(Above PC: Tom ‘T Bird’ Monterossa)
This is it, folks. After years of planning, months of hype, and two previous stops at Jackson Hole and Baldface, the Natural Selection Tour concludes in the ultimate showdown, at the ultimate venue – Alaska.
Watch all the action unfold on Red Bull TV (below) from 8 pm (GMT) / 9 pm (CET) on Friday, April 16th.
The Tour returns to a head-to-head format in Alaska for both the men’s and women’s semifinals and finals. Run across two days, each rider selected three massive runs from the peaks of Tordrillo Mountains for each match-up. Judges scored each run in real time on location keeping the top score from each rider. They applied the same criteria as in Jackson Hole and Baldface-Valhalla to score based on overall impression focused on the difficulty of a rider’s chosen line, the size of the features they hit, combined with the variety and execution of tricks in the line.
“The riders had their pick of lines in an untouched zone called Montrachet that tops out at 3800’ elevation with a roughly 1300’ vertical drop and average pitch of 35 degrees”
On the men’s side, in the semifinals Chris Rasman (CAN) squared up against Ben Ferguson (USA) and Mark McMorris (CAN) came up against Mikkel Bang (NOR). The women’s semifinal was a three way contest between Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (NZL), who won at Jackson Hole and Robin Van Gyn, the winner at Baldface-Valhalla, went up against Hana Beaman. Each rider had three chances to drop and the highest score of the match up, moved on to the finals. The riders had their pick of lines in an untouched zone called Montrachet that tops out at 3800’ elevation with a roughly 1300’ vertical drop and average pitch of 35 degrees.
