Words and Photos by SKS

The 8th Annual Grenade Games kicked off on Saturday March 24th at Bear Mountain under perfect blue skies.  With great snow, an amazing park, and crews and riders from around the world in attendance and ready to shred and party, this past weekend may have possibly been one of the winters best.

Bear Mountain set up an awesome snake run, and to top it off there was a gap line over the whole thing that sent you into an awesome little quarter pipe.  This feature was hands down one of the most fun and coolest things I’ve ever seen, but that wasn’t it.  Almost equally as cool was a triple pack rhythm section with a pond skim in between jump #2 and #3 and another pond skim after #3.  This thing was really cool, but it was pretty sketchy and only a few riders hit it while even less made it through without getting soaked.  I’m almost willing to bet money that that feature will be back for Grenade Games 9, dialed, and absolutely perfect.  The Bear park crew also threw up a nice 40-foot jump, two pairs of boob jumps, a mogul field for the Chinese-Eyed Downhill and a dual slalom course complete with two pond skims, down rails, boxes, and some slushy berms.

Day one saw a ton of riding on the jump, the boobs, and the snake run with the “official” events being the Chinese-Eyed Downhill and a heavy session on the big pond skim complete with a snowball throwing peanut gallery who even managed to take out Kass himself causing a harsh crash into the cold pond.  The crowd had no mercy, kids as young as 7 years old were throwing snowballs at any one who cared to try the pond skim.

The Grenade Games isn’t a contest.  It isn’t an event.  It’s a party.  As we left the resort at the end of day one I ran into more than one person who had yelled so much their voices sounded like raspy frogs.

 

Pat Bridges handplant