This past weekend, I headed to Jay Peak to meet Mike Rogge, who was running Ski The East’s Freeride Tour and the IFSA extreme competition at Jay.  After going on an extended diatribe making fun of Jon (BroBomb editor) and painting a picture of him standing in the park making fun of kids with baggy clothes while he cruises by in a jean jacket, leather pants, and feathers in his hair; Rogge suddenly changed subjects:  “Just write a positive article for once.”  Wow.  I’ll admit that in the increasing spite I’ve felt towards the world since writing for this blog, the idea of writing a purely positive article was a new and uncomfortable idea.  Could I go another week without trying to do harm to someone’s reputation in the ski industry?  Without venting there was no way I was going to be able to hold it together enough to be cheery on sales calls for SASS.  But thankfully I saw some performances this past weekend at the Ski The East Freeride Tour’s Jay Peak IFSA “extreme” comp that inspired me to positivity despite my ardent efforts to remain miserable.

  The Jay Peak stop, which has been cancelled the last two years because of either weather or lack of snow, took place on Upper River Quai for the first day’s qualifiers, and the infamous Tram Face for finals.  The two venues represented two of the most wretched, evil-looking courses ever to be associated with ski competition, with rocks and exposed sections peppering both venues, and a healthy slush on the day of the qualifiers freezing overnight and morphing into frozen mash potatoes for the finals with cold, snowy weather doing nothing to soften the course.  Still, while most of the competitors had supreme difficulty navigating the icy intervals between rocks that constituted a venue, the Jay locals were out in force and absolutely sending it, proving that this corner of Vermont, close enough to Canada for the base lodge to serve poutine, is home to some of the gnarliest amateurs in the ski world.

    After the full field spent Saturday getting their first round of core shots on Upper River, the group was narrowed down for Sunday’s final.  The Tram Face, perhaps the East Coast’s best venue for an “extreme” competition, was looking twice as extreme on Sunday with the upgraded conditions.  One strategy to overcome the heightened sense of danger was simply to remain oblivious, as James Fater did by pulling a maneuver similar to Owen Wilson’s cameo performance in the Girl skateboard movie Yeah Right:no warm up, first try… bitch.  After spending the previous evening playing flipcup late into the night, Fater showed up to the finals having not taken a run, and proceeded to take one big arcing turn over an exposed rock face, managed to hold some sort of edge over another exposed section, and then pointed it through a group of trees with two feet of spacing to launch a double jump into the bottom mogul section.  All on park skis.

    The rest of the Jay Peak Video crew was out in force, including Kevin Joudrey’s sailing 2nd place performance and Tim Fater’s camera, which unintentionally pulled out the only straightline of the comp when Tim dropped it and watched it tumble over a cliff and into a stand of trees.   But it was Jay’s instructors that really brought it home.  Skier Dave Wadleigh put down one of the smoothest runs of the day to land himself in third, and despite getting “lost in the woods” on his run, Ryan “Nelson” Nelson put on a show as one of the only snowboarders in the finals.  But it was Jay’s Dominick Malaussena who laid down the biggest run of the day, carrying more speed than anyone through the course and narrowly avoiding the trees while speeding out towards the judges.  Dominick had to replace his heel piece between runs Sunday, and stuck his run despite it.  When asked about his line selection, he said simply that when he had gone to bed on Saturday, he had “imagined myself jumping off of some shit.”  Bravado was apparently the key to his success.  “You gotta understand today, that you rock,” Dominick said.  “You have to do three things: make a plan, take your time, and know you’re the man.”  As is necessary for anyone who claims any sort of status as a big-mountain skier, Dominick had a series of one-liners to explain other mottos that helped him succeed, such as “it’s not icy, it’s just fast,” “if you can see it, you can ski it,” and “keep the skis between the trees.”  Dominick was awarded with a Ski The East Burger King crown and $100 for his efforts absolutely shredding something no one born west of the Mississippi would have ever skied.

    Equally as notable was Ashley Maxfield, who smoked the women’s division and got the second-highest score of the day.  Another Jay instructor, Ashley got into her racer stance and sat on the tongue of her boots, absolutely charging down the face, popping between moguls without flinching and maintaining perfect form all the way to the judge’s stand and the raucous applause of the crowd.  If Tanner Hall had been there he would have surely knighted her with that title won by hammer-throwing fixtures like Sean Petit and Sage Catabriga-Alosa: that of “real skier.”  For now she’ll have to settle for a SASS/Dakine backpack and the comp’s Cliff Huxtable award.  Ashley is now in a three-way tie in the overall STEFT point standings going into next weekend’s finals at Mad River Glen.

Results

Women

1)      Ashley Maxfield

2)      Paige Fitzgerald

3)      Jenny Veilleux

Men

1)      Dominick Malaussena

2)      Kevin Joudrey

3)      Dave Wadleigh

Junior Girls

1)      Jillian Collins

2)      Olivia Malaussena

Junior Boys

1)      Alex Krylor

2)      Jody Haig

3)      Ryan Amsden

Overall Freeride Tour Point Standings

Men

1)      Dominick Malaussena – 181

2)      Kevin Joudrey – 116

3)      Derek Pearson -100

Women

1)      Jen Bennett – 100

2)      Lizzy Healey – 100

3)      Ashley Maxfield – 100