at the bottom Sage kotenberg had I think one of the biggest challenges of this first round because Dustin Craven and his crew at Revel Stoke built all of these platforms this summer Dustin knew the flow he knew the distances on this
Course so sage has come out and own this face I would argue this is the best run we’ve seen of the day we were talking about the top he flowed he hit everything he never hesitated it looked so smooth and then he got himself into this sketchy situation he was chest on
Snow his nipples were pulling powder off that face as he got into that I think that’s look at him all relaxed I’ve made it boom that was incredible I think that’s going to be I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s going to be the
Highest score of the day so far that was an insane run the front seven up top okay the nervous weight Craven I think like he said it’ll keep him up at night if he doesn’t lay down the Run he wants I feel like that first run might be a case of what might
Have been for him he had that pillow stack at his fingertips Sage 85 Eddie wall called it big big score at the moment Sage kotenberg sitting in the position for that skido plenty of riders still to drop in the men’s but Sage Ceno’s got one hand on a scoo throttle right now
Yeah that’s got to be a good Good Feeling for sage and again just to be able to walk away knowing that you put down a solid like that to the top of the Course St Lev what’s going on up there brother that thing was flat wow I mean Temple of stoke couldn’t
Be a more apt name for the A-frame up here you got the best riders in the world gathered around the TV absolutely losing their mind when they see Sage land that off that Big Cliff I think after we saw saw the torstein mark matchup and the judges scoring we saw
Okay the judges are looking for people to Chuck and uh Sage understood the assignment let’s just say that thanks so much St great bit of insight there it’s lovely to see that isn’t it like we’re losing our minds but the best in the world are up there losing their minds at the same
Time okay uh just had a squirrel in my ear tell me that not only is Sage got uh one hand on this scoo with that 85 point score but you could probably argue that that back three of that final pillow stack could put him in line for the
Boa dialed in award so he’s just got that front foot facing back and then he has to reverse out onto that takeoff and his reaction like arms up when he stomped it tells you everything you need to know about it that is just so bananas I mean that part worthy right
There oh we got the slow-mo replay of us I love it yeah I just I just realized that I’ve probably got a four finger slap head up here as well that’s great to see thank you okay it just the hits keep on coming straight out of sage kotenberg versus Dustin Craven we come
To Austin swen versus Ben Ferg right now Austin swen on a 63 Ben Ferg on a 54.5 Austin Sweden managed to get a 2 m long Doughboy Shredder off a road Gap and do a front three in 2 feet at 8 seconds go and check it out on YouTube
If you want phenomenal he’s only 53 so the board’s nearly too double his Length 63 where’s Austin tween going what has he got for us so far not a single Rider down the east side of the face all of them pounding this west side of the venue at the moment and let’s not forget Austin qualified through the DU
So he’s been working his way up for this moment you know that he doesn’t want to blow it was that a huge back one yes stays on his feet had to revert it though so he’s back to regular Austin is no stranger to highspeed runs and not checking his
Speed at all cab five so far so good so intense totally different temperature to this Run from Run one yeah I think the is building so heavy right now oh huge drop B hisory holds on with some trees you know tree exposure at the bottom there that was kind of a noall cliff
Austin swen in that youold the sage kenberg run that is another big big run the speed the flow the improvisation yeah that’s one thing that we know Austin sweeten for is he is so like melodically staccato in his movement so good at supervising so good at just finding Landings where there doesn’t
Seem to be any and that was just an exemplary uh example of that those the for me the most aesthetically pleasing runs are the some of the most unexpected and he had that spontaneous element here so he did back back one Landing switch and then a quick
Revert to go off of the next pillow and then he gets a five there and he’d only just recovered he have milliseconds to set up for that yeah and then he’s just bouncing you almost into that quintessential sweetened terrain here it’s almost as good as M Baker
Almost as good as Mount Baker did you hear that okay let’s hear from T-bird and Austin sweeten now thanks everyone you’re sounding great out there almost as good as these Riders are ripping we’re here with Austin sweeten sweeten qualifying through the duel you en crested but at
11 experiences you beat red Gerard how does it feel to take your second run here feels really good the snow is like seriously some of the best powder ever in all season so yeah man we’re all ripping pow it’s good what are the similarities in this terrain to your home Resort of Mount
Baker it’s not as good as Baker but it’s almost there you know it’s uh they just took out too many trees and you were saying something about your goggles I heard you say uh on when you got down here sun came out uh yeah definitely the goggles were caked 34s that run really
Just committed to the line and just wiped as I went awesome good job buddy the old public toilet strategy as you go oh what a line we’ve got no idea of that score but Austin swen’s going to be sat on a heater there he was already leading Ben Ferg in this
Match match up so a lot of pressure if you’re in one of the 10 Barrel Brewing pubs based out of Bend Oregon this is your boy a Pub beer Ambassador Ben Ferguson out of Bend repping for Burton and PB beer let’s see what he’s got there absolute wizard in the pipe had
Some of the most beautiful runs built in his pipe era he transitioned all of that eclectic style perfect trick selection into the back country but now the next minute is what counts as you said earlier Mary if he loses here Ben Ferguson could be in the
Jews he could be qualifying for n select next year there’s so much on the line right now C ters and then the state of 2025 so benur attacking Montana B do die squashes that Red Bull boota building speed down here backside set oh holds on to that holds
On little in the back seat little hand touch but I don’t think that’s enough for the judges to dock him too many points his speed is I just as you said it that’s called The commentator’s Curse uh yeah so his speed was solid and then unfortunately
He just kind of went down a little butt check but as we’ve seen just oh oh oh kind of pinballing between two angles of slope that’s that classic visual inspection you send something and if you don’t know exactly where your Landing transition is yeah and I think Ed what
You had said earlier about these aren’t these aren’t qualifier runs they’re going into this as like this is a final because if you don’t put everything on the line you are not going to advance and I think that was an example of Ben putting everything on the line did it
Work out I’m not sure I think Austin’s run was pretty solid but uh but it is just cool to see them going full that bottom one was so cra oh I blew it I one like uh yeah all good dude like crazy trying to just pick what to yeah
Was full kind of like wild style there a second oh man it’s fun it’s getting paved in there dude it’s getting getting fast the warm to yeah Dam okay so Ben fer saying that he blew it he thinks that he hasn’t done enough with a back seven like that the top of
Your run that was just so perfect too and really holding on to The Landing there and this was the build wasn’t it yeah if he had stomped that I think that would have been uh dramatically affected his score and as you heard Ben say at the bottom talking to Austin it’s
Getting faster the snow is getting faster and that’s that’s the thing about snow it can change hour to hour okay both of them saying it’s starting to get a little bit tracked in there benur 48.5 Austin swen just tucked in behind Sage kotenberg for highest score of the day
With an 80.2 a consumate win for Austin sweeten and unbelievably we’re saying it already Ben Ferguson is out in the round of 16 he will not progress to the finals so the scalps start flying big big names not making it through finals okay so we have the portal up
There you can see that Blake Paul that’s the East start are we no we’re back to the West start that is the shred Shack the A-frame as they say in Canada uh let’s get a gear check from Blake Paul now I’m super honored and excited to join ride snowboards it’s a team of
Mentors close friends and amazing snowboarders that I look up to so I’ve been testing all the boards in the line working on some subtle tweaks to get the right technology that I want to ride this year and it’s been awesome to switch things up and have some new energy under my
Feet yeah for checking the course today I think what I have I got like couple boards in the Arsenal that’ll work well and maybe switch from one to the other depending on how it goes but yeah definitely excited you want something pretty stiff and easy to land on but
Also floaty and fun to ride Blake mentioned mentors there Mikey LeBlanc instrumental in that switch over to ride so he’s been checking out the algorithm that’s what he’s been finding his feet on ride our official snowboard partner for natural selection but he’s also I think on Prototype number three
Of his own pro model very well deserved you’d have to say on the strength of his Riding In Rebel Stout last year is he going to back it up with his second run here currently leading Mikey cicerelli in the fourth of our eight matchups in the men’s big straight air over that Red
Bull jump up at top all right going for the single wild cat stomping it clean going into a nice toine turn there throwing up some spray classic Blake poy barely compressed on the landing of that wild cat yeah I swear his bones are made a helium I like
His use of the terrain up there he was kind of you know really finding a quite beautiful line big big lumpus now in front of him okay so navigating his way down a pretty steep kind of pillow line multiple little drops there and that’s going to round it out so he’s in the
Lead had a lot of pressure taken off of him stayed on his feet overall smooth run besides the Wildcat there wasn’t a lot of real you know like defying moments there huge tricks and he’s pushing Way Out West so you’re actually losing a lot of vertical getting out there into that juice
Beautiful turn with the afterburners on on his way out yeah beautiful hack and I think this is where the different riding styles of cicerelli and Blake are going to come into play because it’s cerelli going to pull from that really heavy kind of slope style background and try
And put on something big whereas Blake’s run as you can see here there’s there’s the back flip and it was just really Po in there mark Frank Montoya St just said dink yeah and it just this was beautiful route finding it was just really really smooth so I think the riding styles are
Going to come into play in terms of what Mike’s going to throw down next I I think you’ve hit the nail on the head Mary Mikey needs to play to his strengths now he’s not going to be as smooth potentially as Blake with that big mountain navigation but if he can
Throw some big tricks in there okay let’s throw down to t- bird I’m here with Blake Paul after run two Blake how are we feeling about that run there uh feeling pretty good there’s a couple unexpected obstacles and some little pockets of snow that have slid so a lot
Of the features are kind of out of play um but yeah just hit that hip jump up top which is fun and then wanted to come down and hit the last pillow line and the rest was just kind of a shot in the dark what does it feel like now with
Mikey sis Elli with one shot left still about to drop how does it feel sitting down here uh yeah you know you’re just wanting to do well but also you’re hoping to move on so just conflicted but hopefully he can land the Run he wants but uh yeah a little nerve-wracking to
See who moves on yeah buddy well it’s always a pleasure watching you ride Blake well done Blake it’s I always feel like a mom or a dad I just want to put my arm around him such a lovely okay Mikey cerelli up at the top there
Quick shout out to Yeti this is the yeti natural selection they’ve been on board since day one trying to help natural selection become plastic free everyone decked out with those Yonder water bottles Mikey cicarelli absolutely love his riding powerhouse on the Canadian slope team kind of came through with
Darcy sharp under the guidance of Max perro SE Toots and Mark MC Morris but he’s made that transition into the back country and Whistler and he is a force to be reckoned with like he has got some of the biggest hits I’ve seen in the back country in
The last couple of years I think yeah he goes massive and I also like what Blake was saying at the bottom he was like you know I I want to advance but I also want to see Mikey do well it’s pretty there’s a lot of camaraderie out here it’s a
Competition but this terrain is scary the tricks are big and all of these Riders just want everybody to do good I remember back in the day Travis Parker talking to me once and said he basically stopped competing at one point because he said he was he was like watching one
Of his friends and thinking oh well if he falls I’m going to advance and he was like I hated that feeling and I I wouldn’t ever want to see one of my friends fall and after that he was like you know what I’m going to I’m good for
A while and went and filmed for robot food and killed it that’s a great story I love that became one of the most creative pros of all time there you go okay so Mikey cerelli sat on a 51.5 Blake Paul on a 60.2 got to say I think Blakes up his
Score with that first run there so it’s a much bigger margin that Mikey’s got to close here he needs something special yeah I think that Blake really had the composure in his run he looked very fluid confident I think his just route finding was F fantastic Mikey where he’s
Going to potentially bring it isn’t that complexity off of these upper freestyle features another thing too that almost can hurt Blake is that he’s so effortless that he makes stuff look easier than it is starting things off with a nice is that a cire cab five beautiful cab five Chop Top big back
Three oh wow landed up perfect so far very solid performance by Mikey but this is where the test comes it starts to get Steep and exposed here you got to control that speed but you’ve got to keep your flow good Slough management great boter coming up here that big nose front three
Stomps wow okay going to be so interesting I’m not going to I’m not going to make a call one way or the other I that’s a that’s going to be a tough tough job for the the judges no you said it Eddie this is tough this is this is kind of apples and
Oranges you know Mikey just wrote that so well Blake had so much fluidity to his run I don’t know which way this would go either so back in the Dark Ages there used to be a form of torture called pressing they’d put a giant Stone on top of someone which they hope would
Force them to talk sounds horrible that’s what Mikey Celli’s just done to the judges I was wondering where that was going a giant Stone on top of the judges and said give me a score so here’s my opinion I think Mikey performed better in this upper section off of the kind of man-made
Feature some of those big pillows I think he had speed he he went big um but Blake Paul did have that sick pillow line at the bottom that was very steep very blind so I think Blake maybe takes the bottom and Mikey takes the top but drifting more fall line for Mikey had
More hits he had more vertical to work with so there there is naturally there’s more to work with for the judges as well yeah hey guys I’m about to bite all my fingernails off right now I’m I’m I think Mike is as well look
At the little T give it to me give it to me he’s got the Crab Claw going yeah oh I’m kind of leaning towards Mikey I think he might take it but again but how yeah so currently all we know Blake Paul on a 60.2 from his first run Mikey right
Down on that 51.5 with big instability in his first run so I’m with Blake though can we can we not have either of them get eliminated oh man that’s a tough this is a really tough one you can see you know the judges are here we go come
81.2 wow that’s a big score Mikey cicerelli joins Austin Sweden and sage kotenberg in the 80 Point Club Blake Paul it cost him that far west side of the venue cost himd now Mee we are here with Mikey cicerelli Mikey dude you got our hearts going my
Man I had my heart going there as I was just coming in be like please stay on my feet obviously you know they were talking in the booth it’s obviously amazing to advance but bittersweet because of the respect that you do have for someone like Blake Paul of course
Blake is such a beautiful snowboarder and always love his riding so it was a good battle and uh always love watching him shred well congratulations Mikey we look forward to seeing you on day two my man well done so Mikey cicerelli gets revenge on Blake pool from Revel Stoke last year
81.2 a very convincing victory for him Ben Ferguson loses out to Austin Sweden and Sage kotenberg takes Dustin Craven very very tight there toin hogo jumps back back and takes Mark McMorris in the second run of that first heat so cicerelli swen kotenberg and hogo advance to the sell Kirk Tangers finals
Day some big names going out in the first of our four matchups there Eddie that was tired yeah that was that was a nailbiter uh and and I think you know I I fully agree with the judges on that last call with Mikey cicerelli pulling up into the lead there uh again
Sad to see Blake uh head head home but uh Mikey absolutely Crush I mean this is a big mixup we’ve seen some of these familiar names from a round of eight last year all through the season just knocked out and you know Sage ason coming back in this is
Exciting I I mean those the first of first four of our eight though and we’ve got another four to come plus we have all of the women as well so no shortage of action still to come at the yeti natural selection here in Revel St qualifiers day ahead of the cirk Tangers
Finals uh now Rivia one of the main sponsors this year that is I think probably the biggest prize snowboarding has ever seen in its single form at least up there with that nugget of gold terier won once it is a rivan r1t truck and up until now there’s been
The R1 and the r1t but rivan have just announced that they’re going to bring out the R2 and an R3 and an r3x very exciting uh moves from rivan coming out very very shortly uh next though we’re going to take a closer look at Revelstoke Mountain Resort and all of
The work that they’ve done ahead of natural selection this year 250 km north of the US border lies a little place called Revel stoke while the gorgeous area that is Mount Revelstoke National Park was founded in 1914 Revelstoke Mountain Resort first opened its doors to the public in December of 2007 situated on the iconic Mount McKenzie Revelstoke Mountain Resort boasts the longest inbounds vertical of any Resort in North America with a staggering 1700 M of ridable terrain while receiving an average of 10 and 1 half M of snow annually that’s over 34 ft of snow per winter Revelstoke sits amidst an inland
Temperate rainforest which is the perfect climate for snowfall accumulation in the winter months it rests in the most opportune location for cold air to sweep south from Central and Northern DC to collide with the moisture from the West this convergence of hot and cold air flow rings out the moisture from
Storm systems and dump snow on the town and the surrounding mountains formed by the continental drift over millions of years Revel stoke’s unique location in the cell Kirk range makes it the ultimate playground for all Mountain freestyle snowboarding and a perfect host Resort for the natural selection tour where the
Best Backcountry snowboarders will battle L out for bragging rights to professional snowboarding’s most coveted [Applause] [Applause] Crown [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] Oh All right we’re ready camera speeding we’re 100 here we go there’s something special about winter every year I get the same feeling winter is coming in it’s one of the best [Applause] feelings Welcome back to the yeti natural selection here from Revel Stoke and oh my gosh this has been nothing short of insanity already this morning this is the most excited I’ve been to commentate an event in a very very long time the runs that have gone down by the men so
Far have been absolutely Bonkers and yeah oh my gosh how’s it going everybody I’m Todd richers and next to me is Pat Bridges from slush magazine and Leanne Pelosi an absolute Legend in women’s snowboarding Leanne first your thoughts because we’ve been sitting in the Green Room the whole time
And it’s just been like everyone’s been freaking out yeah at first it was stressful with the ABY conditions but then the guys just laced so many sick lines it’s been really impressive Pat what has been your big takeaway so far this morning well the course that was created was equally incredible for both
Freestyle leaning Riders and traditional Free Riders and seeing that to contrast to Riders like Dustin Craven Sage kotenberg we saw it that play there well it was amazing and not only are the Riders up against the terrain but also there’s some instability in the snow pack today which adds just like another
Layer of excitement and in order to mitigate that and make sure all these Riders are safe the rebel Stoke ski patrol is out there and they supported by Yeti let’s get a little bit more information on what they’ve got going down and the support they
Give I’m Josh I’ve worked at RMR for 8 years and uh I’m one of the Avalanche forecasters here at the Hill constant learning and progression those are the things that keeps me coming back to being a forecaster and and being in the snow the world is that constant Learning and Development in terms of forecasting amount of this size it’s a little bit different where we’ve got a couple
Different elevation bands where we might have problems at 800 M of elevation or at 2300 M of elevation so you’re thinking about things at a whole different scale having a team like we do makes it a lot easier to do that because you can have other people help and
Support uh figuring out what’s going the team here at RMR is great there’s a lot of people who work real hard and uh keep it fun while we do it there’s good camaraderie the natural selection creates an interesting environment where you have these people pushing boundaries vent is in a neat Zone where
It’s highly visible from the resort it’s an area that’s gotten cleaned up with the natural selection coming in they made a few natural features but they also cleaned up a lot of The Landings out of those cliff Stones the event slope you know we’re going to be considering that throughout
The season here snow profiles that we’re digging there and regular increments we’re going to be connecting those to the problems we’re having on the resort and then we’re going to mitigate that Hazard with explosives or ski cutting and ensure that we’re not building up into a problem leading up to the event
It’s a full season of consideration it’s also cool to see it all in person making it a fun event that people get get excited about both the people in the community and the people working it it’s going to be neat to see what Happens big shout out to Yeti for being committed to Mountain communities across the world and being the biggest supporter of natural selection since day one okay if you’re just joining us right now we are in the first brackets and the way this whole thing goes down we’re
Going to explain it to you right now in the way the format goes so it’s simple as this we have eight riders that are coming in here for the women there’s going to be three rounds we’re head-to-head unfortunately someone has to go home two runs for the Riders
Each and they will be moving on to the finals those top four riders in cell Kirk ters later on so huge uh consequences here today you got to ride really really well in order to go home and go on to the next round Credo Pat give us a little bit more information
About like what Credo is here well it’s creativity risk execution difficulty and overall impression and any combination thereof can be a play today we see a lot of riders going to the West so far which is where the freestyle and creativity is going to come in but there is some
Consequence as well just to back that up lean we were talking earlier about like this course favoring a certain type of Rider what do you think at this point in the riding um I think we have a healthy balance of big mountain and freestyle and it seems as though the freestyle
Aspect is it really coming into play well we’re starting to get right into it right here the first heat Zoe Sadowski sent it up against Haley langland two riders that have cut their teeth in slope style but have been slowly pushing the boundaries in the back country and
