Filling the void: The Drink Water Double Tap at Mt. Bachelor

Digging out the frozen bones of a banked slalom course has become somewhat of a ritual in early December. As a general rule, if you’re looking to score some powder at Mt. Bachelor, just plan an event; you can practically set your calendar to it. Usually this honor of digging would belong to participants in the Dirksen Derby. However, the Derby would be taking a year off. A gap year is one way to describe it, a void is how it felt.

Snowboarders are industrious, so with the ample notice of two weeks, the Drink Water triumvirate of Austin Smith, Bryan Fox, and Curtis Ciszek announced that they would put on a new event—the first of its kind—where riders would go head to head on nearly identical courses that combined elements of boardercross with a traditional banked slalom. They would build the course in one day, it would be called the Drink Water Double Tap.

Just a few states away in Colorado, some of snowboarding’s most recognizable riders were doing serious math to figure out just how many rotations, flips, grabs, and corks would be needed to land a spot on the podium at Dew Tour. There, a perfectly manicured jump would allow riders to travel in excess of sixty-five feet across a tabletop and perform dizzying aerials. Meanwhile, in Oregon, a group of riders known more for their time spent in front of the camera rather than on top of podiums, were digging deep trenches into the pipe walls to see just how wild they could get without ever having to leave the ground—the difference between drinking water and doing the Dew.

At the end of the day it was Bend local Jared Elston who took home the top spot in the pro men division edging out Dru Brownrigg, Griffin Siebert, and Alex Yoder for the top spot. For the ladies it was Ashley Thorton, another Bend local who seems nearly impossible to beat when it comes to competing on her home mountain.

Full results below

Watch also: Pathology: A movie about snowboarding and humans

wedrinkwater.com