The weather for Wednesday as we woke looked much the same as yesterday. A little moist down below and cloudy up top. Up the mountain the hoped for bluebird was nowhere to be seen, but perhaps the clouds were a little thinner than the previous day allowing some good practice runs in the halfpipe before the final 16 men and 8 women from the qualifiers of the previous day set about their task of taking home some money from the Brits' £10,000 purse. The pipe itself had been recut the previous night, but 12 hours of snow overnight and throughout the morning had made visibility tricky and the pipe slow. There was no way anybody was going to be going super huge, but some certainly tried.


Dom Harington was stand out technically throwing down Hakkonen flips at the first hit. Last year's winner, James Foster was going so huge out of the pipe it was questionable whether he was riding the same snow as everybody else. Tyler Chorlton was also riding well and put in some great inverts. Dan Wakeham was also spinning for money and impressing the respectable crowd that had gathered to watch the Brits. Of the five or six youngsters that made it through to the final, Colin Phillip was also getting some serious height out of the pipe and riding well.



For the ladies, we had hot contenders Mel Leando and Leslie McKenna on the case with Leslie going technical and Mel super smooth. Gilly Seagrave and Zoe Gillings also put down some fine lines in the orange tinted pipe.

Winners were: Dom Harington, Tyler Chorlton and James Foster for the gents. Lesley McKenna, Mel Leando and Zoe Gillings for the ladies.



Later in the afternoon, with the cloud thinning and then thickening, the non-seniors took to the slopestyle course. This time with the jumps fully open, but visibility remaining bad, they hit two banks of kickers, three rails and the hip with as much enthusiasm as they could muster. Chris Chat, Chris Schulz, Luke Paull and Jamie Nichols all rode well. The finals are tomorrow.

Alex Croft took a nasty knock to the back over the kickers and was stretchered off. Dee, one of the park shapers, was hit by a skidoo, ripping his foot out of the binding and cracking his board in half lengthways at the front. He's also broken his back. There's certainly been a few injuries, James Carr amongst them, but we won't dwell on that and might have a bit of a rogue's gallary after the event.



We were also treated to some Cuban Brothers fun up on the slope as they recorded their links for MTV. Those guys are mad and we're all looking forward to their full set at the Avalanche Bar tonight. Today is also Big Air day for the boarders and the weather forecast for the afternoon is looking optimistic, although at the moment it's still snowing lightly but looking brighter than yesterday. Fingers crossed. The expression session down in the town is cancelled, but something might still happen up on the mountain.

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