Just building and building Zoe had an Incredible video just dropped the other day yellow she’s stopped you know a stomped front side tens in the pow and you know last year she rode so so well so this is going to be a really interesting matchup and it’s also
Incidentally the first of the couples matchup as well because you know we not only do we have a couple Riders here that are uh you know coming into this thing with a lot of strength but there’s also two couples here competing we’ll get more into that as we go up to stand
For a Vibe report up on the top of the course thanks Todd up here yeah the vibe is high okay just ladies get up here excited hugs all around honestly the only tension that I’ve sensed at all is if someone’s getting in the way of the TV okay everyone’s excited to watch they’re
Stoked I think these ladies are hyped to ride get that first run under their belt see where the judges are at with them it’s going to be exciting thanks Dan yeah excite excitement is you know I got to calm down basically I’ve had a little too
Much red bull this morning you know what I’m saying like I’m a little too hype so all right this first quarterfinal match up between Zoe and Haley Haley being the first of the coup’s DU as well red Gerard and her came in here as a couple
We’ll move on to Robin vanin and Austin sweeten later we’ll talk about that later but this first matchup I mean talk about two freestyle powerhouses and Pat give me some thoughts we were kind of talking about what might go down with these Riders well I mean this is a unique
Matchup because this isn’t the first time these two have competed together all year theyve been competing in slope Styles already so far this season this is the first time they’re going to compete on the natural selection tour and they’ve been a rival for years to
Come but as you see the course that DUS of Craven created a lot of great ramps for both of these girls to dig deep into their bag of twins all right Zoe Sadowski Senate will start us off here in the women’s quarterfinal run number one here we
Go working a way down here on this Ridge and there’s that huge kicker that’s coming up I anticipate that she’s going to want to throw something really big and really dig into her slope style Roots there’s that backy oh Landing a little bit flat Landing a
Little flat but missing the tree in the landing which is key bonus seems to be still pretty fresh considering considering there were 16 runs it almost seems like you know it’s you need to calm down and not over amp your riding in this course I mean there’s there’s so much energy that’s
Been pent up from the men up top talking about what this course is like so maybe run number one is going to be a little bit too much pent up energy from sitting around all morning oh look there she goes into the Nar nice Zoe yeah and that’s a little
Bit more the more traditional free brain backside 360 off the bottom rocks zo at it gets run number one one done and there we are we’re underway with the first runs here for the women’s portion of the competition here today so as we said Zoe such a strong
Rider last year had a very dominating presence in natural selection let’s take a look at how it went down started things off with this big backflip Pat but just maybe Landing a little bit too much in the flats well totally and and as you see like with
These snow conditions it looks like she it’s very light where she was Landing um so you got to really be on bolts to come down yeah I’m wondering if they’re hitting bottom um that layer underneath that it was sliding on it just might feel a little firm well it’s
Definitely been tracked out a bunch there there’s been a lot of Punchy holes so let’s throw down a t- bird who’s with Zoe yeah we’re here with Zoey Sadowski Senate Zoey that run probably not exactly what you wanted where are you going to try to improve upon for run two
Yeah um yeah not exactly what I was looking for but yeah just try and land run too maybe change it up go somewhere else but man the snow is super sick in there how were uh kind of navigating in and around the tracks from from the the
Men’s first run yeah it was it was a lot better than I expected like a lot of St snow still in the like super track parts to be honest which is suck is Stan behaving himself up there yes Stan’s Stan’s chilling good job Zoe look forward to run
Two all right thanks tbird Zoe will look to run to obviously I mean I think that she just she’ll have a lot more calm nerves going into her second run here and I kind of thought she would go down the ridge more to that more almost looks
Like a park feature that huge one we saw Ben Ferguson do the gigantic 720 off of earlier and Mark McMorris that 540 I think you know if she can just kind of get that line looks like she came up a little bit short where she did that back
Flip well this is where strategy comes into play for Haley as well Haley is one of the lighter Riders so if if she’s going to get bucked it’ll be Amplified in that regard and also there is overall impression and execution Zoe went for a
Lot of spins we know Haley has a lot of straight aors a lot of tricks can flow into train good so it’ll be interesting to see if she opts to be a little conservative with trick selection just to get a full pull uh before we drop in
Haley’s run big shout out to BCA back country has been real they’ve been helping us out with mitigating the snow in here I mean look it’s punchy in there it’s been snowing a lot over this past week and BCA has been given the Riders the sense of security that they can have
They have the best equipment in the world to help them go through these conditions all right we’re going to get back up to Haley who’s about to drop right now Haley checking it out her and red spend a lot of time in the back together and you know you remember that slush
Cover obviously from last year a gigantic front side 720 in the back country that kind of was heard around the world so Haley looking to bring some of that slope style skill in here to the back country as she drops and as it gets more track she’s going to be light on
Her feet it could be an advantage um if the snow is light it’s an advantage she looks like she’s going a little bit further down the ridge off that Yeti jump stalefish and there you see it she’s just trying to go big stra nice back three right
There yeah and this drone view of what’s going on out here kind of gives you an idea of how steep it really is it’s very deceiving well another interesting factor which we saw in Scary Cherry the last couple years is when you get off your line you may have to course correct
And next thing you know you’ve passed four features Hal looking at this diving board drops in nice that was a really solid run by Haley yeah she she had a couple might have that edge there stomping out up top Haley doing a full run no Falls navigating that bottom section that
Runnel where all the debris has been flowing out well she’s got something to build upon from there that great way to start this light as well this light kind of you know dancing in and out the Sun so Haley really leaning into those Oakley goggles with the prism lenses cuz you
It’s all about you know having as much definition as you can possibly find out there today with these variating uh conditions with the light so let’s check out a little recap of Haley’s run nice that was so styly nice Indie I thought she did a stal pish from from the back the back
Three you see that that secondary little kind of popper in there caught her by surprise I think it’s really difficult to navigate because of all the trees you think you’re somewhere and you might be somewhere else so yeah it doesn’t really matter how much studying you do you know
You can look at you can look at those those charts all day long the pictures but as soon as you get in there you just throw all that out the window yeah yeah and then you add in the factor of flatlight which was a problem on and off for the men’s
Bracket yeah there see Haley just pointing it out at the bottom so she’s going to have the advantage here over Zoe just by virtue of staying up on her feet well staying up on her feet big straight air she got the 360 in there and that pillow line at the bottom too I
Thought that was pretty SI so let’s see what this match up gives us Haley langin with a 7 5.5 over Zoe’s 42 so Haley with the advantage right now going into run number two what are you she’s got to be stoked yeah she has to be absolutely stoked that’s snow I
Mean it’s it’s incredible in there it looks so fun and anybody who wants to know how much protection you get from your goggles just look at that goggle T right there Haley uh you could hear the little quote when she came down my feet are too close together so maybe she’s going to
Go back up widen her stance up a little bit for run number two just for a little bit added stability in her riding well it worked for her so far I I’m not sure if I would mix it up yeah it works for Shawn White you know what I’m saying
Spread him out all right heading back up to the top here you just get a good eagleee view of this course man that’s pretty Rebel Stoke has got some of the most incredible mountains to ride on the planet and I can’t believe you know this is just like where natural selection is you
Know it’s just like in this most beautiful place so pristine and uh let’s uh let’s do a little sendy shout out right here so Travis Rice has created this thing where you can buy sell rent gear it’s an app it’s called sendy so if you’re looking to offload some gear maybe you’re
Somewhere you want to rent some gear but you don’t want to go to the rental shop go on the sendy app and you can just pick through with everything you can scan the code at the bottom of your screen use your phone scan that little
QR code and it’ll take you over to the sendy website where you can buy sell and rent gear and the sendy top female and male get $1,000 cash to spend on the sendy app there you go thank Leanne for that uh updated information appreciate that all right so Pat from what you’ve seen
So far in this with this next matchup that we have Maran herie against Robin Ben Jin and who do you think has the advantage here coming in well as you recall Marin herity comes from the Free Ride World Tour which is a oneandone Run Tour where you have to ride some of the
Gnarliest faces in the world a lot of exposure Robin comes from more of a freestyle background and as Riders are taking the west side with all the ramps you’re going to see a lot more jumps and tricks and that’s Robin’s Forte and the reason being that these Riders are
Taking this west side is because the East Side had a a lot of activity on it this morning that maybe has some of the Riders spooked yeah the activity this morning was actually caused by the ski patrol doing safety mitigation ski cutting nice backside 180 riding switch
Oh boy it’s got to be difficult riding and these you know the lighting out here too can be very difficult to navigate just the flat light some of these obstacles come up really fast but here she’s back on her line staying up on her feet I think she’s heading to the
Our Zone well that’s her comfort zone right like she comes from like you said Pat the Free Ride World Tour some of the steeper more aggressive terrain probably favors her riding style definitely going into this Gully here you could see the exposure from that angle right there and
You pretty much are forced into riding it out Marion looking yeah it’s pretty scary getting onto the top there you can’t see anything but throws herself into that shoot coming down here with a lot of speed bottom section of the course couple little bobles up
Top but still I think you know in my opinion she should get more into that aggressive natural terrain that’s in there I think really play to her strengths well looking at the majority of the field so far both with the men that could in The Credo that could help
With creativity absolutely it can at least you know it can differentiate your riding from the rest of the pack if no one’s really looking to get over in there and you want to go and wrestle with some of that Terrain give you that big score and if Marion
Can just clean up the top portion and successfully ride a bit of the course switch I mean that’s pretty difficult as well that’ll get some traction with the judges I think she tried to set it up at that backside 180 but it’s so difficult to ride powder effortlessly switch STS
It’s really tough oh yeah especially if you have a tapered board and you’re set back all right she’s looking for this little line in here you can just see like Pat said there’s a a lot of exposure in there and a lot of these drops are significantly bigger than they
Look to the rider so Marion Works her way through that shoot so great navigation right there towards the bottom of the course way to go Marion that was awes all right let’s throw it down a t- bird who’s with Marion we are here with Marian her I
Have not heard the crowd that loud all day Maran that was right in front of us after absolutely incredible thank you so much but the beginning of my run sucks a bit so I have to to be aware for the next one were were you fully aware of
The exposure that you were on top of that was unbelievable I was aware yeah I was looking at this place with Victor DAV my friend it’s been a while uh yeah yeah taking my place it’s almost like you grew up riding I don’t know Shaman France apparently yes I like being mon
This is my maybe mainly skill not first time but I’m working on it way to come out first run and drop the hammer that was great thank you so much all right heading back up to the top yeah exactly what we were saying you know Marian’s more comfortable in that
Exposed open type of face so we’re going to head back up Robin vanin about to drop her husband Austin sweeten in the round previous so maybe harnessing some of the Stoke from hubby going into run number two they’re like a dynamic duo oh girl can see Robin trying to get into
A little bit of the Nar and then also pulling into all the freestyle she has too so yeah as you said she comes from her freestyle background Robin with that good looking arter kit on oh she is amped she goes I mean how can you not be amp when Austin’s your
Husband you’re probably just telling him to calm down all the time well and these are such varied Styles too that both Riders can just do what they do and leave it up to the judges so coming up a little short on a 360 on that top feature Robin taking a kind of similar
Upp a line to Maran I got to tell you nothing really indicates how good the conditions are like the fact that these Riders are effortlessly riding across previous tracks yeah I me it is she’s got pretty good flow right now yeah I think she’s getting cutting
Over and oh maybe not it’s looking to line something up up here yeah you can kind of see where this exposure starts here towards the bottom Robin lining up this shoot going off the nose nice all right so nice run for Robin a little bit of a bobble up
Top guess this little drop towards the bottom so guys what do you think as far as Advantage goes from that round I think Robin has the advantage she had more flow and uh yeah I think she hit a more features at the top so Robin vanin run number one done for
Her good job good job was good but I was hear him talking about how good the snow is I think Robin just came up a little bit short didn’t quite get that edge dug in to initiate the 360 went big though but this down at the bottom is
Where she’s really going to stack the points and then finding her way over to that little feature that’s in the middle kind of a little bonus guess a little olly I’m sure she wants to throw in a backy somewhere too I think Robin vanin with the
Advantage 53.2 to a 48 moving into the second run well I think it’s safe to say both of them have something that they left in the tank they want to go up clean up their lines clean up the runs a bit I’m really curious as we get deeper and
Deeper into the day how many riders came in with a set plan and have to adjust because here we are with 18 runs under our belt 20 runs almost under our belt no one’s really dropped into the other Zone at all nobody’s gone into the east side at
All all right so this next match up Elena height up against Jamie Anderson this one is going to be insane Pat let’s talk about Elena’s run from last year a little bit let’s take a look back cuz she got it done in huge fashion here at natural selection in
Reb well here we go she’s going into a much more featur Laden slope right here and as you’ll see this doesn’t have the ramps or the wide open Landings like we’re seeing today much more technical in last year much more oh yeah it was fully blind this year’s course has a lot
More line of sight features yeah it still blows me away that this we’re looking at a halfpipe a halfpipe Chomper predominantly for I would say the the first half of her career yep halfpipe Olympia I think halfpipe translates great into powder with the board control mhm all right so Elena height is going
To be dropping first in this epic matchup Jamie Anderson the queen of slope style will be up next well this is one of those matchups that could be a finals duel on day two yeah but unfortunately Jamie put herself into that yeah yeah she’s Jamie’s very strategic with her riding
But Elena do not write her off she is definitely one to watch she’s very comfortable with uncomfortable situations on slope and putting herself over big drops and pillow lines here we go Elena height dropping in for her first run in this quarterfinal will you mentioned it when
We were in Rebel Stoke last year in Boulder Park you had to travel a couple hundred yards till you saw the first thing you were yeah it’s straight into the business now nice Elena Elena back three so stacking some freestyle up top so she’s probably going to work her
Way over into that more exposed zone or maybe not maybe she’s going to she’s going to hunt and PE over to the right oh there we go oh yeah this is this is her wheelhouse right here go Elena getting into a little bit of the Nar hell yeah
That’s not a little bit of Nar that’s full Nar yeah this is exciting and there’s no easy way out nice oh Elena coming up flat yeah oh and a bonus popper but for sure that was a sick run great opener for she got a spin up top couple pops
Off those upper features and then put herself right into the Steeps I think this run think Elena right now is probably thinking about places that she can improve on run number two let’s take a look at at the recap nice tail grab carrying a lot of
Speed as well that snow looks so good in there well this this rivalry is classic these two have been competing together for 20 years both out of Southshore Tahoe they’re both out of Southshore Tahoe wow just ended up flat in the middle of that shoot right there and it
Was so nice to see the camaraderie Jamie gave Elena a big hug at the top like we’re all friends up there that’s what’s so special about snowboarding yeah it’s so cool let’s throw it on a t bir to get some words fun actually in there surprisingly fun we’re here with
Elena height fresh off one of the gnarliest lines of the day to me as an analyst that line just showed how familiar and comfortable you are in in this type of environment navigating that terrain thanks T um you know to be totally honest I was
Like heart set on this side and when it slid this morning I went full Rogue so here I am and ultimately how did you land on that line was that one of your backup uh lines if this didn’t work out on the East face you know um I had kind
Of scoped it but I wasn’t really that sold on it but yeah it was a bad back up line and when I saw Sage going there I almost changed my plan but I just kind of mixed it up a little bit so it’d be a little different and I’m pretty hyped
Had the landing next time how’s the snow holding up in there the snow is good it’s definitely a little bouncy you can feel the heat but it’s so fun the menu is so well done Elena nice job thanks t- bird and uh when the Riders are saying
They scoped it they’re using that Onyx app that’s really the only way that you can get real eyes on what’s going on out here other than like a low res print out so the Riders are really relying on that Onyx app to know where they are on this
Course it’s so valuable for them as we move right back into Jamie Anderson if you saw the duels with her it looks like she is on a different level right now with effortless effortless riding bowing out last year because she just had a baby but she is back mama is in control
I am so excited to see her in this duel yeah and she had one of the great Duss this year uh making her way here to Revel Stoke after surpassing Emma Crosby who also wrote incredible there’s that freestyle tendency we’re used to from Jamie look look how calm she is with her
Riding style it’s just she’s very very comfortable on a snowboard so smooth in between the features she’s not fighting where she’s going and her lifestyle is very much reflective of that she opens up a new line in here yeah I was curious where she was going when she dipped into the Glades
Found one of those Dustin Craven Misty ramps totally fresh line nice Jamie judges want to see that because that means that you are hunting and pecking around this course to find unique features to hit So Jamie Anderson nice and smooth kind of had a little bit
Of a Slowdown on the backside 360 up top I think she was pretty nervous coming back into competition after spending so much time away and this will probably shake those nerves but if there’s one thing that fans of Jamie Anderson can count on she does not like
To be put in a corner and she performs really really well when the pressure’s on and maybe the scores are down I think Elena might have her on this one that’s a little bit faster than I thought it was going to be in there like on the next takeoff yeah totally it’s
Short talk a little bit about Whiting yourself out on the course as well and how basically not having any Vision after you make a turn in here would play into things well it certainly does particularly when you’re dealing with the trees uh also I mean you could be in the
White room and hit another feature and not even know we saw a couple of those already today and the only way to combat that is to just go faster go faster than your spray don’t check because when you check you’ll see the Riders are spraying snow where the snow is still
Good yeah but right here where Jamie kind of opened up this new section scoping it out her upper section super smooth maybe not as much exposure that Elena had in her run but still super smooth up top she actually kind of went down that little oy off the
Side of that second little pillow it wasn’t the 360 360 was huge and perfect you got into your stuff yeah it was sick little flatten like the CRS of it huh I had it you can see better than you can see on the uh yeah on the Drone thing
Can I was stoked to go through the thing like I wanted to with the trees on side I was like oh this is it I didn’t think I’d get it I got it I got it all right Elena height gets the lead right now let’s throw down to T Bird who’s going
To get some words from Jamie after that first round coming for you next one all right we are here with Jamie Anderson Jamie I overheard you saying it’s running a little faster than you kind of thought it would yeah yeah for sure it was just like you can definitely slow down a bit
They all kind of drop in together easy to kind of get a little ahead of yourself and you qualified through duels you DED Emma Crosby and crested but how does it feel to pass that qualification process and be here in reavel Stoke in Montana Bow it feels great yeah I was uh
Pretty nervous at the Duss but felt good to get through and yeah I’m stoked to be here with the cre is it safe to say we can expect Misty National selection tour 2052 maybe imagine that 2050 littlest yeah I would love that nice job Jamie thank you for your
Time great words T Bird I mean Jamie Anderson one of the best of all time will look for her on her second run Mary Rand up against Hana Beaman up next two riders coming from places you wouldn’t necessarily associate with big mountain riding Mary Rand will be up first coming out of Rhode
Island and Mary’s are a rookie to the Natural Selection whereas the other four ladies who’ve gone already are all veterans this is our first glimpse of Mary Rand in an actual natural selection Tour event Mary reloc from the East Coast out to Washington so she’s been
Cutting her teeth at Baker Baker a great training ground for any natural selection tour she Chucks a huge back flip that’s there’s that white out condition right there where she Whited herself out on the landing she Whited herself out and almost went off a huge ramp all the Riders are saying the
Chorus is riding pretty fast so I think those next features come up quite quick yeah and it’s also twice as big as you think they are as soon as you leave the LI it really separates you know the riders that will end up with those big
Scores if you’re not scared to go fast in here it’s it’s probably really hard to fight the speed checks on this course I really stoked Mary Winford the big backflip because we saw one of those at Red Mountain in her duels against Spencer O’Brien and that’s what brought
Her here to the main event so Mary ran yeah Mary big back flip up top got to be stoked with that run into the bottom nice showing from Mary ran out of Rhode Islands lot of poise a lot of skill she’s got to be proud of her first run
