Red Bull Heli Skiing – The Red Bull Cold Rush
The Red Bull Cold Rush event took place at the beginning of this month and as promised delivered some jaw dropping action from some of the world’s best freeskiers. Each competitor got the use of a helicopter to whisk him or her up the Silverton Mountain in Colorado to begin their runs down.
While you may not have the skills of these amazing athletes, a heli ski holiday with us at Last Frontier will ultimately give you a sense of what these guys do for a profession. You may not be skiing or riding extreme terrain, but it will be exhilarating nonetheless. Plus you’ll get to ski a whole lot more runs than they got to!
The Red Bull Cold Rush is a freestyle meets freeride event, this year held in the Rocky Mountains resort of Silverton. Dane Tudor took this year’s men’s title, and the women’s went to Rachel Burks. During the three-day event, all the athletes battled for the title of best all-round skier in this peer judged competition. Unlike other freeride big mountain events, three disciplines are ran over the three days to attain the best all-round skier: slopestyle, cliff, and big mountain. Slopestyle is incorporated into the big lines with manmade jumps built to specification.
These are not any old booters though; a lot of thought went into keeping them in the style of Silverton and it’s mining history. The first jib in one of the lines consists of 24-foot-long railroad tracks built from beetle kill timber. Another feature even has a timber-framed mineshaft built into the face of the jump, with room underneath to actually go inside.
To construct these, and other similar jumps, crews of workers had to wrestle 800-pound log cabin walls into a long line from a heli. In this environment the helicopters play a vital role, not only for the transportation of the skiers, as we do here in northern BC, but for helping to build the course.
The competition wasn’t without its share of crisis though. The first day’s big mountain discipline was put on hold due to a large avalanche wiping out a third of the course area. Competitors were forced to rethink their lines as safety runs were carried out to assess the stability of the rest of the snow. Thankfully the rest of the snowpack was deemed stable and the athletes put the risk to the backs of their minds to pull out some amazing runs. These kinds of competitions are great for skiing in general, but they certainly get us pumped up for a great days heli skiing in our own, just as awesome terrain.
As a sport heliskiing rarely makes big time coverage across the networks, but when it does, it’s worth watching. Inspiration for your next holiday, sure. So check out what we’ve got going here in BC. You’ll find more smiles and miles of vertical than anywhere else on the planet – and no film crews getting in your way!
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