Colorado has struggled to foster a cohesive snowboard scene since the late ‘90s. Contest riders post up in Breck to train for X Games and Dew Tour, film crews come through when there’s snow and industry folk show up for a week at the end of January during SIA. It’s not that there aren’t loads of talented riders in the Centennial State, there is simply a lacking sense of unity among crews and draw for those pursuing the sport to move here. It is events like Love Games and people like those at Satellite Boardshop that are restoring the flourishing snowboard culture that Colorado once had.

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Now in its fifth year, Loves Games is truly a DIY snowboarding event. It’s not held at a resort, there are no snowcats pushing lips and there’s no ski patrol to hide open beers from. The features are all hand-dug by the riders on the day before the contest, at the same spots along Loveland Pass that snowboarders have been building and riding each season for close to three decades. But no two years are ever the same. Snowpack varies, wind sculpts the winter topography uniquely and the manpower that shapes the features brings new ideas each time around.

Love Games always kicks off with a session on a windlip that forms a natural quarterpipe at the top of the pass. Terming this season’s first feature a “quarterpipe” would be using a loose definition of the word. It was more a variation of a hip with multiple options to redirect. If they could survive the knee-collapsing force of the run-in, riders came from all angles, tweaking grabs and warming up before heading to the “Ironing Board:” a sizeable hip built out of a cornice in a gulley.

Corbin Clement, high-flying and highly educated.

One thing is certain about the Ironing Board: the landing is flat. It always has been and always will be. This does not deter riders from absolutely sending it at this legendary spot, and the heaviest tricks at Love Games always go down here. Tahoe-to-Summit County transplant, Tim Rechetniak, is one of the most talented snowboarders you’ve never heard of and in typical fashion quietly stomped a massive crippler, first try. Corbin Clement, fresh out of grad school with an MBA, boosted what could be the largest front seven Loveland Pass has ever seen. Hunter Wood went to the fuckin’ moon on a frontside air. And fourteen-year-old, Luke Winkelmann put down a flawless front three crail in addition to the method that ultimately won him the Vans “Jamie Lynn award” – a painting of what may be the first set of breasts he’s seen – courtesy of Jamie, himself.