Words and Photos: Diane “D” Harrington
Six female and three male athletes calling Snowbird UT their home mountain traveled to Crystal Mountain, WA to competed in the opening event of the North Face Masters Tour for 2012. The qualifying run was held on the Northway on February 15, 2012. The Northway venue would be the elimination ground for half of the competitors. Those that qualified would move on to the next day and ride the Silver King.
The female cast representing Snowbird were Kaitlin Elliot, Camila Brown, Lizzy Beerman, Laura Dewey, Laura Hadar, and Shannan Yates. A very impressive group of gals. The Snowbird men were Jeremy Tidwell, Ryan Hudson and Matt Carter.
We woke to sunshine in our eyes, which apparently isn’t very common in this neck of the woods, so we lathered on the sun screen and got ready for the show. Kaitlin Ellott’s run started the 2012 three stop tour off with a bang. Camila Brown rode a technical line off the top. She rode strong and with a sense of purpose. She is trying to make a name for herself in this competetive field. Crystal was a heartbreaker for Camila as she just barely misses qualifying. Lizzy Beerman, the youngster of the group charged her way through qualifiers securing herself a final run on the King. Laura Dewey also qualified herself with two nice airs. Laura Hadar was the only gal to throw down some spins. She spun 360 off the top cornice at the Northway totally impressing the crowd. Shannon qualified with a less than perfect landing on one of her jumps, but no one cared she had the biggest airs of the day and was just warming the crowd up for the finals. Ryan Hudson also made it to the finals launching himself off a sweet cliff onto a hard landing, sticking it in the variable conditions.
