This past weekend I was lucky enough to get invited to compete in the Pain McShlonkey Classic. It was really an honor to wear the badge and be an ambassador to the Shane McConkey Foundation.
The weekend was pretty ridiculous. The event was supposed to start with some  of the Red Bull Air Force team skydiving into Rocker at Squaw. High winds caused this to be cancelled, but the party still went down. Red Bull brought a humongous truck with DJ and loud music included. The party continued through the day to the Gala in the evening.
Lets talk about the event though. The event was amazing. Athletes flew in from all over the country to compete and represent Shane in the proper way, and I think Shane would have been proud. The event started at just a tad after 9am with a “Chinese Downhill”. Â This event was brutal. Unlike last year which was a glorified powder run, this was an icy, moguly, hardpacked mess of competitors coming down KT. There was carnage everywhere and it seemed most competitors crashed the whole way down the first face. Daron Rahlves (who referred to himself as DMoney during pre-event trash talking emails) won. Guess he backed it up. Â He took home the golden saucer for the boys, with Shelly Robertson taking home the Golden Saucer for the girls.
The Small Mountain Invitational was just as exciting. The course was a mix of hardpack moguls with several features to jump off. The name of the game (according to the judges) was no big airs. In fact, Ice Goddess and several other airs were out of bounds, and hitting them meant disqualification. This obviously stopped nobody.  We saw repelling down Ice Goddess, Kristian Giessler sending Tombstone pretty big and lots of tomahawking. I’m pretty confident that everybody there had an amazing time, so THANK YOU SHANE!
