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The Cool Sellout After its triumphant coming-out party in Salt Lake City, American snowboarding faces a bright future. Is that a good thing? By Eric Hagerman
THE GAUNTLET IS turning ugly. Two lines of blunt-booted snowboarders stretch along the main slope of the Waterville Valley ski area in New Hampshire, and they are unsatisfied with the performances thus far. They express their displeasure by spewing insults and mouthfuls of beer at riders speeding by on their way to the icy, two-story quarterpipe below. "You guys suck!" Psssssphplaaaaaafth! The drill is to charge downslope at the towering ramp and catapult off the top lip into a McTwist, a Rodeo Flip, or some other contortion. Several riders sail 15 feet above the top, gunning for amplitude. But the gauntlet needs more, so it shovels snow into the approach, improvising a jump to up the ante. When some of the competitors simply bunny-hop it, the gauntlet scatters to gather empty Bud cases for fuel and starts a fire that forces riders to jump higher to avoid the flames. A few swerve wide of the trouble altogether, but such behavior undermines the spirit of the moment, and they are booed and called pussies. This is the fifth annual World Quarterpipe Championships, sponsored by Snowboarder magazine and Red Bull. Competition started around 11:30 this morning when an emcee boomed over the P.A.: "The name of the game is DRUNK!" The vibe feels like Lord of the Flies meets Animal House. On ice. A few days ago, over in Vermont, Stratton Mountain Resort hosted the 20th Annual U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships—the sport's most venerated event. For the last five years, Waterville has served as a sort of anti-contest. "World Quarterpipe Championships" would seem to imply: officially sanctioned, lavishly sponsored, widely covered. The event is none of these. Winning it guarantees neither sponsorship incentives nor a place in the record books. What victors receive is smirking admiration from the brethren. Respect. As with so many aspects of snowboarding, the World Quarters is an elaborate goof—with a slightly serious edge. For instance, two of the judges are newly minted celebrities: Olympic halfpipe gold medalist Ross Powers, looking haggard today after enduring a month of appearances (Letterman, Today, the Daytona 500) and an all-night beer-fest during his homecoming at the Open, and Danny Kass, the lazy-lidded rebel who took silver in Salt Lake. The peripheral activities, however, almost overshadow the riding. At the moment, a round-faced Vermonter is busy pumping up the pressure of a plastic weed sprayer strapped to his back and squirting the frothy contents (Red Bull and vodka, a.k.a. "liquid crack") more or less into people's mouths. Giacomo Kratter, the 19-year-old Italian who finished fourth at the Olympics, wobbles around in tattered fatigues, carrying an issue of Penthouse and playing ventriloquist to a rubber turkey obsessed with the magazine. ("I am durky hunter!") Nearby, two capitalist hooligans work in tandem with cans of spray paint, one distracting a member of the gauntlet while the other lacquers a large stencil of a grenade—the symbol of Grenade Gloves, Kass's company—on the victim's backside. Everyone has a beer cozied into a glove or mitten and bobs loosely to the drum 'n' bass beat, compliments of DJ NC-17, who's hunkered in a slopeside yurt-cum-bong rigged with a thumping sound system. Powers and Kass and the other judges stand near the end of the gauntlet, a vantage that allows them to assess the style with which riders handle both the harassment and the quarterpipe. They confer about the technical specifics of a trick performed by Teddy Rauh, a 24-year-old from East Dover, Vermont, who works as a logger in the off-season. "Let's see what he claims," says Powers, "then we'll decide whether he makes the finals." Powers explains that Rauh, after executing a brassy Backflip Indy over the fire and then flipping everyone the bird, hit the quarterpipe and purposefully did a Tailfish—"which everyone knows is a gay trick." It looks similar to a Stalefish, which is cool, but if Rauh claims a Stalefish, he's gone. "We're trying to judge it fair, you know?" says Powers, who has big blue eyes and a smile that wants to veer off the side of his face. "You gotta put everything into it." "Hey, Ross!" someone shouts. "Is that your board?" Powers pokes his shaved head into the alley and sees his pro-model Burton 158 teetering atop the bonfire. (His old friend Kass snuck off and put it there.) "Awww, shit, man," he mutters. Then, more urgently, "I need those bindings!" Without thinking, he lurches into the lane and scrambles up the gauntlet, holding his beer out to the side so as not to spill. Just as he stoops to pluck his board from the fire, Burton teammate Colin Langlois hits the jump full tilt, sucking his knees into his chest and skimming above Powers's head. The gauntlet erupts. Powers jerks upright and looks downslope, not quite aware that he's just missed being decapitated. It's the best moment of the day—unscripted, acrobatic, and a bit sketchy. Just like snowboarding.
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