On March 23, Billabong held their 5th stop for the 7th annual Flaunt It tour at Loon Mountain resort. The Billabong Flaunt It is a girls-only slopestyle and rail jam tour around North America with six stops including finals at Sierra-at-Tahoe, CA. The winner takes home $700 big ones with other various cash prizes to give out. Last year this contest came on a beautiful spring day with sunshine and blue skies. This year the girls were welcomed into the White Mountains with snow that continued to dump all day. I was all smiles chatting about how the spring season might actually last through April which caused me to forgive the wind that continued to gust right before I would drop into the first jump.
Mary Rand boosting the canon
The slopestyle course was held on the bottom half of Loon Mountain Park with a set-up I would be able to lap all day. It started with a small 20 foot jump with a smooth transition into a canon box or a flat box option. This set the rider straight for either a battleship flat bar (which I favored in my runs) or an up rail. The final two features were 35-45 foot jumps with a smaller jump option. The lips had the perfect pop and there were numerous 540s, back flips and even a wild cat tossed out by Maggie Leon. Though, no one landed a clean enough 720 to take home the ‘Lucky Seven’ prize of $700.
The break for lunch after the slopestyle was anything but unwinding. The mountain was packed and we happened to go in to use our “loon cash” prime lunch-break time. With nowhere to sit I ate my grilled cheese standing and tried not to be knocked over. The girls all ate quickly though and we were up top again within 20 minutes to check out and practice the rail jam section. This was the most exciting part of the day, because we were actually able to see all the girls we were competing with (around 20 some showed up for this event).
Jamie Trayer gapping the DF toD
The set-up held a long flat box, an urban down-bar and a tank along the right side, while the left was occupied with the stair-set holding a down-flat-down, a single barrel down rail with a mini flat and the gnarliest feature of the day: a 3 foot flat box to a blind down-single barrel.
Mary Rand
All girls were throwing down but there were a certain hand full that stood out. Lily Calabrese was destroying the DFD over the stair set while Nora Healy was stomping a back180 off each and every feature. Ashley Lynch-Giangregorio wowed the crowd when she came in hot to the stair set and blasting a frontboard all the way through the box to down rail, right before knocking herself out her next drop (no worries, she survived).
Lily Calabrese
In the end, local Nora Healy claimed first for the slopestyle and Teresa Kewley out of Michigan took the rail jam. The day ended with high fives, conversation and a bib draw where I came out with a Dakine travel bag.
Results:
Slopestyle
1st Nora Healey
2nd Mary Rand
3rd Maggie Leon
4th Molly Turne
5th Katie Kennedy
Rail Jam
1st: Teresa Kewley
2nd Nora Healey
3rd Mary Rand
Best Trick
Lily Calabrese
Rag Doll
Melissa Morin