The Evolution October 2008On Tuesday night we arrived in virgin Utah, after driving from Las vegas for a couple of hours. I was expecting really high temperatures as we were in the desert but we lucked out with fairly moderate weather. The landscape was amazing with huge sandstone cliffs towering above us on either side of us as we drove into Spring dale where we were staying. The next morn I headed up to the site of the red bull rampage and was very impressed with the gnarly course and new man made features added to the event. For the next two days I practiced the course and dug lines to ride. Line selection was tricky ,I wasn’t sure weather to go for a safe line and risk getting scored low for amplitude or go for a burly line and risk crashing. I started to feel comfortable on ridge 3 so I opted to take that in my qualifying run. We woke on the morning of qualifying to pouring rain and qualifying was postponed to Sunday . When I showed up Sunday morn we were told that we would only have one run of qualifying ,i was gutted about that because it puts a lot of pressure on you . I was happy with how I was riding in practice and excited about the comp. The pressure at the start gate was pretty intense I was nervous about crashing . I knew I had to throw some tricks on the features as a lot of people were riding my line. I rode the top of the ridge pretty good but when i did an x up on the big triple step down I got a bit blown by the wind and went down hard. My visor was smashed and I was shook up. I was super disappointed but I got back on and decided to i didn’t have much to lose so i floated a mammoth backflip over the last table the crowd went siiiick and I was so stoked to stomp it and help make up for my crash . I didn’t make the finals but it was cool to sit back and watch the insanity go down . Over all it was a great contest in an amazing part of the world and I hope i get a chance to ride it again.
