No freeride contests for Scotland, but the world’s best get to shine in the Alps

This weekend, in a parallel universe where the Covid-19 pandemic never happened, the Corrie Challenge – the second event in the Scottish Freedom Series of freeride ski and snowboard contests – is about to take place in the Back Corries at Nevis Range. The recent cold snap has topped up the snow cover nicely (all parallel universes get the same weather, in case you were wondering), the safety teams are in position, the judges have got their binoculars out, and Scotland's most accomplished backcountry skiers and snowboarders are at the top of the aptly-named Lemming Ridge, getting ready to launch themselves off the cornice and into one of Scotland’s most perfectly-sculpted off-piste playgrounds.

Meanwhile, back in our world, the 2021 Corrie Challenge has been cancelled, as have the two other SFS events planned for this year – the Lawers of Gravity, which was due to run in the Ben Lawers Range on 27 and 28 March, and the Coe Cup, which was slated for 24 and 25 April at Glencoe. It’s hard to see how these events could have posed significant Covid transmission risks – the summits of Munros tend to be fairly well ventilated – but still, rules are rules, and with any luck the series will be able to run again next season.

In the meantime, as a sort of group consolation prize, the folks at Glencoe are offering to host an “SFS Freeriders’ Day” for all competitors registered for the 2021 SFS in either late April or early May, assuming travel restrictions permit; not quite the same as a proper contest, but still, a good excuse to get everyone back together, and at the resort that can claim to be the spiritual home of competitive freeriding in Scotland, too, since the nation’s first proper freeride contest, the inaugural Coe Cup, was held there back in 2012. If this late-season extravaganza goes ahead, expect to see some jawdropping images of backflips and the like filtering into your social media feeds sometime in early May.

And speaking of photography... while the Scottish Freedom Series might be off, in recognition of all the incredible backcountry skiing and snowboarding that happened this winter and last, the organisers of the SFS are offering registered competitors the chance to win cash prizes for the best freeride photos taken since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The winner of their “Lockdown Lines” competition will win £100 – not to mention bragging rights until the first event of the 2022 series rolls around. Scotland’s elite freeriders may have been denied the chance to compete this winter, but the international equivalent of the SFS – the Freeride World Tour – still went ahead, albeit in a slightly truncated format. Two events at Ordino-arcalís in Andorra in late February were followed by a stunning few days at Fieberbrunn in Austria at the start of March and then, in late March, an epic showdown at the 25th edition of the Xtreme Verbier in Switzerland, on the intimidatingly steep and craggy slopes of the 3,223m Bec des Rosses.

Just to put “steep” and “craggy” into context, the Flypaper at Glencoe, where the Coe Cup is held, is usually said to have a pitch of 45 degrees

– that might not sound too bad if you’re thinking in the abstract terms of protractors and set-squares, but in reality it’s steep enough that a highspeed fall will usually see competitors rag-dolling most of the way to the bottom of the slope. The Bec des Rosses, however, is a completely different proposition. The majority of the routes down the contest face have a pitch of 50 degrees or more; and while Buttress Rock in the middle of the Flypaper offers a healthy drop, the Bec is plastered in launchpads the same size and bigger – in some cases much bigger. In his preamble to this year’s contest, commentator Adam Gendle called the Bec “one of the scariest venues in the world of sport” and watching this year’s event unfold, it was hard to disagree.

Thanks to the wonders of the interweb, fans of “ski sauvage” were able to keep up with the action via a live webcast on the FWT site, and if you missed it, don’t fret: it’s still all available to view, complete with handy little blobs you can click on to skip to runs by individual riders.

If you only have time to click on one blob, make it Victor De Le Rue winning the men’s snowboard category (and the overall FWT snowboard title) with a showstopping, pedal-to-the-metal run in which he seems to be about half a second from disaster from top to bottom. After flying though the forbiddingly exposed top section, he links two mighty cliff drops, then bleeds off a little speed (but not much) before launching an enormous 360 that seems to carry him half way across the mountain. Landing just a few metres above yet another cliff, he has (by my count) just over three seconds to figure out which way is up before he’s airborne yet again. One day somebody will put down a better run on the Bec, but it might not happen for a while.

A high-speed fall will usually see competitors rag-dolling to the bottom of the slope