The Winter Dew Tour stop at Breckenridge has arrived. Well, practice at least. Today the gates opened to the pipe and slope courses for all competitors. The morning was reserved for pipe skiing and the afternoon for slopestyle skiing. Unfortunately, as the day moved on, the sky became more and more milky and the wind gusted up at times. In preparation for the next two days of open qualifiers, we've compiled a course preview, with a few insights from the athletes.

Superpipe

Breckenridge has finally gone to a 22-foot pipe this year, and because of that, they've moved the pipe to the top of the Freeway Terrain Park. The results, a much steeper, longer and bigger Breckenridge pipe. Today the gray skies milked out the visibility, but athletes were starting to figure it out and go bigger and bigger as the morning session went on. If the weather clears up for Thursday's qualifiers, we'll see yougesters like Torin Yater-Wallace, Beau James Wells and David Wise vie for a spot in the finals against the biggest names in the sport.

Slopestyle

The Freeway Terrain Park has always been legendary. But instead of starting on the skier's right, it's now on the left. A long one this year, the slopestyle course clocks in at four jumps, and three rail options.

With the absence of the pipe, the course can snake around the bottom of the new pipe location and place a "money booter" at the bottom of the park that event organizers like so much. Here is a breakdown of the course:

Feature 1: A replica of the Burtlington High School urban rail that was made famous in so many snowboard flicks. A flat rail to closeout and drop or down-flat-down are your two options. Here Alexis Godbout front flips the entire thing.

Feature 2: More of a traditional offering. Options are a flat-down rail or a down-flat-down-ish box. AJ Kemppainen slides switch on here.

 

Joe Schuster

Feature 3: The first of a two jump combo. Good for setup tricks. Roughly 40-45 feet. Check out Alex Schlopy rocking out a 900 here.

Feature 4: A slightly bigger jump than the first, roughly 60 feet. A lot more kick that the first jump, this is where a majority of double corks will go down on the top half of the jumps. Mr. Tom Wallisch cork 360s it here.

 

"It's good. The landings are a bit hard right now, but tomorrow the landings will be soft and awesome." —Bene Mayr

Feature 5: Another rail option to break up the jumps. A sizable up rail on the right or a gap to rainbow-ish box on the left. Jossi Wells greases the rainbow option in this photo.

Feature 6: Another medium-large size jump. Pretty standard. Decent kick, decent length. 60+ feet. Bobby Brown gets that switch 540 here.

Feature 7: And at last the money booter. You can tell from the extremely crowded photo that the jump is in very close proximity to the bottom of Breck, for optimal crowd viewing. Here Russ Henshaw does a rightside double cork 1080. I promise there is an Aussie in there and apologize for the crowded photo.

Justin Dorey

And that is what lies ahead of the competitors at the Winter Dew Tour, Nike 6.0 Open here at Breckenridge, CO. Check back tomorrow for recaps on what happened in open slope qualifiers.