Here at the natural selection yeah you know you’d never think that yagu Valley would be a training ground for uh Rebel St absolutely like that backflip there’s nothing but a flat landing at yagu Valley if you go that big she went huge got the grab on it as well for a split
Second but then tries to throw the brakes on and just goes full snow blind and you can see right there she was actually heading towards that giant step down right After but she got her line back on track nice so what do you think line what do you think be’s going to bring to this after seeing Mary just Chuck that I she’s going to feel the pressure to throw a backy as well and just I think
Bean strength is just keeping the flow she’s always been like one of the flowi Riders and I’ve always loved that about her all right well let’s go down to t- bird who’s got some words from Mary one that from Nan It Rhode Island to Rebel Stoke British Columbia Mary how
Does it feel to finally drop into an n course it feels great you know feels better knowing there’s some fellow East Coasters around and yeah I’m stuck the snow is insane the course is incredible it’s so cool that these guys put so much energy into it and yeah you can feel the
Energy from a Rider’s perspective at what point up on the course could you start hearing the crowd cuz they’re going nuts down here oh really I couldn’t hear anything I was fully in the zone Flow State yeah blacked out nice job Mary well done thanks Ste bird very underrated the
Blackout technique on the course like a lot of riders uh embracing that all right let’s throw up to Stan who’s got some Intel on where Beaman is going to drop for her run Stan yeah Todd we got some exciting news I happen to notice there was no sign of
Hana Beaman up here then cut word Hana Beaman is going to open up that East side this is the first time we’re going to see it all day and me as an East coaster nothing I love more than an East vers West battle so this is going to be
Our first East vers West course I’m excited to see what happens I think all of a sudden the judges add a new element but no better person than Hana Bean an absolute veteran to tee this side off thanks Dan okay this is big news Hana Beeman will be opening up a completely
Different side of this course before she drops let’s get an idea of the gear that she has on to make sure her day goes the way she wants it to I have been on ride snowboard team for about 15 years now which is a long time I feel super privileged to be on
The team we have an amazing team right now and it’s really special that they stepped up and became one of the sponsors for NSD are supporting this because this is such a big event for our type of snowboarding I just have a great quiver of all different kinds of boards that
Help me prepare for any kind of condition so that really helps for stuff like natural selection just having whatever options I may need for whatever conditions present themselves so ride being the official snowboard partner of natural selection now Pat we had kind of talked a little bit and Leanne you actually spoke to
Hana by a text this morning she’s actually riding the RO moderator that we have here behind us so maybe a little bit stiffer of a board something that kind of plays to more of steeper terrain as she goes over here and unlocks this completely new section of
Course yeah we’ve been seeing the riters shop in through the temple here we see the portal and the thing about Hana that I love is that she’s always just you know sticking to her guns and riding what she wants to ride so it’s nice to see her
Just open up a whole new area area and this plays Into The Credo as well what the judges are looking for because you’re taking chances and riding something uh that’s virtually blind there’s no tracks in there at all all she’s going by right now is what she’s
Learned from images of this no Rider has been down any part of this course so that adds for the C and the r the creativity and the risk I think there’s quite a bit of risk on this side because it looks to be a bit Steep and it had already slid what
She’s riding hasn’t slid so I would be quite nervous about it oh there we go dare you’re seeing the movement of snow this that was so sick wow showing her true strength right there who there’s that runnel where that Avalanche debris is but that was amazing and for people who haven’t
Ridden through a runn or debris field it’s pretty much like death cookies it’s all set up like ice right that was an awesome run Hana also it’s worth noting Hana broke her arm earlier this year yeah when we were in Japan she broke it like the day
Before I got there it didn’t really seem to slow her down though no and this is her first time back competing since having a knee injury two seasons ago two totally different runs I’m wondering what the judges if they’re going to reward the freestyle aspect or
The more all Mountain Run that was so sick yeah so Beaman I mean obviously playing to gosh that’s first stranks in back country in the steeper terrain let’s take a look at this again I mean this is all foreign you know she’s dropping into stuff this morning
That had a lot of movement on it they were actually throwing bombs in here because a decent sized slide was set off earlier with the Avalanche mitigation efforts of the Rebel Stoke ski patrol so she had to be a little bit nervous there it is right there there
You see some SL sluffing off as Hana just opens it up into this shoot right here and then just hits that runn down the bottom and gets blown out but she made that it’s just like running into just like a dirt road in the middle of your
Run yeah and that that whole side of the course wasn’t written for a reason and for her to step to it I mean none of the men’s field stepped to it yet it’s just incredible any predictions here well she might get the cendy award perhaps I mean she def maybe Mary
With the backflip that back flip was awesome I’ll I’ll argue that I think Hana going over in there and pioneering that maybe would be a little bit better but right now Mary Rand has the advantage 63.7 to the 50.2 let’s go down to t- bird who’s with Bean out
Loud yeah I’m up here with Hana Beaman Beaman we need some Intel on the Zone there was some activity in there earlier we can see a little bit of debris but how is it riding up on the higher stuff uh the the part that slid the bed surface definitely firm but it’s like
Easy to cruise on and then um there’s a couple little pieces that were breaking away um but all the snow’s good in there just that run out is quite firm from the from the Avy debris you had said uh when you came down that that Cliff drop was
Just calling your name yeah I mean it looks so beautiful look at it I just wanted to ride it so I had to sacrifice the the freestyle portion of the top but I just really wanted to ride that so I’m glad I did it thanks for opening up a new Zone welcome
Guys yeah exactly that’s what we need in this we need people to to to take those risks and go in there hon beam and longtime ride snowboards uh athlete and a big shout out to ride snowboards for being the official snowboard sponsor of the Yeti natural selection
Tour all right the situ ation as we look at it now Haley langin leads over Zoe sski Sate Robin van Jin has the advantage Elena height the advantage in the matchup between Jamie Anderson and Mary Rand right now by virtue of that big old backflip has the advantage over Hana
Beaman well nobody’s got a comfortable Advantage at this point and I think they all left something on the slope that they’re going to go back and improve upon all right well before we get into more of the action here we’re going to throw to a piece on Backcountry access I
Mean look Hana was in there in the guts of the new opened up terrain here it’s moving around you do not want to go into the back country without the proper equipment and I’ve been so stoked to be fortunate enough to get some packages from BCA and here you guys can see what
They’re all about probably my favorite place just now word in the world is the BC back country and it’s got everything coastal ranges big glaciated benches that kind of connect range to range and then as you get worn to the interior you have these steep Jagged Mountains with Boulders and pillow Fields everywhere
And that is Rebel Stoke whenever you’re going out into the back country we have a list of things that can hurt you and those include first and foremost Avalanches a close second would be tree well hazards the difference between the back country and a traditional ski resort is that when you’re at a resort
The ski patrol has done a great job of marking all the issues that can come up and where to go and how not to get lost for anyone that wants to get into the back country the first thing I would say is just take an as1 which is an
Entry-level Avalanche course that’ll get you the basics it’ll teach you how to use your year it’ll teach you how to rescue someone from an avalanche it’ll teach you how to R terrain safely As you move through the mountains the more you know the more places you can go I’d say
The first most important thing you should do before you go into the back country inspect everyone’s gear everyone’s transceiver should be on inspect the probes inspect the shovels your gear needs to be dialed it’s really important when you go out with the crew that everyone there is Keen to learn you
Might be the most experienced person on the crew but at least that way you know if if you’re the one in an incident you can rely on those other people to do the right thing and to get you out of there safely it might seem like a long road
But it’s worth it to some people it’s everything remember that we’re all True to this we’re all obsessed with this because it’s awesome take the necessary courses Avalanche courses first aid courses you need but I would highly recommend experiencing the back country if you haven’t all right and what you see here
Is the BCA float pack you know when you’re in the back country the backpack isn’t for snacks Pat yes it is and and snacks but you can see here the BCA pack you got your your probe you got your radio inside this is a airbag that uh
Comes out to help you in a situation where you might being dragged down a hill you’ve been out there in the back country Leanne you know the situations you’ve been in some really hairy things so how important is it to to be prepared with like this uh safety is the number
One it never takes a vacation and so uh it’s super important I think there’s over the last few years of just taking all the courses has helped quite a bit yeah absolutely and Pat you know the NST crew is all outfitted in this stuff well it’s like there’s so many unknowns when
You go into the back country that to cut any corners and multiply the risk if it’s as simple as having the right gear and knowing how to use it it can make all the difference and it literally is life and death that’s right and the back
Country can also be uh right next to the halfpipe apparently that’s I’ve just I learned that this morning all right well we’re going to go to break and when we come back the second round of the women begins Stick Around Much More Action to come from the yeti natural selection Tour When the perfect power exists it’ll be Fusion a NeverEnding River of energy to tap into at any moment it will be carbon free radioactive free and power everything on Earth and when that perfect power exists we’ll deliver it with the flip of a Switch here the snow is deep the Friendship deeper the work the thought and the desire to innovate that went into our new 2025 models Deepest And we are back to the edti natural selection tour here in Rebel Stoke BC how’s it going everybody I’m Todd Richard joined by Pat Bridges and Leanne Pelosi and we are bringing you the women’s quarterfinals here and uh so far we’ve seen some pretty crazy action H
Bean just opened up a whole new section of this course and uh if you’re wondering why I’ve got this ride snowboards moderator right here well I’m going to tell you and this is the interactive part of the Yeti natural selection tour ride being one of the or actually the premier snowboard sponsor
Of this event that little QR code that’s at the bottom of your screen you can scan that and you can win a board just like this one the moderator like Hana Bean is riding and you get boards boots and bindings of your choice pretty cool huh Pat that’s incredible you got a lot
Of free snowboards you don’t have an opinion in this if I was allowed to have a phone here I’d be scanning the QR code right now I’m sorry uh you’re not eligible I’m sorry all right and uh if you’ve been noticing all of the staff tber
Uh up top we got Stan the entire NST crew they’re all wearing Arc tyx gear Arc Ty one of the best Elemental Gear companies on the planet here’s a little bit of what they’ve got going on for their new movie Darkhorse let’s take a look at the
Teaser I showed up in the pemon valley in 1998 the backyard was was huge in the 2000s there was so many film Cru out here and it was a real Rat Race the snowboarding was growing so fast it was about getting shots you know getting
The Ender in the DVD or getting the over money that was being thrown at Snowboard was insane I only really wanted the free ride so I kind of didn’t really care what everybody else was doing I think those guys had their own little scene they were doing it because they loved
Doing it there was a passion to it from the beginning and even still now it was about like like living locally and kind of having a bunch of things in grasp over time you gain a familiarity with these spaces and I think that’s what it takes to have a life in the Mountains Darkhorse the new movie out from arct tyx and Leanne you’ve seen it it’s pretty sick it’s really sick joax is a local Legend and yeah he rips very very cool all right so we’re going to get back into these matchups right now and Pat we were just talking uh on the
Break about who’s leading right now with the score to potentially go home with the snowmobile at the end of this thing well right now Haley langland has the first highest score of the first run uh by a big margin against Zoey but we know that can that can change uh but right
Now Haley has a considerable lead almost 10 points higher than the second ey score actually a little more than 10 points higher so she’s in the running right now if we had to give the sled out right now Haley wouldd be taken it home all right well we’re going to find out
More about that after we get done with these runs here because it’s all about going out of here with the highest score of the day to go home with that Ski Doo all right let’s plug the industry Alliance right now of course the natural selection tour can’t take place without
The support and of the brands that come in to actually you know it costs a lot of money to run this thing to be straight up if you’re wondering why we’re doing all these ads to pay the bills here between rid snowboards Burton and all these other brands that come together
Arters uh sko all these Brands come together they listen to what the rider’s Visions are Travis Rice say this is his baby he comes in there and he pitches and all of these brands have put their faith in what natural selection is and of course you guys are all tuned in you
All tuned in last year this is the greatest snowboard event that you can watch that is a competition on the planet so big shout out to the industry Alliance let’s hear more about that right now the natural selection industry Alliance was created to provide a platform for all the endemic brands in
Snowboarding to get involved participate celebrate with us these endemic brands that are part of the industry ions are truly the lifeblood of snowboarding these are all brands who already support the Riders who are on natural selection tour and so we want to create this marketing platform to provide value to these Brands and
Meaningfully engage them within our events at the end of the day the people and the brands that make up the industry Alliance truly represent snowboarding community so we appreciate them and appreciate you for supporting all these amazing brands who are bringing events like this to life big shout out to the industry
Alliance couldn’t be doing this thing without you okay straight back up to the top here for the second runs of the women’s quarterfinal Zoe Sadowski Senate will drop first right now Haley langland has the advantage over her and also the highest score of the day for the women
Yeah I I I think one it’s uh not a comfortable place to be in to be behind for Zoe but surprisingly she’s got the most room to improve of any of the eight ladies here and also you know I would think that Zoe would take that first run
As just getting Intel on the course wouldn’t you Le I think so I think she knows what she has to do and she’s fully capable of coming out on top will she take a similar SAR line as she did on run number one nope she’s going to go a little bit further
Down the ridge Line This is what I thought she was going to play to on run number one there’s that big kicker coming up kind of a backside hip for her big backside 360 and just Bush wax right there Deep Forest in the way shoot but there we’re seeing it when you
Start traveling down the face of the slope in a blink of an eye you can miss three or four features yeah it’s it’s easy to get lost I mean there’s so much stuff out here that provides airtime opportunity but you can totally get overwhelmed by it and just fly past all
The nice oh my gosh oh wow Zoe very aggressive line towards the bottom with so much confidence nice Zoe gold posting a couple trees in that there were already tracks in The Landings like that was incredibly impressive it’s a little nerve-wracking when the Riders disappear behind a Grove of trees and their line
Looks like it takes you straight into the middle of the thicket oh yeah a lot of this is blind it doesn’t look like it when we’re watching this on TV but man from their perspective it’s it’s very hard to navigate yeah a lot of these Riders have
A plan A A Plan B but as we get into the later runs some of these Riders are going to be plan C and D or no plan might be the best plan straight zero plan oh there’s no run there okay yeah Mary ran the blackout tick that was a that
Was way slick slick the bottom it really ripped over that side yeah look so Zoe let’s take a look at up top there’s that big back three just deforester environmentalists are so angry right now just replace that you know you got to plant one you take one out you plant one
That’s how it goes lean but this is where she got it done here at the bottom Pat she was carrying so much speed well and like you said when you white out and with the snow moving and stuff you get into situations where you have no option but to point
Out yeah so Zoe really making up for landing on top of the tree on the upper portion of her run that lower half no breaks all gas through the bottom section of the course that was incredible I think Travis gave her a little bit of props at the bottom there Ben you see
Right there to the left of her unfortunately eliminated already from this competition that last part of her Run’s got to be another sendy Contender yeah absolutely 100% how many uh Pub beers do you think uh Ferg’s crushed so far uh solid amount I’m going to go with
Solid Bend amount of of uh Pub beer all right Haley langin will be up next she said that her stance with a little too narrow on run number one maybe she widened it up maybe we can get some Intel off of uh t- bird at the
Bottom of her run but I saw it said her stance was regular I wonder if she’s uh queuing up a song or if she’s actually looking at the course on the Onyx app could just be going through texts well you might be able to Peekaboo there is a monitor at
The top of the course in the temple where Haley knows exactly what zoee just did so you got to wonder if she’s going to adjust I have a feeling she’s going to lace the top section again and then make a little bit of adjustment down into that gnarlier zone all right Haley
Langin on course and I got to say Haley langland has one of my favorite styles in snowboarding right now because she’s she’s so comfortable and she’s compact she’s got a great style coming in switch half cab off that Yeti feature she’s so sty back three gets bucked a little bit
Off of a little mushroom Landing but taking some freestyle risk up top yeah well that is right now particularly since Zoe didn’t do as many tricks in her line it’s opening the window for Zoe to take advantage of that you mean Haley Haley yes this is where the course starts to get
Steep yeah and it’s hard to navigate uh amongst all those tracks you really got to shut your speed down a bit Haley sick big front side air off of that stack Haley is on one today that was amazing yeah that was a really good line super good read of the terrain at the
Bottom that might have just been a quite a big upset yeah I think this might be might be an upset right here Zoe had a strong B bottom portion of her run but Haley up top with the half cab good size riding switch through the pile and then
That big front side AA off that stack at the bottom for two for two freestyle Riders I think it was pretty impressive that got pretty aggressive in that bottom portion of absolutely back three snip I thought you were going to ride out for sure they also both mixed up their lines
From run to run Hal saying she’s so tired I mean half of I mean half it’s got to be nerves right like just nerves taking it out of you oh yeah it’s got to be exhausting Haley what a great read on the upper section of this course kicking that tail
Out and then coming down here towards the bottom and really lining up the big feature here it is comes in slow gets that board pointed you can really see how big some of these features are that you just want to creep over him if she took full speed off that
She would have landed in the parking lot well and it’s a testament to the writing that both of these ladies they’re used to groom Landings and none of these Landings are groomed any yeah you too all right it’s going to be interesting to see Haley langland
61.5 so she will be moving on to the finals we have our first woman finalist she’ll be moving on to the cirk ters portion of natural selection let’s head down to t-d who’s going to be with Haley Haley langland congratulations thank you what a run how does it feel to officially advance to
Day two at Natural Selection tour oh man I feel like I’ve had the uphill battle the entire time I’ve been on tour um it’s been so fun to battle against Zoe and I mean what a competitor and and yeah I’m just excited that I maybe won’t be drinking tonight so yeah I’m excited
To ride some more well I did hear you say too you know talking about how long these days are and what the fatigue and how it can set in you did say I’m so tired right now yeah um I think not even physically but just mentally it’s kind
Of been a lot like coming here and the Scout day was kind of Cloudy and um you know waking up to news that the East space had slid a little bit I think you know it’s just a lot going on and I’m just am so stoked we have the group
That’s here and I mean the face has been riding so well was so fun to watch the guys this morning and we still have another all the girls and the next round of men you wrote incredible it’s an honor congratulations thank you big UPS to Haley for moving on to the finals
That’s a big weight off your back for sure and a potential sco yes and a potential sco yes yes yes that’s the that’s not forget about that okay we’re going to move up Mary and her again the big mountain Rider maybe she’ll play to her skills a
Little bit more now that she knows that terrain that’s in more of the center of this course well and after seeing those two runs it looks like that 75 from Haley’s first run is going to be really hard to beat for the rest of these ladies cuz they both stepped up their
Run nice 360 perfect and she’s just trying to get her way over to that Center the guts of this portion of the course she’s got some good flow right now and she’s maintaining she’s got like four or five erors already under her belt she’s into Uncharted Territory at
This point there’s not a lot of tracks in there in fact I don’t think there’s any tracks in where she’s going and there’s some big exposure under her here Mary is just not afraid I love this she’s like a fly on the wall right now
And you just don’t want to go from fly on the wall to bug on a windshield that’s that’s really where it gets crazy navigating this Slough management there coming down through the guts of the course probably one of the more aggressive lines that we’ve seen taken nice Maran Maran a couple little freestyle
Tricks up top and then straight through the middle over some very very Steep and exposed to rain well I’m not a judge I got to imagine that that gives her the advantage and leaves it up to Robin better that well you have you have to play your strengths out here you can’t
Beat somebody else at their own game if you’re a big mountain Rider you’ve got to kind of stay in your lane because that’s where your strengths are and this course offers plenty for everyone to play with let’s take a look at this lean Tu us through the upper portion as she set
Up well she does a nice backside 360 and just kind of keeps her flow the whole way down for the next couple pillows Indie grab and then she as she navigates down towards this lower section it’s I mean it’s really intimidating that looks a hairball from here you know like with
