1st Place Montafon FWQ 3*
/After a really fun week in Verbier sending a few big cliffs and riding in some new areas, I travelled up to Austria to compete in the Open Faces FWQ 3* at Silvretta Montafon.
After having a fair amount of downtime post-Andorra, my goal for the comp was to try and find a pretty simple line with some big airs in it to keep my head in the game for the next FWT stop in Fieberbrunn.
The day before I left Verbier, I managed to find some great stuff to jump off while filming with Charlotte Percle for our FWT Rookies project. That was an excellent warm up for the comp and I was able to ski pretty much the exact kind of line that I had imagined.
I stuck to the plan of simple and picked three main cliffs with a small booter in the middle.
I was mostly focussed on nailing the last two airs, as they were the biggest and most technical, so I skied pretty casually between features.
Although I moved a bit slower than I really wanted, I am super happy with the drops and I am feeling great for FWT stop 3!
The last cliff of my line at montafon
Below is the replay of my run, it was posted in slowmo so if you want to see it in regular speed you will need to click the settings icon (the little gear in the bottom right of the video) and change the speed to 2.
Drew is in the black, I'm on the left. This was taken after the Castle Mountain FWQ 3* in Canada in 2013. We are on snowblades.
On a side note, while I was in Verbier I had an unexpected link up in Verbier with Drew Peterson, a friend I last saw in the U.S in 2013 when we were competing together on the American FWQ circuit.
He had just finished filming in Kyrgyzstan and figured he'd drop by Switzerland for his first time riding in the Alps.
While he was in town we skied a few areas that were new to me on the backside of Mt Fort, under guidance of locals Yann Rausis and Adrien Hildebrandt. We also had the opportunity to climb and ski the famous Bec des Rosses (The comp face for the FWT grand final) with Kiwi freeriders, Sam Smoothy and Craig Murray.
The Bec is truly an amazing face and until skiing it I never realised how bloody steep the top section is!
It is safe to say the mountains in this part of the world are amazing!
Upper Dogleg couloir
Drew slapping a sweet turn in upper dogleg
Craig, Drew and Hugo
Charlotte Percle nailing the film game in Verbier!
