Some of the world’s best snowboarders will once again return to the land of flat whites and the All Blacks for the sixth annual Burton New Zealand Open Snowboarding Championships, taking place from August 11-15 at Cardrona Alpine Resort. At this year’s New Zealand Open, spectators can expect to see Olympic hopefuls fine-tuning their halfpipe runs for Vancouver in Cardrona’s Olympic-size superpipe.

The first stop on the 2009/2010 Burton Global Open Series and a Swatch TTR 5Star event, the New Zealand Open will include slopestyle and halfpipe competitions, offering riders the chance to earn a piece of the NZ$50,000 prize purse and gain valuable points towards Burton Global Open Series championship titles and the Swatch Ticket To Ride World Tour championship titles.

The festivities will kick off on Monday, August 10 with a free opening party featuring Sunshine Soundsystem in Queenstown, NZ at the Skyline Gondola, followed by an after party at Rattlesnake Bar.

Competition will get underway on Wednesday, August 12 with men’s slopestyle prequalification and qualifications, followed by the women’s slopestyle qualifiers. On Thursday, August 13, the men’s halfpipe prequalification and qualification rounds will go down, followed by women’s halfpipe qualifications. The Gravis Open Sessions will also kick off on August 13 with music from Black Sun Empire (NL), State of Mind and Truth at the Lake Wanaka Center, followed by an after party at Postoffice Lane.

All eyes will be on the slopestyle course on Friday, August 14 for men’s and women’s slopestyle semifinals and finals. Later, the action will move to Wanaka for the first annual “Fight Night” at the Lake Wanaka Center, where riders will duke it out UFC-style for the title. An after party will follow at Postoffice Lane.

The 22’ superpipe at Cardrona Alpine Resort, the same size halfpipe that will be featured at the 2010 Winter Olympics, will be the locale for the men’s and women’s halfpipe semifinal and final competitions on Saturday, August 15. In the evening, Tiki Live and DJ Reno will wrap up the week’s festivities with the final act of the Gravis Sessions, taking place at the Lake Wanaka Center followed by an after party at Postoffice Lane.

If you can’t make it to New Zealand, watch the semifinals and finals live on Go211.com, where webcasts and highlights of the competitions will also be available for on-demand viewing once the event is over.