West Coast Session VI: The wrap-up and athlete awards

Words by Ethan Stone

Earlier this month, the West Coast Session took over the sunny slopes of Mt. Hood for a hugely successful sixth year. Here at the Session we push the sport of skiing by providing talented young athletes with a top-level venue to develop and display their skills. For some veterans it's a chance to kick back and relax after a season of competitions and photo or film shoots, while for the young and hungry it's an excellent opportunity to get some recognition.

Thanks to the support of our incredible hosts and sponsors, the talents of the invited skiers and filmers, and an unprecedented streak of good weather, this year's West Coast Session blew apart all expectations for the event. "This year's West Coast went off," said invited skier Nicky Keefer. "We had the best crew we've had yet, the best weather we've had yet, and the most variety of ill, fun features."

The following photos, videos and words are the products of our week; we hope you enjoy them.

The Public/Gaper Day (May 6):

It all got started with the highly-anticipated WCS Public Day, where we invite anyone and everyone to come join our crew for a highly unstructured day of fun on skis. This year the public day just so happened to coincide with a Gaper Day planned by the local GoodTimes Media crew. The resulting collision of WCS public-day shenanigans and Gaper madness made for an unforgettable kick-off to the Session, and even made the local newspaper!

The crew from Hillcrest Sports was tasked with feeding everyone with hot dogs and chips, and they had plenty of swag on hand to appease the masses. They even enlisted famous professional snowboarder Shaun Black to help out with the workload.

The Shoot (May 7-11):

After a wild Gaper/public day, it was time for the WCS crew to get down to business: five days of nonstop film and photo shoots on a variety of features both inside and outside of the park.

For this year's Session the Timberline park crew constructed a line of custom features down the lift line of Stormin' Norman, the freestyle terrain chairlift that services the small, medium and large parks. This jib line, which combined ideas from the park crew, sponsors, and WCS organizers, turned out to be one of the most amazing features of the Session, and a demonstration of what's possible with some creative ideas and a world-class park crew to help realize them.

In addition to the jib line and the traditional big jump on the Palmer Snowfield, the hard-working T-Line crew also built a massive wallride feature, a picturesque up-box over a boulder, and a step-up carved from the depths of a huge cornice. We had more features than we knew what to do with, and only five days to squeeze them all in.

The first private feature we sessioned was this box to gap over a large boulder, quickly nicknamed the "rocket box" by the riders. Despite its high-consequence appearance, the crew wasted no time dialing in big spins and flips off the box.

The next features on the hit list were the jump and wallride combo straddling the buried midway station of the Palmer chairlift. Over the course of two day sessions and a windy sunset shoot, the jump saw its fair share of trickery, while everyone debated who would take on the giant gap to the wallride.

The jump and wallride action wrapped up with a banger session on Thursday, as multiple riders stomped stylish tricks on the jump, a heavy side-hit session on the wallride concluded with a few nutty doubles, and Buff rider Luka Melloni stepped to the wallride gap, sending it deep into the landing to switch.

The final WCS special feature was a massive step-up artfully carved out of one of Timberline's canyon cornices. We stuck around for an extra day just to make sure that this beauty was well-utilized, of which you'll see some evidence in the team edits.

On top of all the on-snow features, we still had the Windell's campus to shred! Every year the whole WCS crew looks forward to getting to feel like a Windell's camper for a week, whether that means hitting the trampolines, cruising around the seemingly endless indoor and outdoor skate parks, jumping bikes, staying inside playing Mario Kart with your homies, or all of the above. This is truly the funnest place on earth.

And after all was said and done… the fat lady still couldn't sing until we went out for one more backcountry jump session! (Photos: Stone)

The West Coast Session Athlete Awards:

Each year the West Coast Session riders gather together on the final evening to vote town-hall style on awards for their peers. These are the 2012 WCS Athlete Awards.

1) King Meat Award – Luka Melloni

Young Spanish shredder Luka Melloni journeyed across the Atlantic with the Buff crew to take part in the Session, and was quickly turning heads with his unique and aggressive approach. He earned the King Meat title by being the only skier to gap onto the wallride from the top as seen in the Team Mahalo edit; and this after walking away from a brutal crash on the big jump two days before. Felicidades Luka!