The drones ey view you just don’t want to die yeah [Laughter] obviously so Marion gets that run under her belt went way better than run number One so she threw down the gauntlet now Robin’s got a better that run I’d imagine safe to say that’s better than Robins 53 from the first front all right well we’re going to throw it up to stand and find out if the Stoke Shack becomes a choke Shack let’s
See if Robin can pull it off on this second run I think the benefit of Robin’s riding is that she’s got a couple yeah Todd here I am you know in the temple of Revel Stoke it’s the closest thing we’ve got to a a house here you know everyone’s huddled
Around the TV we’re all playing judge we’re trying to guess what’s going to happen people are getting excited when there’s a make we go crazy it’s really a great place to be you guys do look cozy in the studio I will say but I wouldn’t trade this position for
Anything thanks danan we’ll get back to you at around 4:00 when you’re frozen solid cuz it’s nice and warm in here see look how look how cozy we look we’re all wearing beanies for some weird reason in Santa Monica insane well I think right now we need to kind of talk
About what the strategy that Robin vanin needs to take to take down Marian’s last score Leanne what do you think because you know her very very well yeah I think Robin’s really strong in the freestyle category and then also big mountains so if she can mix the two of those together
She’s golden all right and as we see here she won it in uh 2021 in Valhalla and Alaska so she knows how to get this done and it’s it’s really interesting you know the payoff to what I was talking about the mental fatigue of this
As we heard Haley talk about it it’s got a away because now we’re we’re way into the day here and these Riders have have had ups and downs it’s been Sunny it gets cloudy there’s a lot going on for them to process well that’s more Riders take
Down the West face the East face might not seem as consequential with the debris that’s left from the early slides yeah it’ll be interesting to see if anab Bean takes that as we see a huge stomped backflip from Robin benjin Robin kind of lost her
There in the trees a little bit oh she’s got to be feeling pretty confident now and that you know hopefully will translate to the rest of this run she does a lot of positive selft talk while she’s riding and during the Run oh yeah she is amping her execution in The Credo is
Great for the top portion of the Run yeah there’s not she’s not really doing as much you know aggressive speed checking it’s more just like line scoping as Robin great read on that Terrain I think this is going to be an easy take for her big old smooth backflip great
Read of the lower terrain agreed I think she knew what she needed to do and just she was trying so hard to just stay on her feet and she nailed it big trck up top similar to Maran big improvement over run one she’s got to be
Stoked I I don’t envy the judges now but Robin did what she had to do it’s just it’s nice when you when you watch Riders go top to bottom and pull it smooth that was such a smooth back flip and we saw a couple other riders
Coming in hot to that secondary ramp and unlike Mary Rand and a few others Robin didn’t peel off right and she actually there wasn’t like any aggressive speed checks in there she kept her momentum up and I think that’s half of it too is like the overall
Impression the judges don’t want to see you stopping on stop on top of stuff I’m so impressed with the girls riding right now I think it’s it’s a shame that half of them get cut for the the final but the way the cookie crumbles that is the way the cookie
Crumbles it’s Thunderdome two enter one leaves we said W Marion Harry gets the advantage on heat number two wow that is is that a little bit of an upset here I would say that was pretty surprising but the judges really rewarded that Nar I guess so okay so
Yeah awesome I thought Robin had that one for sure but the judges they are looking at different things here me too like at the top I like oh my God I pretty much yeah nice congrats all right Mary and hery moving on to day two it is official she will be in the
Finals amazing riding by the two of them though that was awesome to watch I’m a little shocked by that because Zoe and Hana didn’t get scored very high when they went really Technical and gnarling yeah it’s it’s very interesting now if you guys are wondering especially
On this next run uh what these vests are those are the decine vests that all the Riders wear it has their name on their back and uh Elena and Jamie Anderson both run them unzipped I think it’s more of a swag thing but uh you know they
Want to have more Mobility so up next this is the matchup we’ve been talking about here Elena height Jamie Anderson Elena right now with the advantage into this second matchup [Applause] Elena coming from halfpipe background transitioned into Backcountry riding she’s been all over the world in terrain
That’s over 50° so it’s it’s pretty crazy to watch her go from riding a pipe to riding just unbelievably steep terrain how does the snow not melt when it’s 50° Pat semantics they use uh it’s all CG these days Pat Elena and Jamie had I think one of the
Best conditions possibly that you could possibly have in Alaska two seasons ago and they crushed it so Elena with a little backside 360 up top now she gets into the meat and potatoes of this run check this out she’s on top of a very steep shoot oh gosh hell
Yeah little bit sow s now on the wall getting into it this is awesome Elena gets tomahawked here in the bottom half of that shoot so she was in the lead this may open the door for Jamie Anderson right now if Jamie can lay a smooth run down
The judges are going to have their work cut out for him well you can never really shut the door on Jamie yeah she loves being in this position so Elena height having a a little bit of problem sticking that run out on that lower shoot definitely the some of the most
Aggressive riding for more Nar yeah I think she she knows what could potentially happen when Jamie comes down so she really wanted to take that risk and hopefully you know get rewarded for it but just got thrown into an aggressive Tomahawk down through the center of that shoot we got to respect
That s that was you got to respect a good Tommy what seen starting with Zoe do you think some of those Landings on the west side are starting to get unfavorable that people are forced to avoid them and start doing the Tactical gullies that’s a really good point Pat
Because we have a we have a whole bunch of men yet to come down this course and it seems like the freestylers are really favoring that side of the course and I do recall I think Austin was saying that it was getting a little warm up there so
Those tracks have got to be setting in to be quite hard it still looks pretty floofy down here though where Alena chose her line you see her there scoping she can’t see anything all of this is blind rollover as she heads into the shoot and
She knows she only has one choice is to point it it’s always a roll of the dice hitting a pillow line I’d say chances are like 50/50 coming out oh and there we go the double Tommy hope she had her Pockets zipped up and her car keys weren’t in
There cuz ain’t no one going back up there to find her cell phone right now I tell you what all right let’s throw down a teabird oh no oh no he’s got some words with Elena I’m here with Elena height down at the bottom Elena take us through uh the
The Crux of that run there um I was really psyched about this transfer um that was definitely the Crux I actually landed but the runnels below it were way bigger than I was expecting so got a little caught up but I mean when are you going to do something like
This it’s kind of game time and how is the snow holding up on some of those steeper sustained features uh it’s definitely really steep up there um but the snow’s pretty good you can feel the warming in the air so it’s getting a little heavy how about the crowd the
Crowd’s great everyone’s here drinking beers screaming it’s awesome nice job Elena thank you for your time big shout out to Elena Hyde for basically just pioneering some women’s Back Country riding here on chorus and also you know the films that she’s been in her riding is is unbelievable all right so Jamie Anderson
Coming up next a little shout out to sko who’s been bumping these Riders back up to the top so quickly so we can keep this event running and also a SKU being given away today for the highest scoring run of the day on both the men’s and women’s side of things and Jamie
Anderson being a Ski Doo athlete she just like another one in the garage you know just to go next to all the oversized novelty checks and trophies that she has in her garage so opting for [Applause] a little more of a darker a lens to kind of highlight the darkness that’s
Happening out here as the day moves on Jamie Anderson drops into her run God the light’s got to be playing havoc on these Riders it looks a little flat but I think Jamie has got some confidence and I think she’s stoked right now she goes surfing it through here big
Backside 360 that was so sick so much style like it doesn’t really look like she’s trying but she does the hardest Stu nice stalish oh washes out on her heels Pat looks like she’s kind of trying to get into some fresher snow snow down here towards the bottom yeah
It does seem like she’s way finding a little bit looks like it’s working out powered through the runoff of another jump trying to set up this line towards the bottom go posting a couple trees nice one Jamie Jamie coming out with speed oh and a little bit of a sneak attack
Down at the bottom well though we’ll see how this comes out but you know like uncharacteristic fall on the stalish up top I would say it almost looked like she saw something in front of her and had to instinctively throw the brakes on it didn’t really
Look like you know it was like a fall because something weird happened in the air but Jamie that lower section of that run was really smooth she had a nice 360 up top I get excited for the replays cuz often it’ll show us what’s hidden exactly by the trees because I really
Want to get some Intel on how the bottom went so yeah she’s so sick that big backside 360 that’s great and that slash all right what happened here though this is the question on this run must a bit flat you don’t see a lot of people do Straight stalish maybe just didn’t get
Her board straight back underneath her well and the landing I think like lean said that Landing looks a little flat she got a sick tweak out of that though she did fully sideways this is pretty sick and steep nice down here towards the bottom as she gpost these two
Trees I think at this point it’s got to be pretty blinding not knowing really oh and this is where she just raged all that nose just went under and she just got flipped but I mean that’s how you have to do those run outs you don’t want to end up in a
Tree and she was just navigating there with high speed through some Deep Pal so I think that you know she’s easily has the advantage here on this matchup Elena Heights in the lead right now I know I think you probably got it I don’t know that was pretty loose yeah I’m not sure
Actually that was pretty loose that was pretty loose too well how let’s see Marion got judged oh Jamie Jamie Anderson with his 70 on run number two moves on to the final day Elena Heights great showing here look forward to her riding in the future always pleasure to watch her in the
Steeps all right let’s throw down to t- bird he’s going to get some words it’s from Jamie Anderson Jamie Anderson putting down a 70 on that run absolutely mental what’s going through your head right now H just feels good to uh get the nerves going again you know I’ve been in chill mode
For quite a while and it feels really good to be back is the competitive Drive kind of kick back in do you get that Rush from like having your back against the wall and having to put it down when it matters most you’ve done it for
Decades now oh 100% I mean my nerves have been going since the feeding event I was feeling uh Elena you know she I’ve been competing with her since I’ve been was 9 years old so this is like the longest oldtime competitor um but yeah I feel really stoked the nerves are good
The pressure was on I was like damn I need to send it I was still a little bit loose I’m definitely still strengthening my body uh post babe but getting stronger every day well congratulations Jamie it’s an honor watching you shred thanks Tom oh CH uh chill mode I’ve never heard
That uh muttered around a new mom lean do you have you care to comment on that at all it is anything but chill it’s so hectic a war zone oh my gosh so Jamie Anderson moving on to the finals day very interesting setup Mary Rand
Will be up next she came up through the duel so she’s been battling her way up into the big leagues right now you see all these Riders have that GoPro Hero 12 on their heads get a really interesting perspective on some of these tricks and some of these lines the Riders taking
Much better than my crappy GoPro GoPro footage that I put online I can guarantee you Mary ran drops in first in the hunab Beaman Mary ran matchup yeah and we have two Riders remaining to see who’s going to best you know in Haley from her first run and wi the
Snowmobile Mary that front side 180 coming in switch switch backside 360 what what did she turn no that was a back 360 she must have tossed it back around that was awesome yeah that was sick nice Mary she’s riding so strong yeah she’s been riding at Baker a lot
You can tell this is the kind of snow like Baker at like 10:00 in the morning after all the lines have been taken on some of the Steep features yeah she’s just powering through the landings that are kind of cooked that was really sick Mary that
Was amazing and also the sun is coming out yep very nice read on terrain Mary ran coming out of Rhode Island big surfer in the summertimes on here and surfing her way down this course in Montana bowl at Rebel stove oh I’m so stoked for her
That was she just did her best right there well she definitely didn’t you know she made it even harder for Anna I’d say for sure that was a really sick run so Mary ran carrying the advantage into this matchup I don’t know what happened she blacked out again full black out
Mode I’m telling you that’s like that’s when your your body is just letting uh your muscle memory take over and just hoping that everything went right there’s that 180 she must have thrown it back around yeah oh no she had she must have half C it off that top okay that’s what it
Was that was a great combo of moves great with the Indie there and a pretty steep pillow up drop right here it’s one of those things you kind of have to inch off it because you get too much speed and the runnels and the the track is just hard to manage it’s so
Chewed up in there that was awesome that was sick so Mary Rand looking like she’s putting down a big score here coming up before hana’s run so begs the question where’s Hana going to go is she going to go back into that steeper terrain think I should risk
The back again I think if she wants to be competitive she’s got to go back to the other Zone and get as freestyle as possible so hana’s got to be thinking right now I need to nail this run it needs to be aggressive it needs to be
Scary and it needs to be smooth she needs to put up a really big score right now if she’s going to take down Mary Ran’s second run through because that had basically all the ingredients for a score over 80 I would say that maybe that was one
Of the top runs along with haly yeah as far as like top to bottom linking everything together very smooth well and let’s talk about it she came up through the DU this is her first natural selection event which she’s showing so much Poise and a
Bit of strategy too MH you know and I think the point of the baker Landings is key yeah I think so too I think it really plays in Another Rider that rides Baker quite a bit Hana Beaman opened up a full new section of this course taking some big risk but now she
Knows it anab Bean being a longtime ride snowboards athlete ride snowboards the snowboard partner of natural selection tour and you know she’s already been at the top of the podium on the natural selection tour she knows what it takes and we have one riter left here of the women’s quarter
Finals this is it right now I mean h pressure I know it’s she’s the I’m like sitting here it’s all calm but it’s really not okay so here it is this is the board that Hana is riding right now this is the ride moderator and you know she’s going to be
Putting a lot of her faith into this board doing what it’s supposed to do at this point I mean it’s this is this is a big deal for her because Hana has has done so well at here before and she’s she’s really fun like behind the scenes
At night like there’s no one you want to hang out with more than Hana but she she’s got to be feeling the pressure right now don’t you think oh yeah I think the pressure is on and I think she’s going to charge yeah she has to
Charge and if you want to win that moderator board board Boot and bindings from ride scan this QR code at the bottom of your screen now let’s get into this enough Selling Stuff let’s see some snowboard action here Hana Beaman I want to see your move into that East Side
Take some big risks and stomp it I want this to be a battle for the judges to reward two great runs against each other well you know last year she was on the couch with us did a great job had a great time but the whole time you know
She wished she was up in Rebel Stoke and here she is yeah Bean here we go H be the last Rider to come down in the women’s quarterfinal going to the West taking the West Route maybe playing to her freestyle routes a little bit more remember hanab Bean came up just crushing slope
Style backside three gets a little lost in the air maybe there’s another kicker that yeah there’s a there’s a whole bunch of them lean they’ve taking Great Lengths to put a bunch of kickers in a row here thanks Craven nice little method there well the challenge there is if you
Don’t get down to 360 up top are you thinking you got to go for five or seven or something else down below or just tackle some big natural terrain it’s just hard to do some of those tricks down blow cuz it’s so steep not as much pop and also too on
The run in it’s like 3T deep here we go Hana moving into the bottom section of the course yeah she’s getting po all right so Hana getting some bonus po turns I have to put on my hat I don’t think it’s going to be enough to take down Mary Ran’s last
Run no that was so impressive Mary like the riding has been incredible it’s been nice to see her step up and kill it so Hana Beaman the last woman Rider to come down here the yeti natural selection tour for the women moving on to the next event
That goes on the finals in selker Tangers it’s all but official at this point I think Mary Rand will take this one fairly easily but Hana Beaman what a legend well lean do you think Mary’s second run is going to score higher than Haley’s first yeah that’s interesting
Um I think it’s going to be really close and I would say yeah maybe I think the combination tricks up top right yeah and I think Mary’s um line at the bottom of the Run was very strong which might put her over the edge of of beating Haley
What’s interesting is there were 15 runs in between yeah because Haley was the first Rider to drop first Rider to get scored got a 75.5 which is the highest run of the women’s field highest score and seeing Jim’s Run come in out of 70 you got to
Guess they started being a bit more conservative I think I don’t know I I have a feeling that Mary’s Run’s going to be an 80 maybe just it was pretty Perfect all right let’s see not my best day but whatever 72 to a 44.2 but Mary Rand will
Move on so by virtue of that Haley langin will be the winner and go home with a brand new sco and also the point leader heading into the finals at the yeti natural selection cirk Tangers let’s goow down to T-bird who’s with Mary ran say that one more time Mary what’s
That I was three and a half points away from the sled you did incredible though your first natural selection tour you just eliminated Hana Beaman and you’re going to the finals that’s right what’s going through your head right now just another day yeah now I’m stoked it was super fun
Um hana’s the she’s like a sister to me so it’s just fun to be out there riding together Big Air Mar ladies and gentlemen congrats Mary nice job Big Air mare in full effect Rider from Rhode Island moving on and huge shout outs to Haley langland she’s having a really
Good day right now dude I thought you were taking it honestly after that was like damn that’s nice nice little bonus prize and we’re not even we’re not done yet I mean this is just quarterfinals huge shout outs to skadoo for giving away snowmobiles in the precursor round to the finals that’s pretty
Amazing all right so this is what the women’s quarterfinals shook out like Haley langland on top and goes home with that scoo Maran her over Robin van Jinn Jamie Anderson wins over Elena height and Mary Rand moving on now they will go on to the finals in C Kirk Tangers and
They will all be battling for a brand new rivan truck in addition to cash and prizes I mean this is insane can you imagine if Haley moves on she wins the sco and just throws it right in the back of the rivion and goes home and then
They have to battle that out between environmental non- environmental like how do you I don’t know like where does that go but it’s pretty sick to see uh what’s going on right now in this competition uh surprises Pat I’ll go to you first what do you
Think is is kind of a shocker here so far with this event well it does seem like the judges were favoring more variety of Tricks more variety as far as hitting a lot of features as opposed to going to the bigger line stuff it seemed like like Zoe a couple other writers
Hana on the east side they they took that Gamble and it didn’t pay off what do you think what’s your opinion on that right now I’m not entirely sure I think it was a bit uh all over the place and I think that it was uh surprising that
Robin didn’t make it through and the robin Marion that was the only call that I thought was maybe a little bit iffy but of course the judges are looking at different things than I am and we all know my relationship with judges so I’m not going to say anything else at this
Point but you know it is it is really cool to see smooth riding rewarded and honestly you know when we look at this I mean the matchups where were so crazy Haley langland had one of the smoothest top to bottoms of the day it just looked
Like she was riding with what the slope gave her so obviously that’s why she got that big score let’s throw down to T Bird who’s with a elated Haley languin all right I’m up here with Haley langland who is sitting on a brand new Summit 850 Turbo Haley have you ridden
The turbo yet yes do you love it yes yes I’ve been wanting one for so long and now I’m so excited to get to take one home um I’m just super stoked today was awesome Best Day Ever yeah with a score of 75.5 the highest score on the
Women’s side Haley langland is taking one of these home Haley you rode absolutely lights out today what were you feeling when you woke up this morning were the nerves there were the Jitters there uh definitely I was telling everyone I’ve had like deja vu this whole week ever since the leading
Event cuz I’ve gone against Zoe probably more than anyone really has in a natural selection um but it’s awesome cuz she pushes me and I mean I’ve tried every strategy against her and this week I just wanted to pretend like I was trying to film a line and that ended up working
And I had a lot of fun while doing it so yeah well I think now your strategy needs to shift to picturing yourself driving a rivan with this in the bed of it I would love that that would be almost too much for me to handle but
Yeah I’m going to try and manif that congratulations Haley well done thanks t- bird and Haley Langan woo woo snails go woo woo she’s got a turbo sled to take home right now I mean look start manifesting that’s what I’m saying man manifest filling the back of that uh
Rivan with that sled and man oh man what a great start uh Haley already a force in slope style looking to be a force in the back EV as well all right well before we move on and switch out our announcers heading into the second quarter here at uh the yeti natural
Selection tour from Rebel Sooke we’re going to talk about Ben Ferguson going out with his Pub beer buddies you know it’s it’s great to see that you know Ben just wanted to let his hair down they went out there for 40 days in the wilderness and kind of just let the beer
Speak and got back to the roots of what makes snowboarding so special let’s check it out I’m Ben Ferguson I’m from Ben ororon and I’m a professional snowboarder the seat taken brother all you bro all right let’s go howdy y’all chy here reporting from the beer Lodge up in beautiful Mall
Idaho Ben what’s your favorite part of snowboarding I think my favorite part of snowboarding would just be being out there in the mountains with your buddies Man hey Get don’t Go [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] explore the backcountry like never before use onx Backcountry to map your backpacking trips with our extensive route building toolkit search thousands of mountain bike trails and track your rides discover Backcountry ski zones with integrated guide books Avalanche assessment tools and up-to-date weather reports and find the CAG with ease in 3D
