While most of us are lazily sunbathing on some beach, charging some sweet warm water waves or wishing to do either, UK shreddette Katie Blundell decided to spend her summer snowboarding. And to share her experience with us and our beloved users.
Whilst most people head off to NZ for some summer shredding, I have decided to hit up Australia to snowboard for the summer! I am based in Perisher, but yesterday I headed over to Thredbo for the Thredbo Freeride Series.
The 3 star TTR Thredbo Freeride Series is a program of 5 events throughout the season. Rails, Slopestyle, Boarder cross, Free Ride and the Final. You accumulate points from the different events to try and qualify for the Grand Final at the end. Yesterday was Slopestyle and my first Australian competition!
We got there, and as it often does in Australia, it was raining!! The terrain parks in OZ are always really well set up and the Thredbo slopestyle course looked really fun. The weather didn’t stop 100+ competitors turning up. The rain eased off and we got a couple of practice runs in and then it was straight into our 2 runs….best run counting.
The course wasn’t that long, 2 rail features then 2 jumps. This was good as we had to hike the course to get back to the top as the chair lift took too long! The jumps were really nice, the rails were set up street style and the speed for the course was surprisingly good.
All the Australians are super friendly and they made me feel welcome even though I was the only British competitor there! They don’t seem to take anything too seriously and always seem to be having heaps of fun. This definitely made me relax a bit more and not get so nervous as I do in some of the comps in Europe….. I was still pretty nervous though!!!!
The standard was really high with a huge girly scene and all the chicks throwing down some rad moves! I managed to come 3rd place, which I was mega stoked with!!
So a good day, really nice to check out another mountain and I would love to go back to Thredbo again on a sunny day!
Keep updated for more news from Katie and her adventures on coolermag.com
