Women’s snowboard competition, Uninvited Invitational, comes to Boreal
Provide/Tyler Ravelle
SODA SPRINGS, Calif. — World-class snowboarder, Jess Kimura, is inviting the “uninvited” to an epic four-day event at Boreal Mountain.
Kimura, who is called by North Face one of the most influential snowboarders of the last decade, had been competing in a male dominated sport for years when she finally had enough of not being included.
Provided/Chris Parton
In 2018, she self-funded a film, titled “The Uninvited,” featuring only women snowboarders. It has since grown into a trilogy and has help launch many careers for riders.
Now, she’s opening the uninvited franchise to the public with the Uninvited Invitational, which will be held April 13-16 at Boreal Mountain.
More than 60 athletes will compete to prove their mettle on the world stage, hoping to snag one of 30 spots for the final showdown on Saturday April 15. Individuals from more than a dozen states including Vermont, Washington, Utah, Arizona, Montana, and Colorado will join international competitors from Finland, Denmark, Spain, Japan, Estonia, The Netherlands, Austria, Norway, and Canada. Local competitors include Savannah Golden, Fancy Rutherford, Jaime Deister, Christine Savage and Ava Peterson.
The qualifiers kick off on April 13 and 14 where riders will have two full days on a private course to prove they have what it takes to make the finals on Saturday. Starting at noon on Saturday, the finalists will battle it out in front of an energetic crowd and a panel of legendary judges including Desiree Melancon, Jeff Holce, and Mikey LeBlanc.
Judges will be looking for overall impression, execution, originality, technical difficulty, and consistency. By the end of the day, $40,000 will be awarded to the deserving winners.
The course, built specifically for this event, will be street style including features inspired by Kimura’s favorite and most iconic spots from past video parts. It will consist of rails, ledges, banks, bonks, wallrides, hips and quarter pipes. It will be split two-thirds jibs to one-third air and transition features.
There will also be several one-off set ups elsewhere on the hill, such as wallrides, jumps off sheds, abandoned structures, tree bonks, etc. This gives the riders a chance to get clips outside the park on real urban features.
The course is being built by Trinisha Lumos from Reno, a lead female fabricator for the event, building unique features from scratch out of wood and steel. She is working alongside Matty Alleva, another female welder fabricator and snow cat operator.
Spectators are welcome to the competition days. On Sunday, April 16, the public is invited to ride with Beyond the Boundaries, a woman-specific snowboard camp and touring company.
To sign-up to attend the free event, visit https://book.rideboreal.com/s/uninvited/p/uninvited-waiver.
All three films are free to view; The Uninvited (2018), The Uninvited II (2020), and The Uninvited III (2021)
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