To access climbing routes whether you’re a seasoned Explorer or heading out for the first time onx Backcountry empowers you you to Adventure with Confidence How often in your life does a totally new sport emerge where you get to make meaningful contribution through having Fun Welcome back to the yeti natural selection here at Rebel Stoke Mountain Resort two rounds of a three round competition done already we had the first eight men in that first round just had Todd Pat and Leanne taking us through the women’s qualifiers where Haley langland took the top score of the
Day and unbelievably we saw all three previous natural selection Champions Robin van gin uh Jin sorry uh Elena height and Zoe Sadowski Sino all three of them getting knocked out for the first time in almost two Winters we’ve seen the incumbent Riders on natural selection knocked down huge statement
From some of those upand comers Mary no I think we just saw a Title Wave in the women’s side I mean everyone had really amazing aspects of their rides Hana Bean don’t forget too Mary ran just rookie on tour definitely not a rookie in any other capacity coming in knocking Hana
Out I mean we saw a huge wave come through and eliminate all the past champions so the women’s TOUR Championship is up for grabs from a new winner this year yeah we’ll have a new event winner and a new tour champion on the men’s side it’s no different Eddie
Those first matchups that we all commentated on were big head hunting rounds yeah absolutely I mean I think for me one of the bigger upsets was Dustin Craven he knows the terrain it’s kind of his home Mountain range he helped build the course and I just really wish he had stomped that first
Run that massive Cliff yeah unfortunately he couldn’t and there is no room if you make a mistake here uh now if you want to turn your gear Into Cash get yourselves on to sendy it is an app where you can scan this QR code just
Down below me here and you can rent buy or sell gear you can also get a hold of this it is the NST exclusive merch I like this one what what are we calling this color I said this kind of a Dusty lilac oh I like it Dusty lilac it’s very
In right now what have you got there you got oh yes you know I like this one good at this look what you could have won okay Eddie wall on the long sleeve there from Rebel Stoke get yourselves over to cendy uh set up by cam zinc winner of Rampage and Travis
Rice uh snowboarding goat so you know it’s legit it is uh the best for Action Sports okay now it’s time to get stuck into the last eight men of qualifiers and we have some absolute heaters here I’m not going to say that we’ve saved the best till last because there’s so
Many strong matchups but Jared ston versus Chris rasman I’m billing this one as one of the most competitive Riders on tour against one of the least competitive Riders on tour rasman such an incredible Rider but seems to struggle to put it together when he pulls on the
Vest yeah I I also agree you know I think rasman it has a a lot more of a filming background and uh and Jared he’s young and he’s super hungry so it’ll be interesting to see and and again I think it’s going to be a very close matchup
And then we go to michl and Nels I mean this is like a gnarly matchup Tor here and Kevin Backstrom that’s going to be Sweden Norway and then the finals red and Travis I mean this is going to be a barn burner okay Jared uh oter dragon
And Nitro versus the libtech byy and Rip Curl of rasman some brand battles going on here okay run number one of to highest score will go through to the finals highest score of the day and the men’s will take home that skido Jared ston hops in all right Jared making his way down
If you follow Jared on Instagram you will see some of the most mindblowing mind melting snowboarding ever so let’s see what he can put down here has to deal with a few tracks uh from you know the whole beginning of the day we’re going front three to big wild cat and a
Little bit of a bobble oh just so much intensity up top wow got three rotations in there and a grab as well off that straight air kicking up a bit of Slough as he comes onto this Ridge big bit of exposure off to his right I really think he’s trying
To shore up that foundation on that top part and then just back it up right here okay so Elena hype came into his right there immediately it looks like he’s looking for the fall line though here we go big commitment little peek over the side trying to scope the line this is very
Blind commit oh amazing wow beautiful navigation by ston right there in the crowd loves it wow what a start Sage kenberg enjoying every second of that he knows he’s through to the final got the better of Dustin Craven Jared ston makes a huge statement in the first run of his battle against
Chris rasman Jared is definitely the kind of Rider that wants to kind of plant that flag and make sure the person riding against him knows where things stand 2022 he exploded into natural selection making finals in Jack Jackson Hall but then 2023 didn’t quite go his way this is a big statement for
24 I’m going to go out on alom here and say he’s in the running for a snowmobile that’s what I’m going to say because we saw up top he had front three he had Wildcat he had a back three everything was speed everything under control uh
Was able to navigate the the you know the the paths that were in there from before him uh and then he just destroyed this bottom line look at how steep that is he’s practically laying down on the slope yeah that’s a top moment of the
Day for me right now for sure Bo a Darin award 3,000 bucks oh there you go Contender definite definite Contender what was fascinating for me he did not hesitate when he dropped up at the top t- bird down in the Finish area with him now though little Duff over the
Edge yes yes here we are Jared Alon okay okay I think I understand this big air jir stuff now uh yeah I kind of scra my way in there couldn’t see where I was going off the edge but kind of just trusted Dustin Craven on the Intel so major shout out
To him yeah it looked like at a certain point there you were kind of like making sure you were in the right spot going down the right uh drop I mean I knew where I was but it was like a lot more downhill of a takeoff
Than I thought so I was completely blind but yeah worked out dude way to come out swinging in the men’s final round nice job buddy look at this view you know little call back to last year re Stoke I mean I think Ellison’s very comfortable with some exposure 100% beautiful shot just
Leaning over that front shoulder looking for the line checking there was an exit getting the speed right so the arter Ambassador Jared ston going over to the gallery Sage kotenberg Ben Ferg rri Bader up the back there got got it on goody that Kaa Smith and KY Lenny are in
There with the new Earth Project as well those boys if you watched the life of Kai last year Travis teaching on my dad love you a a there you go Simon Elston one of the Pacific northwest’s best surfboard Shapers I let you know okay back up to the top this battle is over
Only just beginning uh Chris rasman I one of my favorite Riders on tour who’s never actually he took that Bal face stop uh during the pandemic good mou guard in the M he got this spot after he uh he took T Stein’s place at the last minute last year in Alaska stepped
Up and routinely rasman is one of the guys giving beta to everyone else I mean he’s a true Back Country Gentleman he’s always is giving uh giving information helping other people okay rasman press the button on that GoPro signal he was coming into the course so see what he can lay down for
Us here flicks around to switch oh didn’t get the purchase he wanted he’s going for that cab 540 switch front side five and just kind of under rotating Landing a bit on his back you can see him swimming as soon as he took off but nice little back three
Front three real quick quick on the feet I like that he’s getting into that exposure now you see he’s kind of staying out of the white room staying ahead of some of that snow look like he’s kind of making his way down this lower Cliff to a back
Seven oh he holds on to it and that’ll be class like a little bit tail heavy hand down but I think the judges are going to give that to him and we haven’t seen any tricks down in that bottom section of the face yeah in a back seven
Off of what kind of appears to be a downhill takeoff uh very difficult trick rasman actually talked about that he said Dustin came in and built all of these 40 platforms but a lot of them with the amount of snow that Revel sto gets they’re downhill powder takeoffs
Yeah which is the opposite of what you want for a big high rotation trick so here’s that quick back three to front three I’m trying to work out whether it’s slow motion or not that’s just time slowing down in the Flow State The rasman Zone yeah so he
Did get the back seven round I it was hard for me to see in the actual run it kind of laid back a little bit onto his back arm uh but kind of kept the speed out of it so we’ll have to see what the judges think I’m going to go I’m going
To say Jared takes this one but uh again who knows judges are looking at this all different well it’s interesting this is the first time we’ve got kind of apples for apples big trick versus big feature in the bottom half of the face rasman has got that instability
Up top with the cab five but this part’s almost as awkward as the seating event way worse I don’t know what to do with my hands hey what are you gonna do about it boys waiting nervously Conor Manning the head judge he’ll be marshalling Jody wasak uh Chad utrom and guon
Moriset I actually if you go on Conor Manning’s LinkedIn it says snowboard judge since 2006 did follow he’s been doing it for a long time he’s a real one for sure let’s have another look at that back seven unbelievable getting that much purchase of such a flat takeoff yeah
Again leaning back pretty heavily we’ll have to see how the judges dark that the one thing I will say about Jared’s line is that he did stop at the top a for a little while and kind of eye out his line which I know the judges will dock you for as
Well 80 points for Jared Elston tiny dock on that Chris rasman the 64.5 okay now now I got to come for nightmare okay so that is run one a sick score the fifth of our eight men’s qualifiers so another three still to drop on first runs and then we’ll loop
Back round and everyone will get their second runs you guys are a little so getting ready to step in now to what Mary has called her favorite matchup of this last pack of head-to-head ml bang going up against Neils Minnick which way do you see this one going Mary oh it
Stresses me out I don’t know I both these Riders are so incredible ml obviously has some of the finest back country style I think of anyone on a snowboard Niels I think he has performed arguably the best of anyone to be eliminated the two times that he’s been
Here in natural selection as against Pat Moore his first year he was the second highest scorer of the day last year he and Ben had arguably the most competitive duels okay just over your left shoulder we’ve got some Intel waiting to come in from the one and only
Stan levier what you got for us Stan hey Ed yeah we’ve just gotten official word our first battle on the east side about to go down between Nils and mckl I know I’m excited for this one I know for a fact mckl was checking his
Footage down in the gym at the hotel on his bike turned around saw Neils kind of just looking at him Neils probably thinking wait a minute this guy looks into his runs before he goes yes and uh I’m excited to see what happens here this is the first head-to-head we’re
Going to see on this East side this will be a big Telltale thank you so much Stan great bit of uh insight there so two Riders going toet to- toe down the east side of the venue the only person up to this point we’ve seen go into these cers uh
Hannah Beeman and she only took one run which left her at a disadvantage when she stepped back to the West Side so both Riders committing to the east it’s it’s a really strong statement Eddie yeah and again some of these matchups you you’re like okay I can lean one way
Or the other and you might have a little bit of an opinion going into it but this one between Mikel and Nils you really I I really have no idea who’s going to come out in the lead after this first run okay first r at a drop it is the
Norwegian giant Mel Bang on that big 170 he’s not wasting any time he’s finding a lot of speed on that Traverse Lieutenant down the pole Jam just to his right there straight onto this big yeti deck oh the little butter the signature butter remember his his butter last year
In Alaska was one of the best highlights of the competition in my opinion 100% popping off another pillow making this look effortless and don’t forget he’s breaking Trail down here no one’s laid a tracks so Mikel looking at some brand new exposed terrain blasting through that
Pillow oh and he he he keeps making this line more difficult I I’ve assumed he was going to go out Riders right backside three oh staying on his feet yes unbelievable descent there from Mel bang wow I I kept thinking he was going to peel out Riders right uh of that line
And he just kept going left and left and left getting harder and harder and then I did not expect the backside three at the bottom I think that’s going to be judged extremely high so Credo is our judging criteria one of the loudest years we’ve heard from the bottom there cedo is the
Judging criteria the r stands for risk a Mel double down on the risk every you called it Eddie every single time yeah looks like he has a white go tee Mi what’s up buddy this crowd’s so loud down here I can barely hear out of my ifb that was unbelievable dude dude
Thank you it really snow is so good in there uh everything kind of shrunk going into it but I went where I wanted and pretty stuck so yeah the battle of the Big East I mean Neils is from Vermont you’re from Norway that’s even farther east than Vermont that’s true but we’re the
Northwest of Scandinavia you know Europe so we’re to Northwest docks congrats Meeks what a run buddy thank you let’s take another look at this top to bottom mckel bang on point absolutely lacing this run I think what’s so exciting about watching ml ride this is that it looks like he’s ridden it before
And I mean that as a compliment like he just rides with such Authority through terrain that he hasn’t navigated previously that I think that is going to elicit a very high score from the judges and I what’s interesting I came into this thinking that you watch Alaska
From last year you watch all of the alaskar ml loves oh look at that saving the best till last ml loves those big open faces a lot of room to work he’s shied away from a couple of the more treed venues but he’s absolutely put the
Beat down on this one yeah and for those of watching who don’t know Mikel has been a pro snowboarder since I think he was like 9 years old so uh that’s that’s fairly obvious when you watch a run like that since when he was small which was
Ages ago he grows like a tree yeah when I met him I think he was like 3T tall he those pills so up at the top Nils Minnick waiting to drop in Neils molded I’m I with full respect to Victor davier Neils molded Victor davier in their duel in
Durango and for me it was the two switch runs that Neils laid down that put that duel to bed Neils switch ability like he’s almost Ambi stanced in powder oh 100% well I mean like you said Eddie michl’s been a pro since he was nine so
Has Nils they he started riding as a very very young child and has only gotten of course better and better every year and really honed his Backcountry ability from a contest start similar to his competitor to paraphrase Kevin Jones as well I’ve always feel like if snowboarding’s a sign
Then Nils Minnick is the professor oh I love that I love that quote and I know I know that film that that’s that’s from that’s aaz it’s so good thank you KJ little heads up to you there okay Nils mindick dropping in Salomon gyro Rider seees Minnick on
The back of his deine vest there as he starts making his first turns following a very similar line to Hana Bean oh Canyon Canyon he just did it opened it up okay we’ve been talking about that Canyon but because no one’s been out here he is the first man to
Open it a Bonafide Gap over a cliff up at the top the far east side of this venue just sending it with authority to hanab Bean’s track right there next to him Cliff phenomenal work by both Mel and Nils and now this is what Dustin Craven talked about when I first asked him
About the venue he’s like build a venue that can do everything and you put the pressure on the judges because you’ve got two Riders two totally different runs who’ve laced it top to bottom actually pretty similar 360s off and both of that exact same they both rode
Fast they both rode as if they’d been there before and they knew it while having read it for the first time I mean that was impressive by both these guys that Rowdy in there it’s wild you like you pick up so much speed so quickly yeah for sure
It’s fantastic in hear the body language on the sofa is all three of us leaning forward on tiptoes what a run let’s take another look at this we’ll get the canyon Gap here my gosh kills that speed so comfortably yeah this gives you an idea
Of how a flatlight it is and B how steep that terrain is and how little setup time he had on that that three yeah so again I mean I kind of called it in the beginning this one is going to be very difficult for the judges and they both
Laced very like you know solid run so I do not envy the judges backside three is are well known as the ultimate safety trick both men dropped those but to even be able to rotate in the area of the face they were on right there was just
Impossible like do it feel like leg burn Little Burn yeah for sure coming over like the chatter was just like oh please don’t blow out just zero time Neils Neils got onto that tow Edge and had to pop straight away I think for ML it was midway
Through a pillow run at full speed Mel bang takes it a little more speed a little more flow as you said he upu the risk at each spot yeah I think uh I would agree with that that scoring for sure I think Nils did an amazing but Mel’s Mel’s run just the the
Technicality at the bottom there the way he was just navigating and kept going Riders left Riders left into more and more difficult terrain uh I I yeah I fully agree with that score okay so ml leads 82- 76 can we leave it here just a little bit under I think the
Highest score we’ve seen was it Austin swen with an 85 I think Mary’s looking at her notes oh no Sage with the 85 we’ had a couple of 81s and 80 I think Michels maybe in second place for this scoo there so but a lot of people the Scandinavian battle
This one is a mouthwatering prospect the power of tar burm versus the grace and style of Kevin Backstrom I’m not saying that to is not stylish of course he is but backstrom’s got that Elegance to his writing a really kind of Euro style tweak and it’s our only dual versus dual
Matchup of our two competitors who emerged from that round ooh okay okay so to if you haven’t already go and watch Temple of the Dog phenomenal project from him and gimal God look at that playing with the first little bump so back on the west side of the venue here
Oh little back flip with a kind of like a method tweak in the middle of it laid it right out didn’t they and you have to understand now right now he’s getting good light which is good but you see all these other tracks that are in the Run
Add quite a bit more difficulty they add uh you know more variability to the snow and we heard that the temps are warming up so that’s going to affect the snow Yeah bit of hot pound for these last few runs controlling his speed well on top of some exposure now
Oh my this is shaping up to be exciting spicy oh oh very nearly missed the toes there straight off the oh my gosh gigantic drop there from T gear wow that was huge and a celebratory method just poked out the end you know we’ve seen quite a few people get on top
Of that uh you know that exposed terrain right and everybody’s either veered to the left or the right and he went straight off the nose all the way down it looked like maybe sat down a tiny bit in the landing but I mean he kind of he
Came out of it with some speed and uh and so and the judges have been rewarding these these riskier lines well we saw Elena take the right hand side of that we saw Marian take the left we saw Sage back three almost the same point slightly smaller that was all the way
Off the front for T gear on I’m here I’m ready here we go we’re with Toria bergam oh yeah dude what the heck that was insane thanks brother yeah that line was kind of flat but Sage told me the snow was deep so just went for it
Was he right he was right thanks buddy that was absolutely Epic Man in your first natural selection here in Revel Stoke on this course to step to terrain like that that man that’s commendable unbelievable thank you so much yeah I’m stoked uh been kind of tricky to navigate this throughout the day with
All the tracks and everything but the course is running sweet and yeah I’m just I’m stoked to be here congrats buddy well done excited to see that score okay toi’s got a long wait now though because following him in will be Kevin Backstrom there’s that beautiful backflip method up
Top wow this was an awesome run the power with which tar I love it I love the fact that he got those two hits and then he gets this full redirect here it’s full purpose he knows exactly where he’s going he’s not getting sucked into the full line to the
Left he goes and this is nerve-wracking though nearly over egged there yeah you know it’s steep when your chest is on the ground oh my God that huge so big send of the day so far yeah I think that’s definitely a contender wow and again I mean he had a lot of
Compression in the landing but it wasn’t like he just landed on his back or anything like he that was about as solid as you can get with that flat of a landing yeah he went full but that angle made really put it into perspective of
How big of a drop that was yeah it was titanium famous wasn’t it yeah in the Scandinavian battle that’s a statement right there okay to looking back up to the top now where he knows Kevin Backstrom will be waiting for him we we talked about it
At the top it’s tor’s power we’re about to see that Grace that Elegance those big tweaks that you know from all of those Beyond metal movies with Kevin Backstrom yeah backstrom’s kind of a rider in the vein of like uh more like a Blake Paul or an Austin sweeten kind of
Uh kind of moves with that Grace Just follows the terrain he’s not going to barge it quite as hard yeah and Arthur Longo he’s got phenomenal pop up got so much power you see him spring heal out of kickers yeah it’s almost that mixture of power and finesse and and again Kevin
Backstrom one of the best Styles in the sport makes everything look very easy that’s one of his skills which some can sometimes be you know almost negative when it comes to judging because everything just looks so easy in the duels he had that epic double back backy yes with almost
Rotated a little off axis here we go back flip tail grab oh yeah going big keeping his speed beautiful flow big oy over that just as you’re getting into the Steep stuff whoa oh hold it that was a really cool line that was crazy that was really really
Cool he like basically popped off and landed in a butter and then buttered off the cliff it looked like he kind of lost his balance in an Ollie and then you’re like no I’m redire I I actually thought he was falling but then I was like oh no that
Was on purpose yeah that’s Kevin backr at his finest I feel like yeah that’s about dialed in for me like that’s really really close to the most creative thing we’ve seen today yeah I would agree and it’s a yeah I think it’s a big risk heading that far west because you lose that
Vertical we saw it cost Blake Paul badly in his matchup against Mikey cicerelli very evenly match between Norway and Sweden right now I love that tail grab backy so and you were talking about his pop too right and he has this lowkey insane pop so where it gets interesting is that
Creativity at the bottom versus the technical prowess that Tor gear had with his big like a line drop yeah that was amazing oh my that angle wow that was so sick how badly are the judges going to tear it him for that yeah that they going to Peck into him or
Are they going to take a big bite I man this is another tough one but I do think the judges are are going to reward that that bottom trick look in the corner there it looks like a TV screen Ben fer Dustin or Sage you’re watching can’t wait to see what happens
On the scores so if you didn’t know Norwegian and Sweden are similar enough that they can understand each other it’s like French and French [Laughter] Canadian okay patiently waiting that that fatty to flatty was pretty well like I was inspired by yours that’s the flattest on the
Hill well I saw Sage said the snow was deep in there was I you were not so the three Men 78.7 to Tar ahead of 75.7 so that tiny instability on the way out of the butter three for Kevin has cost him there but that’s a good I think brilliantly wonderfully close match up set up for the second runs look at this in front of your peers
