One of the most famous events in skiing and riding won’t happen this year. Today, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort announced that they have canceled the Kings & Queens of Corbet’s 2024. The reason for the cancellation is that for it to be a safe competition, they need distinct weather factors and safe conditions in Corbet’s. This isn’t the case this year, so the various departments that determine whether it can be held decided to pull the plug. However, Corbet’s Couloir is nearly ready to open after 80 inches of snow over the past two weeks.
Veronica Belle Paulsen, who’s the 2020 Queen of Corbets, provided the following quote in Jackson Hole’s social media post as to why it’s not ready to go:
“Corbet’s is skiing great, but conditions are not there to do what we want to do. As athletes, we all want to show off our best skiing, and right now the conditions are not safe enough for us to put on the show we usually do. I’ve trained all year for this and now I have another year to keep training and dreaming about my run.”
Some people, including myself, wonder why they couldn’t have rescheduled the date. However, Level 1 brought up some valid points as to why moving it likely wasn’t an option:
“It don’t work like that when there are dozens of contractors / staff who have to be hired to pull an event like this off, extra ski patrol and operations staffing, etc etc. You have to secure athlete commitments to be present for entire week – most of the competitors probably have the rest of their winter travel planned out already and their time is spoken for.
We would imagine much of the groundwork for this event is laid many months in advance. Pulling off an event like this at the literally top of a mountain requires an insane amount of behind-the-scenes effort. If it was possible to change the date, they would have.”
For more information about why this year’s event was canceled, Jackson Hole’s social media post about the matter is below.
Image/Video Credits: Jackson Hole Mountain Resort
