Earlier this month two members of the Heavenly High Rollers Team made the trek from South Lake Tahoe to the park skiers playground that is Summit County, CO. Kyle Smaine came out to compete in the Breckenridge Dew Tour Qualifier, and Jason Arens who made the trip to ski the park offerings of Colorado.

Kyle Smaine:    Immediately after finishing up my finals I (Kyle Smaine) called up my good friend Jason Arens and urged him to go out to Colorado with me.  It didn’t take much convincing and once he had finished his finals a day after myself we embarked on a journey from South Lake Tahoe to Breckenridge, Colorado.  As we left Tahoe our first stop was in the capital of Nevada, Carson City. This was a crucial stop on the trip, we stocked up on possibly the best candy ever, Hi Chews, and because I was sick I borrowed a roll of toilet paper for the car ride.  We then proceeded on our seemingly endless journey through Nevada to Utah, 8 hours later we got there.

Kyle Smaine: While in Utah we found the most interesting of bakeries, but unfortunately it was closed.  Our miss understanding of how to properly navigate the grid system of Salt Lake City caused us much frustration in finding our friends house where we stayed for the night.  Before we finally made it to Colorado we ended up making 21 U-turns in 24 hours in Utah.  It may seem frustrating to some but by the end we were enjoying every single one. 

Having made the seemingly endless drive Tahoe to Summit County, Kyle and Jason arrived in CO late at night on the 9th exhausted. Copper was hosting the first stop of the Snowboarding Grand Prix, which rendered Copper’s Pipe unusable as a training ground for Dew Tour Qualifier hopefuls.

Kyle Smaine: The next few days we went up to Breck and got to shred the 6-jump line up.  After coming from Tahoe where there are no jumps and barely any snow the first two days back on jumps were incredibly fun.  For the next 3 days Jason and I split up, I went to Copper to train pipe for Winter Dew Tour, and Jason continued to shred jumps at Breck.  Next was the Dew Tour at Breckenridge.  Unfortunately I crashed both runs in pipe qualifiers and did not get to continue through to prelims. For the next few days we did some filming on the jumps at Breck and the freshly built big line at Keystone. On our final day in Colorado I went up to Keystone with my friend Jason Badgley to get some photos on Keystone’s enormous jump line.  Overall it was an awesome trip with lots of new people and experiences.

 

I met up with Kyle and Jason early in the morning and we headed up to Keystone, made our way up the gondola and headed straight to the big line. I started testing out different angles while they began spinning laps getting the speed dialed for the jump line. After three or four rides up the park chair it was time to start shooting. About five hours later we called it quits, and the Heavenly Team Riders headed back to Tahoe early the next day.

On the way home Kyle repaid his debt to society by settling up for a speeding ticket he received earlier driving to CO.