The best of the very best sat behind the fence there watching each of these jeels with baited breath Kevin Backstrom and toia bergam going back up to the top that’s a heavy hitting Corral down there my goodness yeah they’re having a quite the sick day looks
Like oh there you go look at that red Gerard up there now our final battle coming in he’s checking that onx back country app got a full satellite image of the face below him that he can root find look at this I’ve called this the master and The Apprentice since his gold
Medal in 2018 red Gerard’s work in the back country his terrain read his trick selection his ability and variable snow has pushed him into a similar League to Travis Rice I think in the next decade he could overtake flicks around to switch to open his run all right kicking
Things off with the cab 180 AKA half cab now going forward stance backside seven stomping it oh my gosh huge statement on the first two kick CU one of the cleanest back sevens we’ve seen of the day I’m not going to lie I kind of feel
My heart pumping out of my chest right now whoa downhill take off backy and just powered through the tail to hold the landing yeah that back flip was pretty impressive gopost that gives you a perspective of how steep that terrain is oh my gosh and then pins it out of the
Bottom there we go well he took both throttles of the F-15 and just pushed them down didn’t he for the exit so what you would most I feel like you would expect from from Red uh more freestyle driven he had the seven he had the half
You know and then at the bottom gets into some steep terrain but nothing too exposed nothing too crazy so a little bit more of a freestyle approach not a surprise from red and it you know Travis I think will take a complete opposite I’m not claiming this I obviously I am
Claiming it but that had all the Hallmarks of a Travis run for me the half cab the back seven the back flip yeah that’s a good point well I think right here like Red’s years in the traditional competition circuit he has strategy dialed he knows what to do and
He knows his opponent he’s written he’s seen Travis ride enough he’s they wrote in the Quicksilver movie at the same time like he knows what he’s doing do you think this is his 85% then yes just to put pressure on Trav this is him laying the foundation I mean 100 this
Back seven again that’s maybe a sendy moment so smooth so best landing we’ve seen out of the perfect turn out of it too yeah he’s not he’s not skidding to drop his speed he’s actually getting the edge engaged he says as he lays back into that one so
No I think I think this is a fantastic run by red I think it was fast he put down a couple tricks he navigated this this goal post but I think he has more to give because he knows who his opponent is tiny bit of hesitation there
Let’s throw down to T-bird is in the finish caral with red red Gerard my man you just put it down that had freestyle elements it had big mountain elements that was a heck of a run buddy yeah no I was super exciting you know it’s been a long day for sure a
Lot of waiting around a lot of watching the boys ripping up so I was just hyped to make it down with the clean run you know it’s pretty choppy in there there’s still some fresh for sure but more than anything just happy to make it out with
A clean run did you notice when you were up top that right as you dropped in the light got really really good I actually did a little bit I noticed on uh Tor gear and KB the face started shining a little bit and I was like oo that’s nice
You do have Travis Rice up in that start gate right now what’s going through your head yeah it’s about the worst worst guy you could have drop after you so we’ll just cross our fingers I don’t know what we do let’s go buddy good job well
Done okay from T-bird at the bottom of the course we’re going to go up to Stan at the top of the course who’s got some Intel on T Rice’s strategy yeah that’s right Ed yesterday uh when they were doing the name drawing Travis basically said you know what I’m
Going to take this last spot after a little concern there would be tooo much tracks basically what he said was if there isn’t a good run in there for me then we didn’t do our job last year we saw in the celer region Travis had one
Of the gnarliest lines we’ll see if he can do his job here today but red definitely giving him a run for his money on run one there fantastic setup there from Stan and uh we can take a look back now a little recap of that Earth shattering run that Travis laid
Down in reel startout last year I think this was a history breaking moment last year it’s just the idea of Lily padding out onto another mushroom to redirect this angle this view puts it into perspective look how tiny he looks oh that drop alone is enor it’s insane
But once he’s committed to the Gap out he’s going down 200 ft whether he likes it or not yeah and then he ends it where he didn’t need to do this and he just back threes to just put a final stamp in that Runa yeah there’s a reason Travis Rice is Travis
Rice it’s it is truly phenomenal isn’t it I I think it’s really easy to forget just how good he is I have this innate sense within me that his talent is so great we need to enjoy it all Talent is fleeting even more so in action sports
So you need to kind of soak up every moment you get to see him riding well I think between this and then velvet castles I think we’re he’s given us a lot to soak right now which is great yeah we can marinade in it for a few
Years yeah what do you think he’s going to do here though Eddie against red so right now we don’t know if he’s dropping on the west side or the east side you know I’m I’m predicting he’s going to go where nobody else has gone Travis is
Known for that he’s known to take the risk he’s known to get himself into some situations that look very sketchy and are very sketchy but then he somehow makes his way out of it so I’m very curious to see where he drops and what line he takes I think also he’s not one
To ever to underestimate an opponent and he knows what red is capable of I mean red is definitely one of the like most impressive rising stars in the back country right now so I think Travis knows that he has to really perform in
Order to kind of lock it up if he if he has the possibility to do so the one thing I do think red has done with that first run is back Travis into a corner and if there’s one thing you don’t want to do with Travis is make him angry it’s
Like The Incredible Hulk I think you could say the same thing about red though yeah we’re getting there they’ definitely in terms of their resilience to pressure they they’re in the same basket now like Red’s been there he’s done two Olympic slop star finals he’s done he xgame slope champion and he’s
Just transitioned just as we said about MCM Morris earlier he’s transitioned effortlessly into the back country so we can see on the screen behind us now Travis is in the portal which means he’s on the east side of the venue and that means we’re about to have Mayhem unfold
We’ve seen Nils Minnick hanab bean and Mel bang in there so far ml cracking out a huge score from this side of the venue let’s see if Travis can repeat it I’m so stoked he he’s taking the east side so at the moment following Michel’s track out onto that big diving board you
Can see just down to his right oh front three and a little little sketch but it looks like he kind of held on to it again Travis one of the best at navigating being outside of the white room and any Slough movement making this look it’s so steep he’s making it look deceptively
Easy barreling through those pillows gosh oh my gosh whoa how did he get through that wow literally bonked that huge nose stuck out in the middle of that drop so he just made that look very casual when very much was not we need to see some
Other angles of that we actually I think feel like we lost a bit of that action through the cloud burst off that tap yeah I think uh some some of the other angles are going to make that look absolutely mind melting and and again you know we we wanted to see Travis
Choose a line that nobody else had taken and uh yeah he he did it what he there was the one instability up top the front three slightly over rotated he covered it but then he went straight into the back Tre after that and it was one of
When you look at the gradient on that it’s one of the steepest sections of the face yeah the angle we were looking at was a bit uh um you know hid that a little bit I can’t find my words yeah and uh I’m just going to say this too
Anybody watching this you know you see this and it kind of looks a these guys make it look very easy the guys and girls b it looks soft and fun and and a lot of snow coming around but like I can guarantee you 99% of people who if they
Got on top of that they would unstrap their board and figure out a way to hike out and away from all of that terrain and meanwhile you know Travis is just having fun with it and and doing tricks well there’s some interesting statistics that we can start getting into Travis is
Defending natural selection tour Champion but he’s won the last three events he won Alaska 2022 going toet to- Toe with torstein in some of the greatest competitive snowboarding we’ve ever seen and then he took out Revel Stoke with that run that we’ve just seen and then he took out Alaska last year in
That final against Michel I mean he is so Mercurial in his talent it’s not just his physical ability on the snow it we saw it his mental ability to get in the zone well I think a good example is last year at reel Stoke he had that fall
Where he was dangerously close to the exposure came down was spitting up blood and then went back and had that run that we watched earlier I mean that is such a mental fortitude showing and that’s unlike the majority of other humans okay we’ve got some of the uh replays now
There’s that front three off the top so laying back on that Landing a bit gets up pretty quickly yes go this is what we wanted to see step out Gap onto that I mean there’s barely ground for him to touch there until the end yeah
Yeah that was that was crazy I’m glad we got to see it from that angle because that really puts it into perspective how how gnarly that was he essentially Taps two large pillows while dropping you know a massive clip because I think he wanted a little more purchase of the
First pillow to make the transition yeah twice there any mortal would have just gone over the handlebars and driven themselves head first into the snow it could have been catastrophic but of course it’s Travis and he makes it down okay scores coming in on the left hand
Side of the screen Travis Rice 81.7 red Gerard 76.2 so 4 and 1 half points difference five and a half points difference between them i’ I’d expect to see red a tiny bit further up but I think that last feature that we’ve just seen in the background there really working hard for Travis
Yeah take a breath that is first runs of the fifth to eighth matchups in this the qualifying day of Yeti natural selection here at Revel Stoke Mountain Resort Jared ston leading out over Chris rasman we’ve got mckl in a strong position against Neils Minnick toia berrim leading Kevin Backstrom Travis leading
Red they’re all so close though there’s no way you can call any of these I agree I think this this lineup in particular is so challenging to even pick a winner knowing who has won the first round and I think a lot of these guys too they
Function so well under pressure that if they are in the back seat that’s just going to drive them further toward trying to up their opponent what’s interesting as well it’s just dawned on me there’s so many points up for grabs if you go into the east side of the
Venue now because you are on fresh ground if you’re in the west side you are following tracks and you’re on hard Landings yeah and also the east side again the judges are always as soon as you start locking into someone else’s TR uh run like their pathway and and and
You’re following someone else’s run I think immediately the judges are docking you but as soon as you break away and kind of getting into you know unnav territory the judges are starting to you like really pay attention and and amp up your score because it’s so easy to get
Lost out there okay we’ve already given away one skido today to Haley langland for the highest score in the women’s do you think we’re going to see a bigger score in the second runs here of these men that could beat Sage kotenberg on the 85 anything’s possible with these
Riders y I know it’s a cop out but it’s true yeah it is it is they’re definitely dealing with slightly warmer snow yeah and and you know what as the snow gets a little bit warmer uh there’s a few there’s some upsides and downsides the upside is you don’t get as much as
That crazy white room happening right so you don’t you can kind of avoid getting blinded but with it kind of getting a little bit more wet your speed is harder to check and so as soon as you start going straight or you just adjust to get
Into something your speed is so fast so it it’s pretty wild how just the snow consistency changing from the morning to the evening can can change so much in in a Rider’s run okay well the Skidoo is still up for grabs and make no mistake
All of these Riders want to win a skido it is one of the most important Tools in their Arsenal as a pro snowboarder as you’re about to find out skers are just excellent workhorses we are able to move personnel and gear into locations that are otherwise inaccessible not only are they an
Incredible tool they also just plain fun there’s a lot of ways to access the back country but when it comes to production you need something that can get you there fast and with ease the unbridled power and performance things see say is almost more fun on the
Way up than the board is on the way down these sleds are Paramount to the success of these events all the way through from the first time we put boots Andor Sleds on the ground through event completion and and load out we couldn’t pull off Natural Selection tour without the support of
SKU hands Down [Applause] [Applause] all right we’re ready camera speeding we’re 100 here we go there’s something special about winter every year I get the same feeling winter is coming in it’s one of the best Feelings hey you ready Let’s cut Are little glimpse of the r1t truck there from rivan and both the men and the Women’s Champions from here at the yeti natural selection tour will be taking home one of those I’ve seen some sort of little hatchbacks and compacts being won before I’ve never seen anyone winning a truck like that at
A snowboard comp no I no I this is this this is pretty this is they’re they’re setting a solid standard I like this one that’s the actual truck they’re winning correct they told me I was getting paid in rivan when I got here and then well that one’s easier because
You can fit it in your carry-on so that’s easier to take back home I do I’ll leave that one just there uh Mary what do you got over there I have uh the board Sage is riding the K2 antidote right here and for me this is one of the
Most unique boards like a lot of people taking different boards look at you you you’re pretty good at in those I’ve been working out like Sage started working on that in 2021 ahead of Jackson Hold 2022 an event which he won but he designed that board specifically for natural
Selection well I think too you know we talk about the arc originally from natural selection being the Arc of filming the video part you know you’re starting in you know the Rocky Mountains you’re moving to like uh western Canada you end up in Alaska and wherever it may
Take you and so if you can build a board that can compete in every natural selection venue you can build a board that you can ride all season long he worked really hard with jstone didn’t he and he basically said I want a board
That can land a cab n in powder that can scream down an Alaskan face and drop a 40 foot 10 meter cliff and that’s what he came up with directional twin and I think we were talking to Leanne about this the other day she was like jstone
Basically packed in every piece of Space Age Technology that K2 have to try and build this board the way Sage wanted it uh there’s there’s a QR code just down there Bing scan that and you can find out a little more uh information about the K2 antidote don’t know what more you
Could need to find out though give you pretty comprehensive you there I feel like not that I could do a cab n or scream down Alaskan face on it but I’m sure all of us can give it a good go take a deep breath it’s time now to
Check in with Tae they’re one of the partners that have been on board with natural selection from the very beginning especially with regard to the sustainability mission because they are committed to finding uh carbon free uh non-radioactive clean Fusion solution to energy production let’s find out a little bit more about
It elevating the conversation around sustainability has been a priority for natural selection from day one mother nature is our main character and we are proud to partner with inspiring companies who are dedicated to sustainability Yeti has been instrumental to developing natural selection sustainability strategy proving that you can do good business
But also remain committed to tackling the impact of climate change Natural Selections use of Yeti drink wear thereby reducing plastic use is only one small example of how we continue to collaborate Tae is one of the most Innovative companies in the world developing commercial fusion power power and the cleanest environmental profile
Fusion is Nature’s preferred source of energy it’s the same process that powers the sun and stars and it’s what makes life viable on Earth natural selection road trip with rivan across Colorado during duels and up to Revel Stope showcasing e capabilities in the mountains rivan sets a great example for
Others to follow as we are seeing rapid advancements towards electrifying snowmobiles and helicopter for over 30 years ride snow wordss has been testing and employing new manufacturing techniques to decrease raw materials needed for production As Natural Selections official snowboard partner ride gets our dedicated crew into the mountains to make the magic
Happen A New Earth Project is an Innovative company that works with many outdoor Brands to employ sustainable packaging Solutions less packaging waste means less plastic pollution in places where we play both in the mountains and on the water lastly our Trix is dedicated to making gear that will last a lifetime
Through its rebird program designed to care and repair the most durable outerwear on the market natural selection is stoked and inspired to partner with Brands who have proven their commitment to Mother Nature showing that you can do good business while also being committed to our planet that’s been a central tenant as
You just heard there of all of the brands who’ve partnered up with natural selection is their commitment to sustainability and it’s worth mentioning Yeti title sponsor have been on board since the very beginning they stood on the first faces that Travis picked out for natural selection and they got the
Idea they were like yes we’re on board uh since the very beginning they’ve been committed to trying to create a plastic free environment for all of the events all of the broadcast so huge thank you to Yeti for their support and their commitment to that course we’re also on
Board with a new Earth Project they’re one of the biggest brands in terms of their work in sustainable packaging they’re looking at different ways that you can build packaging within the action sports community so they’re teaming up with Advocates industry-leading Brands and Global Packaging suppliers to come up with different approaches to packaging
Sustainably so you’re looking at cardboards uh even mushroom or plant-based uh plastic sticks and paddings so let’s take a look at their story Travis you know who has had a long career is at a stage of life like well I I want to use this as a microphone to
Really Elevate the conversation around sustainability to celebrate mother nature in a very engaging way and almost use the competition of the content as a trojan horse to have these conversations and the impact Change A New Earth Project is a coalition of outdoor enthusiasts industry-leading Brands and Innovative packaging suppliers all working together to solve these problems great things are accomplished by the people who refuse to lie Down our whole mission around celebrating mother nature and talking about sustainability now we have something very tangible that’s Rel for audience new Earth Project our our tagline has been we do this together and that was something that we figured out really early like the secret sauce is community the secret sauce is everyone
Working together my hope is that Brands will begin to look at this sustainable transition as something to celebrate and at the end of the day like that’s what this should be about is like we are all inspired by this beautiful planet and we have a responsibility to understand our
Impact and do everything we can to minimize that if it’s negative okay the cat is well and truly amongst the pigeons here at the yeti natural selection Revel St Mountain Resort if for some reason you’re only just joining us which I find hard to believe we are in the midst of day one
Which is qualifying we’re breaking 24 athletes down to just 12 we’ve seen the first eight men going toe-to-toe in four matchups we’ve seen the women eight women go toe-to-toe in their four matchups and we lost all of our previous three natural selection tour Champions Zoe Sadowski sin is out Robin van Jinn
Is out and Elena height is out we also saw one of the Heavy Hitters event winners in previous years Hana Bean go out to the rookie Mary Ran So in the women’s we’re assured a brand new contest winner and a brand new tour winner uh we’re just getting into the
Back end of the men’s results where we see Travis Rice versus red Gerard we’ve got the Sweden Norway battle TG bergam and Kevin Backstrom ml bang Nils Minnick two of the best technicians in the game and Jared ston and Chris rasman we’re going to be joining them very very
Shortly uh but right now we’re going to show you a little clip from Arc terx they put this together in conjunction with natural selection we like to call it backyard selection this is our man Scott Winslow check this out yeah bud yes got wins love I is that a land
That he make it it cuts out and I’m like is he okay got a face shot 100% made that yeah he stopped that yeah Scott and that looked pretty big too that that drop you know every time I wear a GoPro and and I I do a drop I’m like oh that’s
Going to look so sick and then I look at it and it doesn’t look like I ever left the ground and I’m like dang it so anytime you see like a pretty good like time frame there that yeah that solid drop I I like the fact he definitely got
Called into it as well didn’t the chairlift was having it yeah little Hollywood line there you got to do it for the people 100% uh if you’re interested in getting involved in that you can do it using the hash backyard selection right now it’s time to take a
Break join us when we come back for the last of the men’s Matchups [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] A different breed that’s how we describe our our new sleds and that’s how we describe you who rides them you to whom what comes after the storm is definitely not the calm you who knows that there’s a big difference between gray and Monument gray you who knows what this feels Like Welcome back to Yeti natural selection live live here in Revel Stoke you’ve seen the conditions that we’re dealing with out there the Riders absolutely loving the Montana Bowl it is the venue out on the outskirts of Revel so Mountain Resort and they’ve got some beautiful terrain beautiful snow to work
With one man who’s been working with this is Sage kotenberg he currently has the highest score of the day an 85 he is in line to win the Skidoo on the men’s side of the draw Haley langland’s already taken the Skidoo for the high scoring qualifying for the women but
Sage kotenberg has got to wait for Travis Rice red Gerard Jared ston Chris rasman mbang Nils mnik I’m not reading these off the screen to bergam and Kevin Backstrom uh but you can win a signed K2 antidote the official partner of natural selection uh in terms of snowboards if
You scan this QR code let me get it right on top of it slightly over ding right there regular Vana White I can do that uh so if you want to get stuck into it this beautiful board could be yours when we come back Todd Richards
Will be back in this seat he’ll be joined by snowboarding’s very own Simon Cal the ultimate judge Pat Bridges and Canadian snowboarding royalty theam Pelosi welcome back to the yeti natural selection and huge shout out to uh revian because the Riders are going to win one of the well not not this it’s
Going to be twice as big as this the one that the Riders are going to win but it’s going to be amazing when they move on to cirk Tangers for the finals not only did they go ahead and win a sko today for the highest scores but they’re
Going to go home with the rivan so there is a lot on the line here you know besides being the overall champion of the natural selection tour you get to go home with a rivan that is solid solid prizes we didn’t have cars any give me with cars when I was competing eting