2) Wild Card Award – Noah Morrison

17-year-old Noah Morrison from Vernon, BC skied off the hook this year, almost landing a triple cork 1620 at the Jon Olsson Invitational while scooping up podiums across the North American contest scene. He came out for the week with fellow young Canuck Alex Beaulieu-Marchand (both just named to the 2013 Canadian National Freestyle Team) and put on a display of what's soon to be "Olympic Freeskiing".

One one of our shoots on the big jump, Noah was the first skier there, and was casually tossing double cork 10s before anyone else had even arrived. It was that gusto that gave Noah the Wild Card vote.

3) All Day Syndrome Award – Dale Talkington

Dale Talkington's style and grace place him among the very top of today's terrain park skiers. From tech rail tricks to pure steeze on the jumps, Dale cemented his reputation as one of the leaders in the game with every lap.

4) Repeat Offender Award – Cam Snyder

It came to our attention this year that Cam Snyder has poached every West Coast Session feature for the past three years, all while sleeping in his car in the TImberline parking lot during the month of May. If that's not the perfect Repeat Offender, we don't know what is.

5) Rookie Award – Ryan Wyble

"Bryan" is a core member of the 4bi9 crew who has somehow not yet attended a West Coast Session for all the years that his buddies have been coming out here. "It's just weird that he's never come before," said Tyler Barnes. "That's why he's got to get it."

6) Best Trick Award – Maks Gorham, cork 900 nose tap

Against stiff competition from a whole score of double flips from Nicky Keefer, Reed Lewis and Alex Beaulieu-Marchand, Maks' huge 900 tap over the rainbow box prevailed in the vote for the best trick. The stomp sealed the deal.

Best Trick: Maks Gorham's cork 9 nose tap

7) MVP Award – Reed Lewis

No other skier took advantage of this year's Session like Reed Lewis. A local Northwest shredder whose antics and capability are already notorious in these parts, Reed got his big break with a spot on Team Mahalo and ended up with one of the standout performances in the video contest. His energy and stoke-factor were defining elements of the whole event. He was nominated for almost every other Award on the table (Best Trick, Rookie, Wild Card, King Meat, All Day Syndrome…) and probably could have won most of them, if everyone hadn't already been planning to vote him MVP. Congratulations Reed, you killed it!

8) Camtrol Session Showdown Winner

This year we introduced a new video contest, the Camtrol Session Showdown, which turned out to be a huge success. The four invited videographers agreed to go head-to-head in a team edit contest. The filmers picked their teams dodgeball style at Windell's on Sunday night with six to seven skiers per team, and were charged with producing an edit of the week's activities including all the members of their team. The greater goal was to create unique edits that would showcase the diverse styles of everybody here at the Session, and that's exactly how it went down! Each videographer took his own approach to the challenge, and the skiers all gave their best for the cameras.

It was incredibly difficult to choose a winner from among the four fantastic submissions, and each edit was a winner in its own right (Yeah, super cheesy but it's true). Each West Coast Session sponsor and host has cast a vote, and in the end the clear winner is… Team Mahalo!

Team Mahalo's winning edit.

Congratulations to Chief Mahalo Andrew Napier (now $1,500 richer) and his team of Ryan Wyble, Steve Stepp, Tyler Barnes, Max Peters, Luka Melloni, Reed Lewis and Noah Morrison! Throughout the week Team Mahalo destroyed every feature in the WCS lineup, including a couple of backcountry jumps for good measure, and Napier's entertaining edit captures the style of each skier on the team, including the breakout performance of MVP Reed Lewis.

We'd like to give a huge thanks to all of the filmers in the competition for their participation and hard work, and for creating the best West Coast Session edits we've ever had! Thanks Shane, Jasper and Evan! If you haven't already seen their edits or you need to watch them again (which you do), scope 'em out on our Vimeo channel.

A huge thanks to our incredible sponsors and hosts:

From everyone here at the West Coast Session, thanks for following and supporting our event, and we'll see you on the slopes next year!