Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Park season ends on high note

Rain washes out slopestyle, but Huckfest goes on
1441huckfest
Big Finish Mitch Chubey launches a front-flip cliffhanger into the foam pit last Friday to win the Air Dome Jump Jam title and turkey.

Heavy rain and high winds prompted organizers of the 2007 Harvest Huckfest to cancel the Amateur Slopestyle Sunday, but the other two weekend events — the Air Dome Jump Jam and Team Air Downhill — went off without a hitch.

The Air Dome Jump Jam was an indoor slopestyle event, where riders were judged on how well they could ride the wooden tabletop jump, the wall ride, the quarterpipe, and the big jump into the foam pit. The riders were given one hour to session the indoor park and got in about 10 runs each. At that point the organizers took the top riders in the amateur, sport and pro groups, and gave them each two runs to compete for the grand prize — an 18-pound Butterball turkey.

The level of riding was extremely high, ranging from 360s and 540s over the wooden table, to 540 spins on the big wall, to tailwhips on the quarterpipe, to front flips into the foam pit, to huge cliffhangers (picture a superman where you hold onto the handlebars with your feet) over the wooden table and into the foam pit.

In the pro group, Mitch Chubey was particularly driven. He crashed on several attempts to land a 540 on the big wall, then nailed it. He then went to work on a tailwhip on the quarterpipe, which he also stuck after several crashes. By the end of the hour he had nailed pretty much every trick in the book.

More impressive is that he did the entire contest with his two kilogram cable bike lock attached to his bike with tape, after a friend of his misplaced the key.

Chubey won the overall pro category, despite some solid challenges from Tom Hey, who made the longest runs of the day, and Scott Attegar, who probably landed some of the biggest individual tricks of the day over the table.

Chubey went on to win the turkey after two solid jumps into the foam pit, including a back flip and superman combo, and a big cliffhanger.

In the Sport group, Leong Benton finished on top with gutsy 360s on the box, while building up to bigger tricks including a front flip into the foam pit. Trav Oystrik and Noah Brousseau finished second and third, but showed a lot of talent on their own runs.

In the Amateur category the top spot belonged to junior Wade McCraken, who rides a lot bigger than his size. Kye Walstrom and Brendan Walstrom were second and third.

Although just 15 people took part, the fact there were fewer riders gave all the participants a chance to stay warm and keep building on their runs.

The Team Air Downhill brought out 16 teams of four. While the course was muddy in patches and slowed riders it also had an equalizing effect on the field. Riders who took less than four minutes to finish the course during the Air Downhill in the summer were taking over five minutes on Saturday.

The top team posted a combined time of 19 minutes and 49 seconds. The riders were Tristan Merrick, Katie Holden, Adam Mantle, and Kyle McDonald.

In second, just two seconds back, was the team of Micayla Gatto, Curtis Robinson, Dylan Dunkerton and Daniel Crowe Hutchon. The average age was also just under 18 years old.

In third place in 19:55 was the team of Len Hornridge, Dan Skokland, Adam Wright and Denise Uyesise.

Special mention should also go to the youngest team of Max Horner, Alex Prochazka, Mackenzie Patterson and Tyler Allison. They posted a time of 20:06 with an average age of 14.5.

Individually, Len Hornridge was the fastest male in 4:42. Micayla Gatto, the national women’s downhill champion, was the top female in 5:05.