Geez you got like a lease get like get one like still you missed the vote after us was Cars everyone just got cars my gosh all right well check it out we’re going to drop a rider woo I can hear a drone or a murder hornet in my ear let’s
Go so we still have eight runs to go here second run for the second half of the field so this will be Jared Ellison up against Chris rasman Jared Elon had such a sick video part this year in brown Cinema yeah he did I mean Jared is uh
You know he’s cocky I like it I like a little controversy in snowboarding I think you know sometimes snowboarding gets a little boring little vanilla and I think Jared is uh is definitely a little bit of spice kind of maybe taking the throw from Shawn Palmer a little bit you know being boisterous
Kind of being out there it looks like the sun has come out a little bit better the visibility much better than I anticipated when we got picture back yeah it’s nice conditions here we go Jared Ellison on course coming out of Bend Oregon nice front three well it appears to be what the
Photographers call Golden hour so we may actually get a cover out of these runs well you said it pat two back three so I wonder if they’re you know I wonder how set up that snow is now that these Riders have to deal with oh yeah it looks so much gnarlier from single
This is see this is where it gets a little spicy Jared’s over here oh gosh oh boy this is kind of a happy hour line right now well this is like Jared’s first run last year in Revel Stoke in Boulder Park yeah he’s trying to get on his toes
Right here my go I think he’s going to go off that nose there this is intense going to be sick Jared Ellison yeah nails that line that was smooth wow that was Heavy waiting all that time up there in the temple to come down and Lace a line like that that was Intense wow just to just nail it like that are you kidding me that’s crazy oh man so I mean look Jared came up on the top of that run couple little simple front threes then straight into a heavy heavy line probably one of the heaviest lines we’ve seen today might be
The Sandy award oh yes don’t forget about that cendy W $1,000 for both men and women go to them for winning the cendy a here’s a recap of what we just saw from Jared front side 360 to start out his run weaving his way through the Glades there a lot of Air elements up high and we’re seeing that the snow hasn’t really changed too much this is where it gets a little bit crazy yeah he had to kind of figure out
Where he was on the face this is sketchy looking to set his Edge yeah but he made it look so smooth look at this just nicely rolls in look at that ol power Ollie hits that second little bench and comes out at a million miles an hour and I think the biggest takeaway
Here is that you know when you’ve got legs that are just like lactic acid building up from like all the intense energy that you’ve had all day and you just got to like sit around you know and you’ve got the nervous energy and you’re probably a little bit cold and to come
Down and Lace like that that’s insane yeah that was super impressive and we’ll see rasman though he’s got a has work cut out for him after that yeah and uh Chris rasman you know is kind of like Travis Rice’s understudy you were saying earlier that you guys call him uh Chris
Rice or Travis Raz Travis Raz it’s it’s pretty interesting though because you know coming up under the tutelage of Travis Rice Chris has got some of the most uncanny abilities to land in deep snow that I’ve ever seen a rider have he is up next he is an athlete he is so
Strong so just yeah yeah the dude just like foil boards around he’s just like pumping around a foil board for like a day tree trunk thighs here we go Chris rasman on course Jared Ellison has the advantage in this heat looks like he switched it up here coming in
Fakey cab five a little bit on the heels the back three trying to set himself up over into that Center Zone man that light looks good right now yeah looks glorious and you’re actually oh aggressive thrashing rasman just got Tomahawk there near the trees well that’s got to put him at the
Disadvantage to Jared right here yeah it’s not what he needed up top he was mixing it up pick it apart a lot of tricks look at that seven oh lands sideways so Chris rasman yeah he knew that he had to really put something down to take out Jared big air jir coming in
With the advantage and I think it’s pretty safe to say that big air J is going to take this match up I think [Applause] so comes down here holy that was wild but let’s look at this recap and just kind of talk about how where rasman
Had something going on for him in this run I think rasman had the benefit of yeah that cab five and just like a pretty sweet nice lofty back three right here so he was kind of killing it at the top and oh yeah oh there he is right
There I think I think it went sideways and then he just couldn’t recover and yeah and that’s in some of those spots there you can tell there’s a lot of tracks in there a lot of sloughing from earlier oh it’s so hard to deal with you’ve got to really be either on
It or just going kind of slow cuz it’s hard to go fast and it just it’s hard to control kind of seems like Travis bucks that Trend though uh rice tends to go a th miles an hour through the Avalanche debris all right so right there the results
Are and I think it’s pretty obvious Jared Ellison will move on he is the winner of that matchup against Chris rasman so Chris rasman will go home and bang it out in the back country a little more and produce an Incredible video part for next year with the man boys
With the manboys of course all right moving on ML bang we saw him come swinging in the first matchup here Mel will be up against Nils mindich and uh look ml has the lead right now very stylish Rider very powerful Rider eats a lot of raw meat
You know well at least he looks like he does he’s a viking I just assume that but so Nicholls Nicholl strategy was to go ahead and use that East face oh here we go looks like he’s going down the line over to the west side he’s going to the
Side yeah you have to imagine that east side is is really shady right now going for that big old kicker that’s on this Ridge line lining it up huge laid out back flip Nails it oh that how’s that turn and there is still a lot of stuff
To be hunted down even further to our right on this screen nice tail that was stomped right in the track of somebody else’s Landing that was perfect yeah you guys talked about The Landings Mel riding a 170 wow has got to be an advantage when you’re going through the
Chop well not when he’s that tall it’s like a 150 nickel bang tall glass of Norwegian water he is a big human being absolutely crushed that run giant back flip up top carrying the advantage into this matchup let’s check out the recap here of that run we saw that huge back flip going
Down the ridge line this is kind of a really cool perspective that we have here of how big this jump is absolutely starting off with the huge old backflip I got to say that was a great run really smooth for Mikel but his first run was better and I think
He he did leave the door open for Nils mhm yeah Nils is very technical with his riding Nils also has some incredible Back Country skills as far as being able to throw the big spins we saw it in his du and if Nils can take that same line
And do like a 900 or a 720 where maybe Mikel just did like a the the back flip or the front three I think he may be in for a bit of a problem in this matchup okay heading right back up to the top Nils mck about to drop in in for his
Second run in this heat coming out of Stow Vermont remember ml carries the advantage in Nels is going to have to dig deep they both had really great first runs here we go Niels on course coming out of Stow Vermont they’re just following down through the tree line
Here all right here we go Nils right into the freestyle aspect of the course here he goes switching it up switch back five switch back wow back switch back seven for Nils my go still riding switch this is what I’m talking about Nils play to his freestyle Roots
This is what everyone is saying C five oh oh he’s still up kind of no he’s still up he’s still up that was the most aggressive non-fall I’ve ever seen in my life oh into a fresh Zone oh oh wow Nils absolutely gigantic switch back seven
Into the cab five into opening up a fresh [Applause] Zone I mean that was pretty damn sick yeah that was really sick that was insane that was one of the best runs of the day no I think so technicality wise like trick- wise absolutely yeah technicality like riding switch in powder amongst all
Those tracks has got to be so difficult so he goes sets up switch switch I I couldn’t believe it switch back sevy yeah so sick and holding on through all those tracks committing to the switch he’s real good he’s strong well he is a former Free
Ride World Tour Champion oh my gosh that is the battle right there didn’t actually go down kind of pinballed off a couple features stayed up got his head back and just launched off of this right here that was so H pill that is huge that was incredible
That was a heavy matchup once again ml carrying the advantage this is going to be tight drop these scores judges you could tell here go here we go yeah Nils takes it with one point 83.2 so Niels will move on and we will get to see more of his Backcountry freestyle at the yeti natural selection in cirk Tangers the finals Nils would love a rivan he’s a rivan guy yeah I mean who wouldn’t a rivan all right next up torer bergam
Coming out of Norway this is the scando battle and I love this tor gear perfect cap five wow hauling butt too down here through the upper portion of the course it’s incredible they’re still managing to find a couple little nuggets oh and this one’s freshy takeoffs
Yeah to gear lining up that one’s fresh there’s a lot of them in here I don’t know what he’s looking at remember they all oh boy another fast run out through those runnels oh my gosh just holding on for here life and just blows out and as
You were saying lean that stuff is like set up like cement isn’t it yeah the nice thing about them going later right now is that this sun has probably opened up a bit more terrain absolutely I mean I think that that you know there’s a lot more definition in
The snow they can actually see where they’re going but those runnels are just like so Gnarly yeah he was definitely being meticulous about his line choice in here obviously anticipating the run out was going to be just like the most aggressive thing that he’s done all day long check this out Norwegian power stance trying to get his Edge to dig in and then just gets blown
Out of his line luckily that is not his fault no he didn’t kiss that tree but that was that was a harsh run out the upper section pretty sick yeah yeah that was good so we’re going to get back up there and it’s going to be him against
Kevin Backstrom coming out of Sweden so Sweden versus Norway you know you have two guys also from Scandinavia that came from slope style backgrounds both Advance through the Duss into this you know it’s it’s it’s a lot there’s a lot on their plate well and this is very anticipated
I think a lot of people were disappointed that he didn’t advance from Jackson a couple seasons ago so Kevin is one of the most s like people are really looking forward to seeing him return to the tour got some points to make up it was was very close to AAR in the lead
After that run with maybe a bit of a blowout in the bottom in these conditions no matter what are definitely softer than the conditions he had for his duel absolutely yeah that looked like polished concrete backy tail grab looks like that’s how he started his first drive good memory [Applause] Pat coming in
Switch switch back one little back seat holding on to it Kevin with that butter 360 and just gets blown into the bottom so maybe that line was intentional we saw before we kind of thought he got bucked off of the first time he did that line
We thought he kind of get bucked into that butter 360 down that Cliff but it looks like it was completely intentional the crowd at the bottom is stoked respect the end that was so sick all right let’s check out the recap of his run there’s that tail grab
Backflip that’s where you really have to throw the brakes on there is so you don’t fly into those other smaller trees and as we’ve been saying all day this is far steeper than it looks this Z looks like it has quite nice po though yeah the Switchback one
Gets lands on kind of a mushroom I think he was just looking he was looking for this butter opportunity once again and gets bounced off that lower shelf so Kevin Backstrom unfortunately with that fall I think the advantage again run number two is going to go to Tor
Gear yeah I mean I think that’s pretty safe to say came in with the advantage he’s going to leave with the advantage but seeing that creativity seeing that uh butter it would have paid off huge how he landed there huge you heard the crowd at the bottom and that’s what you
Why Kevin’s here you want to see that riding well as we thought to gear program is moving on to the final event the finals location I should day he still needs to get his way and work his way through the semi-finals and as of right now for the
SKU correct me if I’m wrong Sage I’m speculating I think Sage is still sitting in however however two Riders yet to go as we wrap this up red Gerard will drop first followed by Travis Rice one of the most anticipated matchups we’ve had in this event the Young Buck against the veteran
Yeah matching skios in the Gerard garage with Haley his and hers his and hers wow taking the coup’s award I know the couple’s award today I think maybe going to Red Gerard and Haley langin I really you know I was hoping for a little Austin sweeten Robin Benin the van sweeten the van
Sweetens but I think it’s going to go to Haley and red as we get ready for the draw but we talked about it Travis actually came out of first run with a little breathing room he did however red is a fast learner he knows what kind of riding gave Travis that big
Score arguably I think red maybe he did a 720 but it was like not the best red 720 I think red knows from his slop style background you know years and years and years of doing that and also his experience in the back country he knows how to
Incrementally up and build and play the game you know there’s no reason uh that there is it’s no mistake that he got a gold medal at the Olympics he knew exactly how to play the game and winning dour and winning X Games and everything else that he’s won over the past few
Years he absolutely knows how to play the game and looking at Nils and Mel they opted out of the side if Travis opts out of the east side then he’s playing right into Red Zone and remember all of these Riders laced up with those deine vests it’s got their
Name on their tactical vests snow tactical you can put all kinds of stuff in there your radio your GoPro can strap on there as red drops in for his final attempt here Travis Bry has the advantage into this second matchup here we go giant inverted back seven
Totally got upside down on that one so sticking to the same line a little bit a nice grab air that was huge though front three backy big backy [Applause] oh my gosh this a real night nail biter yeah I feel like I just woke up from anesthesia ah I’m back I’m conscious I’m
Conscious again here we [Applause] go all right so check it out here where red comes in this is a gigantic backside seven and gets upside down and Stomps that thing out then he comes in here Little Indie pops a front side 360 so he’s stacking tricks up top and then comes
Into this giant backflip and that’s where the point of contention is it does kind of look like he threw the heels in to slow down a little bit probably whed himself out on the landing so re Gerard trying to make up for the difference with some
Tricks the judges are like uh you know if you are in the white out in the middle of your run is that going to affect your score well and it’s it’s a very interesting thing because Travis Rice and they alluded to this in the in the
Other group that was in here doing the talking before we came in rice is very good at white out management and Slough management he’s he has an uncanny ability to know exactly what he needs to do to keep his line of sight and you have to when you’re doing the lines that he
Does so Travis Rice coming out of Jackson Hole Wyoming father father of two baby on the way he wants to bring home some bacon from this event being his brainchild these Stakes are very very very high here going into the final day as Travis Rice drops in for the
Final run of the day here at the yeti natural selection Revel stok switch back actually backside seven so solid and perfect into a freshy Zone oh wild front five somehow pulls it back revert that was a very cat-like instincts being put into effect well you you’d expect like
Untracked takeoffs Midway bottom of the course but at the top he definitely just sniff that one out he did go huge I’ll say that Travis Bryce went absolutely massive he may not have grabbed Travis may not have grabbed that uh dipped shoulder 540 he may have
Opened up a little bit but it was massive and he didn’t go down on it red I think had a little bit more composure in his tricks but still Travis was taking the big risks opening up a new line I think this is going to be really
Hard for red score to take down what Travis just threw down so here we go Travis Rice in the lead with the advantage will R Gerard be able to make up the difference let’s check it out here from the top Pat what went right well certainly starting things out with this
720 classic Travis right classic he can do that one in his sleep and then here he is finding a whole new fresh take off dude what a cat that was insane because he was heading right for the shrubs on that one Gets it back together spins it around C five gets a c 540 nose grab a little bit of an indie off of that or technically that’ be a front side air for him yeah that was that’s that’s a heavy match up right here yeah right so we just ran through 48 runs
That’s a lot of riding on one slope yeah this this slope is beaten it has been given a beating by these Riders so let’s this is the final matchup of the day who is going to be moving on between the Young Buck and the veteran into the cirk Tangers portion of
Natural selection brought To Us by Yeti let’s check it out Redwood the spin up top yep and then the 720 huge grabbed inverted stomped that was so sick and I will argue that grabbing mute and getting upside down on a 720 is probably more difficult than grabbing nose the
Way that Travis did it just by virtue of technicality of the trick and where it was placed there’s that back flip so we got to compare and contrast those to Travis’s run and is it going to be enough to make up the difference that’s the question you know the judges are
Doing Duty right now oh my gosh this is going to be intense oh my gosh I want to see this what are the scores they are definitely deliberating hard and I’ve got to say that these judges here I can’t even really talk smack on the judges too much today
Because they’re all so damn good really incredible snowboarders all of them here we go come oh my gosh we have scores coming in coming in the Travis Rice 82.5 TI tie bre this is a tie this makes sense that’s that is absolutely insane I want to get an official word on this what’s
What’s Happening Here can can there be ties t- bird help us they go to the first run score all right we are here with Travis Rice Travis have you ever won on a tie never one on a tie there’s a first time for everything I think the red and
I should just go tie break this thing with uh with barf fight right now look at it yes should we get your bump up there I mean look at it I’m not going to lie that last run took the judges a long time but I see after watching the Recaps
Why it took so long that was a pretty kind of blow for blow Style run from both you and red yeah man it uh I don’t know getting the pleasure to dance with red I mean he’s such a talented individual I’ve looked up to him for many years
Since you know the leadup couple years him going out and being the complete wild card into the Olympics and not even that he won the Olympics like the Olympics but it’s it’s like who he was through it um um so it’s an honor to be
Able to go yeah like you said blow for blow with them I mean yeah it it could could have gone either way um I thought his first run was super clean um I don’t envy being a judge out here it’s tough how do you balance you know Free Ride components to Freestyle
Components I frankly kind of wanted to see red um roll out to that Glory finals face that um is going to be run later this week um yeah honored uh if you’re watching really appreciate you tuning in thank you this stuff is crazy uh to throw
These types of events uh from the back country well hey man congratulations you did it again thank you yeah well we just on to the next phase of the journey um but yeah thank you everybody for tuning in can’t do it without you guys thank you Travis for putting on a
Show now this is the way it goes they did tie on those scores The judges had to go and look at these Recaps they wanted to get this right because of the implications of this final run it ends up going to who had the higher first run score and that would be Travis Rice by virtue of him going absolutely bucknasty on run number
One thoughts you guys cuz this is this is kind of heavy Pat I one thoughts from you first well I think the flow of Red’s run Trump travises red really flowed incredibly see right here where he’s putting on the brakes to keep him from going over the falls but he knows where
He’s at he knows what he wants to do here I’ll play Devil’s Advocate I feel like if you’re if you’re looking at this in the true judging criteria of what natural selection is yes Red’s run flowed from top to bottom better that is my opinion but I
Also think that red was riding like a slope style he knew where he was going he was playing to the favorites Leanne do you agree with that assessment kind of you know that they it was an even matchup but then you go back to the first run score and Travis
Definitely kind of took a more nasty line yeah for sure um honestly I’m I’m stomped I didn’t know who was going to win and I think that was the right call was even the only point that I have the point of contention is that I mean
Look Travis would not have put that in his video part he would not have put the wild style attempted front side 720 loose into an inverted 540 in his video like it’s not like that wasn’t on purpose so that’s where my point of contention is on run number two run number one
Easy winner for me I think that Travis took the craziest line maybe one of the craziest lines the day so I think the advantage goes to him but I’m not a judge I just talk smack about him on TV no I more fun I agree with you but I
Think in second R I would have given it personally I would have given the edge to Rett all right well let’s go down to t- bird who has got the latest recipient of a brand new turbo sco Sage kotenberg yeah thank you Todd and everyone in the booth today you absolutely crushed it
I’m standing here with our men’s highest qualifier of the day sitting on a fat score of 85 this right here is sage kenberg and this right here is going to be his new snowmobile Sage how you feeling bro dude I’m so hyped right now this is insane super sick yeah you’ve
Been on the turby yet I I have I have one right now but it’s uh it ain’t this it ain’t this well hey man congratulations you absolutely crushed it out there today you showed up you showed out here’s what I think I think you just take this thing for a test
Drive right now let’s fire this thing up dud all right brother all right thanks T [Applause] Bird nothing would give me more pleasure if he just bogs this thing right now all right t- Bird back to you for another thought here towards the end of the day all right well hey Sage is out we’re GNA take off but I want to thank all of
You for tuning in today and watching and thank you to all of the announcers in the booth here’s to another incredible day in the mountains cheers t- bird cheers t- bird wo here’s Sage congrats sounds like oh a warm up big congrats out to everyone that went out there and absolutely killed it
Today and a huge huge shout out to everyone that brought this broadcast to you everyone is trying their absolute best to make the impossible possible so everyone at home can view the incredible riding from this group of individuals as we watch Sage complet bog a snowmobile right now all right wow
What a day cheers you guys Cheers Cheers let’s enjoy some Pub beer and this is the sick day custom can brewed by 10 Barrel Brewing and we’re going to go to break right now when we come back we’re going to bring you the natural refle natural Reflections post show I haven’t
Even had a sip yet I’m just punch drun we’ll be right back When the perfect power exists it’ll be Fusion a never-ending River of energy to tap into at any moment it will be carbon free radioactive free and power everything on Earth and when that perfect power exists we’ll deliver it with the flip of a switch hey what’s up everyone it’s Travis and
Cam here you might have already heard but we dropped an amazing Marketplace app called cendy last year it’s buy sell or rent adventure sports gear anywhere in North America Radio check yeah I got eyes on You oh take a breath everyone this is natural Reflections uh sat in the studio with Mary Walsh Eddie wall and Todd Richard what just happened it feels a little bit like that doesn’t it yeah it really does I’ve told I’ve got to say congratulations I spat
