The setup in Appaljack
With such a warm, wet spring so far this season, ATP lucked out this past Saturday, March 27th and hosted the Recess Wreck Less Rail Jam under sunny blue skies, with cool, but spring-ish temperatures. The course was constructed during the week, and held up perfectly with a solid setup the night before. The theme was most definitely urban, handrail style features – with one giant pad and takeoff for 4 different round rails, including a 24 elbow rail, a 30 down-flat-down rail, the 19 OG rail, and the 21 down-flat rail.
The vibe throughout the day was mellow and fun, almost like a regular session with friends in the park. Intermediate ski and snowboard took to the rails first for their 40 minute jam session, and set the bar high, with all sorts of technical combos on all 4 of the features. The intermediate division of riders has been stepping their game up all season, and this event was no exception.
After the first jam session, the top 3 riders for both ski and snowboard were announced, and invited to compete in the Advanced session. Wow what a show for the advanced riders – the open format and long session let people work out creative, difficult, and amazing tricks on all features. 450 disasters, switch back lips through the dub-down rail, spins on and off every rail, and lots more were the reg for the advanced.
After the advanced jam session, 6 snowboarders, and 4 skiers were selected for a finals game of “SHRED” – similar to the game of “HORSE” in basketball.
Skiers went first – the format was a bit different for them – the first skier selected set the trick, and the other 3 skiers had to match the trick or they received a letter. Tanner Sinclair was chosen to go first, and ended up stomping a frontside switchup, 270 out on the OG rail – setting the tone for the rest of the session. He ended up taking the win for skiers, with Charlie Jonas coming in second, and Ross Rowan in 3rd.
The snowboarders tricks were set by custom dice made by Recess, that could produce tricks ranging from a backside 50-50, to a switch backside 180 nosepress. The competition was amazing – almost everyone in the finals was stomping tricks left and right, and trying things that they otherwise wouldn’t have even thought of. So many snowboarders landed so many of the tricks on command that the event actually ended up running right up until the slopes closed! The battle between second and first was a close one, with both Austin Leonard and Kris Jones hiking the OG rail too many times to count. Kris ended up taking the win for the snowboarders and taking home a good amount of cash in the process.
The Recess SnowDice – the trick set here is a switch 270 (hardway) frontside lipslide!
Recess also brought tons of prizes out for the raffle, which went down immediately after the game of “Shred”. All in all, Wreckless was an amazing time – lots of great snowboarding and skiing, a new and unique format, and for the first time ever at ATP – a cash purse for the winners! This will definitely be something we look at bringing back in some form for next season, so watch out for it.
Mens Intermediate Snowboard winner Clay West with a brand new Forum board!
Mens Advanced winner Kris Jones killed it all day.
Recess Wreck Less Rail Jam Final Results:
Intermediate Ski:
1 – Dakota Barnes
2 – Ben Crawford
3 – Tyler McCullough
Intermediate Snowboard:
1 – Clay West
2 – Thomas Graham
3 – Luke Winkelmann
Advanced Ski:
1 – Tanner Sinclair
2 – Charlie Jonas
3 – Ross Rowan
Advanced Snowboard:
1 – Kris Jones
2 – Austin Leonard
3 – Jimmy Tarlton