Notes from the Field: Red Bull Cold Rush Day One

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Rise, shine, stomp. The Cold Rush 2016 Big Mountain venue at Revelstoke Mountain Resort. Photo: Travis Persaud

The peanut gallery of a big mountain contest is a fabulous place to be. You hear remarkable things like this: "I don't know if this is offside, but your run kind of gave me a boner. A sports boner." And that, succinctly, is what Red Bull Cold Rush is about—giving people a sports boner. 

Tuesday's plans for the big mountain portion of the contest were sidelined by one rogue cloud that opted to sit squarely on Spilt Milk, the chosen face for the competition, while most of the region basked in a sunny, warm February day. But as Wednesday dawned, conditions allowed for the contest to get the green light. Throughout the day, each contestant would get two cracks at the course. 

While video content from the day won't be available until early next week, below you'll find some top notch photos from Scott Serfas and an itemized list of what happened today. Consider it secretarial notes at today's meeting:

07:00 a.m. Wake up. 

07:02 a.m. Decide to not shower. 

08:00 a.m. Pick up media pass. Bump into Powder magazine correspondent Kade Kricho. Notice his pants are ripped in the crotch. 

8:30 a.m. Discuss with Krichko regarding his ripped pants. 

08:40 a.m. Approach the traverse to the contest venue. Rejoice that we don't need to skin in. 

08:42 a.m. Traverse through hell. Arrive at venue. 

09:02 a.m. Mike Henituk gets set in the start gate. 

09:09 a.m.  The helicopter shuttling the Cineflex camera gets in position. 

09:11 a.m. Henituk drops. The contest begins. 

09:12 a.m. People in the finish corral start screaming for Henituk to stop as he picks a cliff option dangerously close to a deadly plummet. 

09:17 a.m. Stan Rey reminds everyone that he's absolutely fucking loco and launches a huge backflip off of one of the bigger cliff options. Though he eats it, he sets the tone. Someone calls him Stan "Seth Morrison" Rey from the peanut gallery. 

09:20 a.m. Rey makes it to the finish corral after collecting his gear that went errant after the backflip attempt. He arrives with an announcement: "My GoPro is gone." 

09:33 a.m. The first and only weather hold of the contest takes the stage. 

09:39 a.m. Sean Pettit sends a cliff that most contestants in the corral clearly didn't even consider an option.  

09:53 a.m. Sammy Carlson drops in with a 360 and punctuates his run with another 360, upping the ante for everyone. 
09:58 a.m. Riley Leboe skis out of a tomahawk as if it ain't no thing.
 

10:30 a.m. Greg Hope laces up the first spread eagle of the day.

10:37 a.m. Josh Bibby enters warp speed after airing a cliff into firm snow, prompting him to cartwheel into tomahawk. He skis down after gathering his gear, but not without an injury. 

10:44 a.m. Bibby's take: "As soon as I started cartwheeling I was pretty relaxed. I knew I had missed the rocks." 

10:45 a.m. "Yeah, if that was broken you'd punch me in the face, " says a patroller to Bibby after feeling around a potential point of fracture in his leg. 

10:47 a.m. Tatum Monod sends sluff off a cliff as she darts around and under it, prompting her to get barrelled as she charged through. The crowd is stoked. 

10:50 a.m. Angel Collinson sends a line very similar to the one that claimed Bibby.

10:51a.m. Alexi Godbout gets on the ground and bows repetitively at Angel's feet. 

10:56 a.m. Leah Evans' ski hits a cliff without her.

11:00 a.m. Stan Rey crouches beside Angel, assuming the role of a sports reporter and asks, "How does it feel to show up all the dudes?"

11:45 a.m. Stan Rey tomahawks through the landing of his first cliff on his second run, but then steps up to the plate to give the backflip another try and rides away this time. "I landed right in my bomb hole, which is awesome," says Rey upon skiing into the corral. In addition to the sacrificial offering of one GoPro on his previous attempt, Stan also lost a pole and ripped the ass of his pants on run two. 

12:17 p.m. Kye Petersen links up a 360 as his top hit with a 720 on his bottom hit—the first 720 of the contest. 

12:18 p.m. Sean Pettit blows the doors off the course with a switch 540 into his run and punctuates the run with the loftiest 360 of the day off of the cliff that bested him on run one. 

12:20 p.m. Sammy Carlson does a 720 into his line.

12:22 p.m. Godbout drops the hammer, prompting a member of the peanut gallery to say, "We got a fucking speed demon in the house." 

12:25 p.m. Henituk crosses gate to close contest. As it was in the beginning. 

17:15 p.m. Discover that the hotel lobby serves free wine and cheese. 

19:16 p.m. Realize that the media room assertively smells like opened Red Bull cans. 

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Greg Hope on his grind. Photo: Scott Serfas / Red Bull Content Pool

Weather permitting, the plan for tomorrow is to take on the backcountry slopestyle and touring component of the contest. Stay tuned to Forecastski.com for daily updates. 

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