My tea and then my beer about five times at the end of that uh broadcast yeah and Ed Le better you not me that’s really where I’m at right now look the battle between Travis and red I think the judges did the right thing by taking all
That time and really trying to get it right you could tell they were trying to Liam Griffin up there was like I want the judges to have every single angle before they make a decision on this but that’s how close it was and we pulled it all apart you called it perfectly Travis
Losing that front set but then it felt like he made up for that yeah you know in my opinion I think that I do think that the disadvantage that red had was he he wore a Groove in the course okay and the thing that the judges don’t want like Credo is all
About trying to experiment and find your way down while taking these big risks Red’s a slope style Rider and you can see that and I think it’s inert I do I would do the same thing I would find something I like I know what my trajectory is I know what this takeoff
Is like and I know where I can hunt and Peck and stack these things almost like a slope style Red’s an amazing Back Country Rider I’m taking nothing away from his riding abilities but when you play to the criteria I think Travis played to the criteria of what natural
Selection looks for a little bit better I will take away though I know that rice rice doesn’t doesn’t like to get wild style in the air he wouldn’t want that had he laced that front seven I think it would have been a really easy call here’s here’s one thing that we
Discussed though Travis hadn’t ridden down that West face exactly that was his first run down there exactly and he opened up a couple features with freshy takeoffs yeah the front 540 even though he opened it up and you know stopped the rotation was big and he still stomped it
You know little quick rever at the end there but like his back seven nose was big and clean the front five little wild but big and the cab five was a lot bigger once we saw angle it was far bigger than I it looks from straight on y okay enough of our
Ramblings we’re going to get stuck into the runs of the day now uh first we’re going to kick off with the women’s and it’s none other than Haley langland she takes home the skido for this run and you’ve got to hand it to Haley going up against the queen of
Natural selection Zoe Sadowski Center love to see Haley in the driver’s seat and this run really epitomized just I think the the hours that she’s been stacking in the back country coupled on top of her contest experience you I feel like you know Haley’s style she has one of my favorite
Styles in snowboarding across the board and she just flows she’s small in stature but she makes up for she’s a very powerful rider that’s a little bit on the smaller side and she takes advantage of her lightweight abilities to bounce through the the the course and the powder or whatever she’s riding it’s
Fantastic to watch okay next up we have the one and only Sage kotenberg this one a lot of people I think Sage thought Sage was on the back foot because he was up against Dustin Craven the man who actually put this course together built 40 platforms through the summer alongside his crew
But Sage came out with this and give the judges no choice all I’m going to say is carts fired okay everyone take notice cuz Sage gootenberg is coming for the title I was still trying to get cod’s fired that’s pretty good that’s pretty good Todd it’s a lack of oxygen Eddie really
You’re quick and I am not but uh this is the highlight of the whole run I think everybody was just going to be impressed if he was able to make it down this run if he was going to be able to air off the bottom and then surprises us all
With this quick hop around toeside turn into the backside three this is a leap of faith right here right here this is incredible and just stomp in that what it looked apparently like a flat Landing full meteor into that Landing too yeah that was yeah I
Think no doubt that one wins run of the day easy yeah truly phenomenal you had no business with that three uh if you’re interested both uh Haley and Sage will take home the 2025 Road tax e tech uh skidos at top of the line those new
Skidos go out on April the 2nd if you go out and invest in one of those right now you can choose between three years of coverage or you can get a th000 bucks worth of skito apparel or uh accessories free with your new sled so definitely
Check that out uh now we’ve got uh the move on and this is going to be interesting to see what everyone thinks uh sendy send of the day it’s the Online Marketplace turn your gear Into Cash best thing you saw and then we’ll go and
Have a look and see what it is Eddie you start because you’re looking terrified um oh man that’s tough I mean honestly I was gonna if that question was asked to me I was going to say sage is backside three so at right now I’m at a little
Loss for words I know what it I know I’ll stop because I know what mine would have been had it been landed Kevin’s Ole to butter switch back one out down that last face if I can’t use Sage’s back three I’m going to go with uh Jared
Elon’s line at the bottom the kind of double Gap uh double pillow tap I’m going straight Tor gear right off the nose of the feature that everyone was hunting and pecking around off to the side he went straight off the nose and basically went as far out and as flat as
You could possibly go and did the best with a flat Landing that you possibly could yeah and with that one we could give like you win a free knee surgery or something oh it’s wonderful do we have an orthopedic sponsor that seems like socialized medicine he’s fine oh yeah
What about you Mary I want to comment on the women’s side that’s okay so can we talk about hanab beiman opening up the entire East venue I feel like that’s deserving of something yep absolutely okay I can tell you that one of you is right oh okay what does that mean ah
Very nice it’s for me it’s a repeat of that pipeline moment we saw in surfing earlier in the year like Hana Bean chasing beating everyone to the punch on the east side of the venue and she properly went there didn’t she oh my gosh you love to see and I think Hana is
I mean we talk about Travis Rice being the one who says I’m either open up the course or I’m going to close it down Hana is the same kind of Rider she has so much experience so much depth that she makes a statement and allows other
People to follow that with her and build confidence in that way and also I’ll say this too taking that risk because the ski patrol up at Revel Stoke was definitely telling these Riders look this whole thing can move it moved already this morning it’s very dicey and
Spicy over there and for her to have to put all that away and open up that new line that definitely you know it’s got to be worth something well and on top of that Neils Minnick dropped in what three four runs later up against michl bang
And took exactly the same line he back threed that last Cliff but it it puts what Hana did in perspective like that uh Hana winning that send of the day courtesy of the sendy app uh the place where you can turn your gear Into Cash
You can also so give it a second life so people don’t have to buy new gear all the time wherever you’re traveling you save on excess baggage turn up somewhere else rent some gear off someone so you give gear as much use as possible uh Hana is won a th000 bucks worth of
Credit to use on the sendy app as well now it’s on to the men uh we’re just going to take a quick look now at the men’s send of the day it was Todd Richards you called it to really yes I love it when the commentators always right
Check look at this he only just held on to that he could have elevated himself all the way down there and it’s it’s so flat he had at least three Flaps in there with his arms before he made impact he was winding the windows down in a mous watch The Deep Impact here
That’s gigantic yeah that’s a massive it’s well over 40 it’s probably in the 50t range look at this boom Oh My Gosh just being to hold on to that wow fur forged in the fire as the that’s right oh my goodness that boy he’s we talked about him at the start
Here is pure power a lot of whole milk growing up you know what I’m saying yeah definitely not a lactose intolerant individual okay I think the biggest like if we start looking at the bigger picture though we’ve drilled in on a couple of runs couple of moments there
Let’s look at the bigger picture there were some huge scals taken today we’ll start in the women’s three previous champions hyp Robin van Jin and Zoe Sadowski sinot and then previous event winner Hana Beaman the four incumbents from natural selection all out I mean no
One saw this coming Todd I didn’t see it coming and this was the only really cerous piece of judging that I really saw today was I wasn’t so sure that Robin should have been the one that was eliminated by virtue of what she had going on with the backflip and how
Smooth she rode that run but once again I guess it falls into what are the judges looking for natural selection is a completely different event than anything else in the planet this is the criteria and if you are going and putting yourself over exposure and things that are far more steep than the
Average person would consider comfortable that’s what gets rewarded and I guess I just have to live with that yeah and another thing to be said is a these judges judge professionally contests all around the world year round and they’ve been doing it for years and not only that they can all every single
One of those judges could take runs on that course and and probably take solid runs on that course so I mean there’s something to be said for that I have coming from a judging past I tend to be very because generally if you have a a
Kind of a something to pick with the judges they whenever they describe why they did what they did after you sit down with them and you you calmly talk about it you walk away being like that makes total sense and unfortunately they can’t do that to every single critic out
There you know there there are some events where you see judges wandering out of bars at 3:00 a.m. and then walking to the judges Boo at 7 but and I’ve never done that I can tell you that EDD goes to sleep early he needs his rest I do but
Then yeah this is not as you just said this is not the case and we discussed at length last year that Travis versus Dustin semi-final in Revel Stoke and in the you re-watching in the heat the moment you see something you rewatch it with a judge’s explanation and it all
Starts to make sense see something say something yeah that’s what I know is you know can I bring it outside the judges and also thank you to the judges you guys have the toughest job out there um so you guys are great but uh I want to
Bring it up to just the writers and the women’s the where where Women’s Backcountry writing is right now and I think that’s part of what’s having what is so cool about having Leanne on site today is that she’s done a lot to help bring other women up with her through
Filming through Crews everything like that but what we’re seeing natural selection is such an upleveling of talent just from time in the mountains having the the access to this kind of terrain the riders that are that are here taking runs year after year is just having everyone rise and so the
Competitive field is getting enriched it’s really exciting I mean it’s like you can see it today we had four of the best women Riders you know be defeated in competition by four other of the best women Riders I mean it’s amazing to watch what’s fascinating though uh like
Take a look through we talked at the start that first match up between torstein and Martin MCM Morris those two classic superpower Nations Canada and Norway they’ve dominated slope style competitions for the last 15 20 years look at the power that we had in there from Norway you got Mel bang youve got
Torstein hogo you’ve got toia berrim but then rck Bader was down there watching you start looking at staray sandbeck Alec ostring like there’s so much you heard about ter hawson is he Norwegian yeah he’s Norwegian um no you have to yeah and like you said it’s it’s the
Lineage and the history and the influence of Norway on snowboarding I mean Daniel Frank you think about all these people that have made such incredible marks and this is just the newest generation of writers and it will go on for years and years and years and
Also for the people out there who aren’t familiar with the size of the mountains in Norway they are not they are small they’re like smaller than east coast like Pennsylvania Resorts that’s the south of the M the South the country the linging Alps up north if you’re prepared to live with nomadic
Reindeer herders and eat dried fish for weeks on end then the linging Els have got some big mountains yes absolutely I guess what I was referring to is like where most of these pro riders come from and grew up riding are very small like you know kind of uh one two chairlift
Type Resorts and it’s pretty impressive to see the that level of riding come out of resorts that small well what’s fascinating you look at someone like Cleveland in dbass he’s got a rope toe it’s almost like Red’s backyard but the frequency of hits he’s getting there is what’s created that repetition and
Consistency Y and it’s exactly the same theory for meia Brooks all riders that one day we hope we’ll see I think you know something that’s really interesting is to see these slop style Riders be able to switch and go into the back country because that’s always kind of
How it starts it’s like someone that ride slop St really well is great off a groomed Park takeoff and then you take him into the back country it’s a little rough at first but it seems like that transition in the back country is becoming easier and easier for these
Riders I mean look at red red just really started venturing into the back country and hitting big jumps into deep powder Landings not very long ago four or five years ago but I think his video Parts in sequencer and short and sweet with Ben Ferg proved we talked about
This a bit earlier I think he’s the natural successor to Travis’s Crown at the moment his trick selection is to rain read his ability and variable snow in the next 10 years he’s what we saw he took Travis all the way there today but you almost have to come from that if you
Want to have good style in the air you need to come from Roots of slope style I mean Ferguson pipe Austin sweeten was a form Young Blood kid who came up on rail trips and hit and park jumps all these people and you can kind of tell the ones
That didn’t because they go to the free ride T well on to piggyback that point look at Mark McMorris so back in the day a few years ago in order uh one of the qualifying spots to get into natural selection would be was a gold medal at
The X Games and Mark McMorris won the X Games and Mark McMorris got into natural selection it was his first time going and it was on Scary Cherry out in bald face and Mark obviously we all know one of the best snowboarders in the world he did not look experienced in the back
Country during that and to see where he progressed to isane one quick interjection is can’t forget about you mentioned halfpipe we have Ben Ferguson El height Ryu Karama from the DU too we have to mention halfpipe Riders because they’re yeah Dustin Craven great calls Minnick I mean all these halfpipe riders
That they edging is brings them right to the back country in the same way but then there’s a chin first approach the one that always stands out to me is Zoe like she had you take it okay Jackson bold face you you have a line of sight
On those faces to go into that Rebel Stoke venue last year that bowling ball effect and ride as Jake Phelps at Thrasher would have called it chin first into some big blind rolls and as fast and non- hesitating as she was that was to me it was spectacular okay uh we’re
Going to take you now into day two that wraps up the qualifying day of the Yeti natural selection in Revel Stoke we’re moving on to Selkirk Tangers for our finals day and this is what the women’s bracket looked like uh we’ve got that slope we talked about slopestar Riders
Crossing into the back country Haley langland the best example going up against the ex Free Ride World Tour Champion Maran ay and then we’ve got probably the goat of women’s slope style Jamie Anderson going up against the woman who rode out of her skin today some of the best runs we’ve ever seen
From Mary Rand on the other side of the draw though it’s it’s up for grabs that rivan you I right now I think I’d put a pin in Jamie maybe but I’d love to see Haley there as well I mean I think Maran has a great opportunity there because
She’s so well versed in fre and also Mary Rand rode so well today and she is in Baker she trains there I mean you know that’s her home territory is riding that kind of big line yeah and I’m I’m just saying don’t count on Haley because
I think that she has the momentum now going into this don’t count on her or count on don’t don’t count her out don’t just Jamie Jamie’s great but I think Haley’s a little sneaky he’s going to sneak in there okay yeah a lot a lot of different styles there Eddie y yeah nope
I agree I agree with Todd and don’t count out Haley yeah it’s anyone don’t count on Haley Four Women lots of talent anyone’s game okay now let’s have a look at the graphics for the men’s and you can see the scouts that were taken today uh Torin hogo knocking out Martin MCM
Morris Sage knocking out Dustin Austin taking Ben fer that was a battle of the Giant and then Mikey cicerelli the young Canadian taking out Blake Paul Jared ston on Chris Ras uh that I think one of the biggest battles Neils Minnick versus ml bang a switch backside seven in the back
Country everyone toy bergam knocked out Kevin Backstrom and then it came down to a tiebreaker uh in the second run so Travis’s first run score is what took him through against red Gerard and I mean we I think are we are we going to see Sage torstein Austin miky Jared Nils
Toia Travis and toia Travis wow that is that’s like a battle of the powerlifters I can’t wait to see you know like once once these Riders get through today now they can kind of relax a little bit and you know this was the battle to get into this final event in
Sell Kirk Tangers I can’t wait to see Austin sweeten Unleashed on some bigger open terrain without so many trees to slow him down that’s I get excited to watch that kind of riding yeah I’m going to double back on that too because I think that’s going going to be
Incredible um I’m really really excited to see Nils in his first Finals day I think that’s going to be super exciting and after I think what saying on what you said Todd with that Travis doesn’t like to be kind of untethered in the air that way I think he’s going to go into
Finals day like you know very focused and eyes on the prize I’ve seen a couple of sneak peeks of some of the venues in cirk town Jers they’re a lot more open and I think that Nils Minnick given the space to open up his switch riding could
Be one of the dis in factors yeah I agree but I also we can’t count out uh Jared ston yeah young Powerhouse yeah the dark Ro pretty well okay we’re going to be back uh I think uh April 2nd I might get corrected on that in my ear
Very shortly but we will have the finals day from cirk sorry April 4th there you go I told you the squirrel would be in my ear April 4th we’ll be back with the yeti natural selection from Selkirk Tangers top eight men top four women battling it out for those rivan
R1ts we’ll also be uh announcing who won the boa dialed in awards from today the most creative and unique takes on the Montana Bowl in Revel Stoke Mountain Resort all that’s left for us to say is thank you so much to all of the partners who make natural selection possible
Thank you all for your support we’re going to leave you now with some highlights from the first day of competition cheers Che to you all 10 Barrel Brewing Pub beer thanks for a sick day Cheers Cheers Cheers Cheers you guys got it there we go my name is Carter Westfall I’m a
Co-founder and CEO of natural selection I want to take this time to recognize the partners um who are part of natural selection because without their support none of what you’re seeing would be possible you know our story goes back to the fall of 2020 when Yeti’s CEO Matt
Ryes visit Travis and I at Jackson hle together we walked the course at Jackson and they could Envision what we were trying to create something super Innovative really taking a whiteboard and creating something special and new and they took a risk on us so now we’re in our fourth year and
Just working with incredible Partners who are all playing a super functional role to how we execute the events Partners we work with are instrumental to getting the job done relying really heavily on the gear and equipment that we bring out with us to have a good day out there we work with
Some of the highest caliber athletes in the field and we work with some of the best crews in the field and there’s this expectation that our gear keeps up with us and our equipment keeps up with us and I’m really proud of the partners we work with I’m really stoked to work with
The partners we work with and really grateful in what we get to do because of them I mean our whole outfit everything we do is supported by our partners and last but not least I want to give a special thank you to Red Bull they’ve been with us from day one
They’re bringing all this content to a global audience and we couldn’t be here without their Support the most prestigious contest in snowboarding the best Riders incredible natural terrain perfect conditions this is the yeti natural selection live from Revel Stoke Mountain Resort a backside seven stomping Mar memoris xgame slope gold medalist in 2023 double Wild on to It wow oh my God that was so Wow the judges are looking for people to Chuck and uh Sage understood the assignment let’s just say [Applause] that big big score at the moment Sage kotenberg sitting in the position for that skido Austin smen returning after your Hiatus sweet tucked in behind Sage kotenberg for highest score of the Day oh massive pop on that Method Ben Ferguson is out stayed on his feet overall smooth run for to be reckoned with wow big names going out in the first of our four matchups there we have eight riders that are coming in here for the women for head-to-head unfortunately someone has to go home Zoe sski Senate
Will start us off here in the women’s quarterfinal run number one here we go Get that forward pointed you can really see if she took full speed off that she would have landed in the parking Lot So Lena a little back that 360 up top now she gets into the meat potatoes this run check this out she’s on top of a very steep shoot wow there’s that pre style tenden Su sh Backlip haly langland will be the winner and go home with a brand new scoo and also the point leader heading into the Finals Down Down commits oh and wow Jed makes a huge statement in the first run of his Battle it is the Norwegian giant melb that big 170 Okays M dropping In straight off the nose oh my God gigantic drop there some T Gear just as you’re getting into the Ste stuff oh my God hold it backside seven stomping it feel my heart out of my chest right Now pins it out of the [Applause] bottom [Applause] besta Whoa yeah nails That Switch back five switch back four wow seven for nil this is what I’m talking about nil is playing to his freestyle Roots cap five oh oh he’s still up kind of no he’s still up he’s still that was the most aggressive non-fall I’ve ever seen in my life Wows absolutely gigantic switch back Seven With That oh w front Somehow [Applause] He What
18 Comments
Why I am subed to redbull?
Tonight we shall drink from CURVED horns ahahahah. Lets do this! Gonna be so RAD
Sean Palmer for the win
Poop shart?
Pop tart
one of the best competitions ive seen in snowboarding
Marion Haerty rode such an epic line, well deserved
why a british guy for announcing the event?
The announcer chick Mary is annoying AF. I can’t even watch.
Skip the intro…..
Commentating is so bad it’s funny
3:59:07 for Travis's 1st run
This happened like two weeks ago.
and I haven't heard shit about the rest of the contest since then. live feed was crap and then to top it off the judges can't pick a winner? lol
_" Hi, I've been riding 15 years. Won World Cup, 4 X-games, I can pipe, freestyle or backcountry and I have dozens of vidéo parts to support that"
_" Nice, a new rookie ! "
Travis Rice privilege again. Red should have won that battle and they knew but obviously wanted to put Travis through which is why they tied the score
Hello. I am asking for a friend (lol): what about those NFTs that Travis and NST Crew promoted 2 years ago? The money was taken, they promised people NFTs and wallet integration, and nothing happened. Time goes by… 2 years… the money was taken, and…
People still haven’t received the NFTs to trade on an open market. NST hasn't delivered that part, the most important part. A so called NFT is worthless if people are not able to own and sell it. Thanks in the name of all people who are still waiting for some answers… Peace and love!
Travis Rice had better runs in my opinion straight up.