This year’s freestyle ski and snowboard competition, the Kumi Yama, proved to be a showcase for some epic riding. The eventual winners of the amateur Slopestyle ski competition were Bopcrew, and Bomb Squad on snowboards. In the professional event the winners were Elvis Harsheim, Nicolas Vuigner and Markus Eder on skis, and Matthieu Crepel, Alluar Ricciardi and Arthur Longo. Longo is also a Deux Alpes local and competed at this year’s Olympic Games.
The prize for Best Trick on skis was won by Bapiste Collomb Patton and there were joint winners in the snowboard category: Johan Baisamy and Kazu Kokubo. In the Superpipe, the winners were Nivo Bijonsen on skis and Kazu Kokubo on snowboard. The photography prize, a trip to Japan and a huge goodie bag, was won by David Tchag.
Today was the final of the Kumi Yama’s invitational Superpipe competition and – as always – the talent was mixed. You’d expect riders that have been invited to take part to be of a certain standard, but the quality of tricks was hugely varied. Some riders barely managed to reach the top of the wall, let alone get any air. Of course, I’m far from an expert myself, and have been known to snow-plough down the pipe screaming. But that’s probably why I don’t get invited to compete in this event… and quite rightly so!
This weekend is easily the busiest of the summer as thousands of people descend on the Oisans region for a variety of events. In Les 2 Alpes there’s freestyle ski and snowboard event, the Kumi Yama, and the Raidlight Trail on Sunday. In Alpe d’Huez it’s all about road bikes with La Marmotte taking place on Saturday and the Ascent of the 21 Bends on Sunday.
It’s one of those weekends when you need to be in at least two places at once and manage without sleep or food in order not to miss out. But I’m recovering from a nasty cold and my car is being repaired it’s going even harder than usual to report on all the exciting stuff.
So this year I’m not going to stress about it. I’m going to go where I can go, see what I can see and bring you the best photos and films I can… so stay tuned to Destination Oisans!
The weather in resort has settled into a pattern: scorching in the mornings; torrential rain in the afternoons. It may be frustrating, but at least it’s predictable. Usually weather like this guarantees fresh snow on Les 2 Alpes’ glacier but temperatures are just too high at the moment, with the freeze level at around 4000m. This means we could have some slow take-offs and sticky landings at the weekend, as the summer’s freestyle ski and snowboard comp, the Kumi Yama comes to town…
