A Weird Winter Just Upended the World’s Biggest Freeride Competition

You may have seen headlines about crazy winter weather across Europe. Snow storms pummeled the Alps in the late fall, making for one of the snowiest Novembers on record. A few hundred miles away in the Pyrenees, rain fell on barren mountainsides amid soaring temperatures. Then, a mid-January warmup saw France nearly break its high temperature average for the month. Across the continent, the conditions have wreaked havoc on winter sports.

Perhaps no sport has faced more turmoil than extreme skiing and snowboarding. The Freeride World Tour (FWT), the preeminent series for the sport, was recently forced to completely upend its annual competition schedule. The tour canceled its first two events in the Pyrenees—one in Spain’s Baqueira Beret, and the other at Andorra’s Ordino Arcalis resort. While the mountain range features the perfect terrain for freeride competition, there’s just not enough snow.

“It is a shame, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Pyrenees stops were canceled,” said Drew Tabke, a retired FWT skier. “Every year we went to Andorra we had tough conditions.”

While the Spanish Pyrenees has fared a little better and has open ski areas, the snowpack has failed to meet the demanding conditions that freeride competitions require: ample coverage combined with avalanche stability on the steepest, above-treeline terrain. So while the groomers are skiing well in Baqueira Beret, Spain, the Baciver face that is home to the FWT stop was not sufficient to ride.

Aymar Navarro, a veteran FWT skier and Pyrenees local, expressed dismay at the weather conditions in his home range. “It is true that the Pyrenees suffered a lot of heat these last two seasons and I think it is not normal,” he said. But Navarro maintains that these venues are special, and deserve to remain on the calendar. The Baciver face is situated right above the piste and crowds gather to watch the athletes drop into the face. “It is unique to be able to compete in front of so many people—it is like a soccer stadium,” says Navarro. “You can stand in the start gate and hear everything said in the crowd. It makes your hair stand on end.”

Organizers further shook up the schedule with a backup plan to keep athletes competing. They held an event on the famed Bec de Rosses face in Verbier, Switzerland, on January 26-27. During a typical season, the Verbier event is the series finale, and it features perhaps the steepest and most dangerous slope in competitive freeriding.

“The Bec is like the Eddie,” says Tabke, referring to the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational which takes place in Waimea Bay. “It’s an event everyone wants to compete in, but is only good every six years.” The Bec is no stranger to bad crashes—Navarro broke his shoulder in two places after a brutal crash on the face during the FWT finale in 2022.

Placing Verbier first placed some athletes at a disadvantage, Tabke said. Under Freeride World Tour rules, skiers and snowboarders get a single run down some of the most difficult mountain faces in the world to prove their abilities. Competitors can visually inspect the face, but none gets a chance to feel out the snow conditions until it is their turn to drop in. North American athletes rarely compete in events that allow visual inspection. Max Hitzig, a 21-year-old German skier and Zuzanna Witych, a 31-year-old skier from Poland, won the pro skiing events at Verbier. Meanwhile Núria Castan Baron (26) and Victor de Le Rue (34) stood atop the podium in the women’s and men’s snowboarding categories, respectively. Not a single North American rookie stood on a podium.

But not every athlete complained about the shakeup. Molly Armanino, 30, a Lake Tahoe skier who made her debut on the Tour in 2023 said she was happy to simply ski the imposing face. “Going straight to the Bec was scary, but it was awesome to actually be able to ski it,” she said. “Last year we waited around for a week before the event was canceled so coming back to Verbier first thing this year felt fitting.” Armanino landed on the podium in Verbier with a third-place finish.

The next stop is scheduled to be held in Kicking Horse, outside of Golden, British Columbia, between February 13-19. But snow conditions in Western Canada are also challenging. “It’s quite dire here,” said Dr. Michele Koppes, a professor and research chair in landscapes of climate change at the University of British Columbia.

“Right now we’re sitting at about 56 percent of our average snowpack,” she said. Koppes pointed to several major shifts that are changing the climate in B.C. Heat in the arctic circle has shifted the jet stream further south, pushing warm air into Canada. In January, British Columbia broke its 30-year record for high temperatures. Due to the unusual warmth, the high peaks are seeing rain instead of snow?. “The freezing level in the Coast Range fell at 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) two days ago,” Koppes said. “That’s above the summit of Whistler Blackcomb.”

Climate models for the near future point to weird winters continuing. Rain-on-snow events and atmospheric rivers which saturate the snowpack are going to become increasingly likely, said Koppes. Unless the Freeride World Tour can pivot its structure, which is locked into one-week weather windows at each stop, the future of competitive freeriding looks unsure. “We’re living in highly variable times and we fear these out-of-norm conditions are becoming the new normal,” said Koppes.

The Kicking Horse event is still a few weeks away, and snow conditions can change quickly. “Rain and wet avalanche danger in January in Canada is a new one for me,” said Armanino. She’s says she’s not sure what the Tour would do, if the Kicking Horse competition was canceled—by then, they’d be down three out of six total stops (plus a seventh with the Verbier addition). But she has hope—“I’m still sort of optimistic that they’ll have the comp at kicking horse. With an unskied face, all you really need is a few inches of snow to make it sendable!”