Subaru freeskiing will return

Posted by Erin Eddy

By Reilly Capps, staff writer
Daily Planet
Sun Nov 16, 2008, 07:23 PM MST

Telluride, Colo. -

Extreme skiing will return to Telluride’s extreme terrain.

The Subaru Freeskiing World Tour will make another stop in Telluride this year, returning the weekend of Feb. 5-8.

The Telluride event is a qualifier for the World Tour.

Registration spots filled up quickly. Ridgway’s Scott Kennett, who has floated and hucked through the San Juan backcountry for decades, tried to sign up on Wednesday, the first day of registration. But it was a no go.

Registration began at noon. By 12:05, Kennett said, all the spots were taken.

He registered for an event in Crested Butte, and he said he’ll try to ski the event in Taos. He was one of the judges in Telluride last year, when the event took place around Telluride’s Black Iron Bowl.

It’s a shame Kennett won’t ski in Telluride. He has won three Freeskiing events in his age bracket, and he was hoping to take a fourth title here.

“I’d really like to set the bar high,” he said. At 50 years old, Kennett seems to be as in love with skiing as ever. He was skiing at Copper Mountain Sunday, and we talked to him via cell phone. He was also heavily involved in a ski movie shot mostly in Bear Creek called “Carve.”

Telluride’s Travis Wolfe signed up. He finished fourth in Telluride last year and has high hopes for this year.

“I’m hoping to stay top five,” Wolfe said. “I’ve been training and everything, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to hold my own and stay in the top five.”

Another skier who — unfortunately — won’t ski the Telluride competition is Telluride’s Jake Cohn.
He won the competition in Taos last year, and finished fifth in the Freeskiing World Championships in Alaska.

“I was pretty stoked on that,” said Cohn, 21.

But then Cohn broke his back while skiing in the New Zealand Freeskiing Open on Aug. 26.

He launched off a 40 to 50-foot cliff and stuck the landing, but the terrain was flat and icy, and he suffered a compression fracture of one of his vertebrae.

“My body couldn’t handle the impact,” Cohn said.

It was a tough road back to the U.S., spending three weeks on bed rest in New Zealand before he could be flown back to the states.

Now he says he’s better, walking again.

But he wants to scale back his participation in freeskiing events, especially after seeing what happened to John Nicoletta, an Aspen resident who fell to his death in the April championships in Alaska.

“He fell on a line a bunch of people had taken,” Cohn said. “It freaked me out quite a bit.”

Sometimes freeskiing competitions mean “risking your life,” Cohn said.

And though he hasn’t ruled out more freeskiing competition, he wants to focus on being in ski movies. He, too, was a featured skier in the movie “Carve.” He wants to do more movies, said the University of British Columbia student.

“I kind of had to reassess what I want to do,” Cohn said, “and then I was watching a bunch of ski movies, and those guys are just skiing pow.”

Hopefully, ski movies will be his new line of work.