It was a morning of all mornings that incurred three hours of driving, three coffee stops, three stops to ask for directions, three inches of snow/ice to be negotiated on the road, three forgotten passports (only to be discovered at boarder control) three snowboarders and one photographer had arrived in what some would call ‘style’ at Thyon, Switzerland to three foot of fresh snow. Hmmm – by this stage I was ready for my fourth coffee of the morning and it was only 9am! We – Gilly Seagrave, Emma lee Rogers, Jo Chastney and myself – had made the journey over from Morzine to attend the Nikita Goodie Lady Session organized by Nikita rider, Maude Richon.

The morning started slow with the park crew at Thyon working overtime to get the competition underway and deal with the 3-foot of fresh snow that had fallen from the night before. With a minor delay in the starting of the competition, there was enough time to sneak a few cheeky tree runs in and take full advantage of the new snow.

The morning’s weather wasn’t the best for competing with visibility in and out and with the wind chill and temperature well into the minuses the competition was going to be tough. A jib style part of the contest started the event off where the girls had ample choice of rails to hit consisting of a battleship, c-box, s-box and the picnic table. Girls jibbed for well over an hour before taking up the second episode of the competition hitting two kickers for the afternoon, jam format.

The girls were throwing down with a variety of tricks from Cab 3’s, to big shifty lofty Backside one’s to some serious technical tricks on the rails. It was Jo Chastney a member of the morning madness that took the whole event out scoring a fistful of Swiss Francs, a Dakine travel bag stuffed with a bunch of goodies and a wildcard entry to ‘Intergirlacktik’ held at Les 2 Alpes in April to compete against the world’s best female riders. All the girls competing were stoked on the competition and all came away with a prize – a super fun day all round.

A big thanks must go out to Maude for organizing the competition, Thyon park crew for making it happen, all the girls who competed and Emma for keeping me sane whilst I was attempting to take photos in what I thought was one of the coldest days ever!!

To find out more information and results check out www.centralcamps.com