This year I had the privilege of competing in my first ever Dew Tour in Breckenridge, Colorado. The Dew week started out with easily one of the coldest and most miserable day of practice I’ve ever been apart of. With windchill temperatures up to -40 degrees. Luckily as the week went on the temperatures vastly improved for the better and practice went smoothly up to the qualifier on Thursday.

Robby and I hanging out at the top of the course

With a field featuring 30 of the top freeskiers in the world, the qualifier wasn’t an easy one by far. Unfortunately for me I was the last one to drop out of the group, which I never enjoy in any contest. After watching my buddy Robby stomp his first run it was time for me to drop. I was starting to get my run down, until the 3rd jump came into play and I was going a little bit slow and crashed.

Frontflip off the box in Qualifiers | Photo by: Jay Badgley

Trying to shake off the jitters from the crash I took as many laps as I could between laps to get my legs warm and ready for the next run. When it came down to my 2nd run I was in last place. Right before dropping in I just sent up a quick prayer and just let the run happen. Thankfully I landed my run and secured my spot in finals with a score of 76.60, and a 14th place finish.

Some good friends made signs for me! They're the best!

Since finals happened on Sunday we had a couple of days off for practice and to relax a little bit. During the practice, I tried to change up my run as much as I could to hopefully do better in the finals. When we weren’t skiing, the best thing to do was go up to the athlete lounge to eat some food and get a free massage by the awesome people over in main med. Throughout the week I ended up visiting them so much, and so happy cause my back feels much better thanks to them.

Switch Right 5 | Photo by: Shay Williams

When Sunday came around the morning practice gave us a good idea of how the weather would turn out. Even though it was a bit windy we were happy to know the jumps could be cleared.

Noah Morrison and Nick Geopper looking on during the contest in the athlete tent

After landing my run in practice I tried to keep it easy till Finals started. I was the third to drop and unfortunately screwed up in my first run by going a little bigger than I was expecting on second jump and crashing.

Even though I crashed, I didn’t really feel nervous for my second run. I just tried to keep on thinking of it like another fun day in the park, and when I started to take my second run I just tried to stay focused on the next feature and nothing else. Although it wasn’t the prettiest, I was so happy to just land a run that difficult. The run gave me a 71.80 and my first Top 10 finish at a Dew Tour.

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the overwhelming support from friends and family that i've been receiving. You are all awesome. Dew Tour was such a fun week of shredding one of the best courses ever with some really cool people. Now on to the next contest, the Grand Prix World Cup at Copper.

-Noah

Photo.

Dew Tour