Competitors awoke to the sight of 40-50 cm of new snow for day 3 of the Candide Invitational 6. You can’t very well run a superpark event with over a foot of fresh sitting in your course, can you? So Candide and the organizers made the best of both worlds: groom the in-runs, and leave the landings blower soft. And with the sun periodically peeking through the clouds and fog, riders took full advantage of the small windows of opportunity and threw down, here in La Clusaz. The weather and conditions either held back some competitors from coming up or lured them away with thoughts of head high blower, but a stout few sacked up and showed Candide and the crowd their best.

The focus of the riders’ assault today was on the huge gap jump and the log jib jump. The gap jump took some time to get the speed down, with many coming up a good 10 feet short; plowing into the fresh snow and energetically bouncing back up for another go. Eventually the speed issue was tackled and there were quite a few flying europeans dropping rodeos and cork 7s.

The loge part of the log-jib feature was being completely ignored, instead riders opting to air over the whole feature, going massive in the process. Luke Van Valin, a true slashie (skier-slash-announcer) was crushing it with huge backflips and rodeos, while Canadian powder-hound Joe Schuster took time off from burying his nose in snow to style out some 3s and flatspins. Local and international star Laurent Favre showed everyone his nose-kang grabs and manned up to hitting the jump switch. Richard Permin made a cameo by floating a giant 180 over the feature.

So, despite the new snow and the less than decent light conditions, the field managed to step up and throw down on Candide’s custom park. We will see what tomorrow holds, as the snow has begun falling again in La Clusaz. We’ll either be blown away by systematic slaying of the park, or be blowing through fresh pow in an ethereal landscape. Check tomorrow for what we given.