The last couple days in Ski Arpa have been pretty unique. Ski Arpa is an amazing little cat operation in the middle of the Andes. To get there you drive an hour and half from Los Andes up a very windy road where chains are mandatory on a 4 wheel drive car. A few of us rented a truck so we drove up to the mountain for the three days of competition, Arpa received about 2 feet of snow which made the conditions pretty ideal. It turned blue on our first inspection day and as we unloaded the cat at the top of our venue you could see Aconcagua very large in the distance. The Andes stretched along for miles. It was so beautiful, I felt so lucky to be here. We had the entire place to ourselves which was a new experience. The venue that we were given for day one was pretty small and did not have a lot of options. I found a line that had two 15 foot airs with fast fluid skiing in between.
The North Face Chilean Freeskiing Championships — Finals Day Highlights from Subaru Freeskiing World Tour on Vimeo.
I felt that I had some confidence after the las Lenas , but as always I was Still really nervous in the start gate. I only was able to do 4 turns before my first air which is always a little hard on the legs with no warm-up. I came out of my top air with a lot of speed and skied fluidly into my second air and had no problems with the landing. As I skied through the finish I was psyched with my run, but not entirely sure how it would score. A couple of the other girls skied some more unique lines and even if they were easier i had a feeling they might score higher. I was in third place after day one and was ready for another run. The second day venue ended up being to rocky for us to compete so as athletes we decided to go back to the day 1 venue. To make it fair the judges decided to do best out of 2 runs. I decided to ski the line that had won the previous day to see if I could better my score. For some reason it did not score that high and I was not able to better my 3 rd place finish. In the end I was stoked to be on the podium again and am now leading the tour going into the season. That also marked my 20th career podium. I am off to Termas De Chillan for a few days of skiing and then back home on Friday.
Subaru FWT Day One Highlights Ski Arpa from Subaru Freeskiing World Tour on Vimeo.
Here are 2 videos with highlights I will not be able to post photos until I am home! Thanks everyone for all the support, I feel very lucky!!
