Hunter Mountain Halfpipe

When riders arrived at Hunter Mountain on Friday December 13, the pipe they saw was not happening. In fact, competition organizers were seriously considering cancelling Sunday's halfpipe competition. "It was horrible," said rider Jeff Brushie. "It was too narrow, there was no flat bottom, no vert. It was terrible."

Hunter Mountain workers built the pipe just days before the contest. That plus the rain and warm temperatures meant the pipe was too soft to ride and would have only survived for about a hour in contest conditions..

During a riders meeting on Friday night, however, master halfpipe builder Frank Wells showed up and said that with some help from the mountain and the riders he could fix the Hunter Mountain Pipe. "We can do this," Wells said. "It's just going to take a lot of shoveling, a lot of pipe dragon work, and a lot of salt."

Wells and the crew, which included JJ Collier, Todd Franzen, Kris Swierz, Jeff Brushie and others, worked all day Saturday getting the pipe ready and by the time the sun went down the pipe looked fine. In the riders meeting Technical Delegate Gary Taylor told the riders that how the pipe looked in the morning would determine exactly how the competition would go on Sunday.

The judging staff getting a good look at the pipe before climbing into their ivory tower.

Sunday morning the pipe looked ridable. Competitors were given only one practice run and then it was straight into the qualifying rounds. Most riders didn't seem to have a problem with that. "I took my amusement park ride," said Jamil Khan. "I gave them my ticket and they let me take my run. But look at this, no one is getting above the lip."

Jeff Brushie said the same thing. "On my first qualifying run I did a big method on the first hit and got out pretty far, but a lot of people aren't even getting out of the pipe. The snow is just too slow," Brushie said.

The Hunter Mountain halfpipe had the largest crowd of the entire contest.

The head-to-head finals are scheduled to start around two o'clock this afternoon. So far the pipe is surviving. "It's holding up pretty well," Gary Taylor said. "It's just that there is so much moisture in the snow that it's very slow and these guys don't wax."

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