Scoping lines and getting rad. This is gonna be fun. Photo: Natural Selection Tour
You’d best be dusting off your superlatives, because the waiting period for the “greatest snowboard contest of all time” begins today, Saturday, March 4.
Snowboarding’s most talented figures — both behind the scenes and in front of the camera — have descended upon British Columbia’s backcountry Mecca at the tail end of a classic Revelstoke storm. And now, with a few days of sunshine in the forecast, the town is abuzz with the prospect of the YETI Natural Selection Revelstoke kicking off in the next few days.
We got our first glimpse of the venue today. And it looks like poppers, pillow stacks, and treeline spines are all on the menu:
How’s that pillow line? Photo: Natural Selection Tour
The contest is hosted by Revelstoke Mountain Resort, but the venue itself is deep within Selkirk Tangiers Heli Skiing’s terrain. So when Mama Nature delivers the waiting period’s finest day for powderboardin’, athletes will be flown into the wilderness for the big show.
So how do you watch it? Well, a team of highly proficient nerds will beam the stream LIVE from the venue and you can watch it from wherever you like (YouTube). Aside from the venue itself, the best spot to watch will be on the big screen TVs at both the top and bottom of Revelstoke Mountain Resort.
Cool, right?
Revelstoke is the second stage of this year’s tour. The first stage already went down in the form of “Duels,” a head-to-head format where newcomers were pitted against tour veterans in a backcountry zone of the returning riders’ choice.
If you like your contests peppered with party waves, good vibes and collective, backcountry decision making, you’ll dig The Duels for sure.
Watch them here (starting with Dustin Craven versus Werni Stock):
Dustin calls Revy home, so he’ll be one to watch on the big day.
The winners of each Duel — eight men and four women — will be lacing up their boots in Revelstoke some time over the next seven days. And yep, you guessed it, the top contenders from Revelstoke will be headed to Alaska’s Chugach Mountains for the final stage.
So maybe we’re not talking in superlatives after all. In the words of Travis Rice himself: “When someone wins a Natural Selection Event, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call that person the best rider in the world.”
That’s a lofty claim, to be sure. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a snowboarder who stands toe-to-toe with Travis and says otherwise.
Keep your eyes on the Natural Selection Instagram page for updates, and check out all the radness occurring at Revelstoke Mountain during the week as well.
YETI Natural Selection Revelstoke Riders, 2023:
Zoi Sadowski-Zynnott (NZL), Kimmy Fasani (USA), Elena Hight (USA), Hailey Langland (USA), Travis Rice (USA), Mikkel Bang (USA), Blake Paul (USA), Jared Elston (USA), Ben Ferguson (USA), Dustin Craven (CAN), Torstein Horgmo (NOR), and Mikey Ciccarelli (CAN)
Editor’s Note: Mikey Nixon is covering the Natural Selection Tour for The Inertia live from Revelstoke.
