Behind the Scenes of the Natural Selection Build

Nine a.m. and it’s time to go. A group of extremely talented and dedicated snowboarders are working hard to turn a rocky, snowy hillside at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort into a world-class freestyle course.

Designed to mimic features found in the backcountry, the Natural Selection Build Crew enhances the area known as Moran Face in preparation for the event. Unlike most freestyle venues, the Natural Selection course is not accessible by snowcat, therefore an almost unimaginable amount of human power goes into bringing Travis Rice’s vision to life.

The builders are a team that has devoted their lives to snowboarding, they live and breathe the culture. I join this passionate, rough around the edges crew for the day to see what it takes to put on one of the biggest events in snowboarding.

We rendezvous at “the shop”, a mid-mountain facility the Park Crew uses as their year-round headquarters. The smell of coffee and freshly cut wood fills the air. Tools, terrain park features in for maintenance, and snow gear drying from the day prior are everywhere. After a short meeting led by Ranyon D’arge, head of park crew, the team gets ready for battle. They dawn their Gor-Tex armor and grab their weapon of choice. Shovels in hand they load the Sweetwater Gondola and set out for the day.

With over 40 features to dial in, the twelve-person crew must divide and concur.

Today I join Ryan Cruz, Jess Goucher, Gary Hansen, and Matt Iberlin to smooth out the in-run and manicure the take-off of a feature called Lando’s Hip. If the best snowboarders in the world are expected to ride to the highest of their ability everything needs to be perfect. Despite the cold, our jackets come off quickly as we move what seems to be multiple dump trucks worth of snow away from the area leading up to the jump so there are no bumps. Our goal is to have no compression between going down the hill and up the lip of the jump.

A few hundred yards below us the other crew is hard at work building a jump from scratch.

To make a jump on this course they can’t just dig a hole and make a pile of snow. If that were the case the venue would be littered with massive craters. Instead, the team below is hiking up and down the slope pushing the top foot or so down to the area of the jump. They call this “Farming Snow” and it is extremely grueling work, sometimes moving snow from 50 yards away to ensure that the general slope of the run remains smooth.

It is estimated that at least 200 man-hours go into building each feature.

As the lifts stop spinning and the trails below us become vacant white rivers flowing to the base, we wrap up our projects for the day. It's after 4:30 and the sun has dipped to the west side of the mountains. Returning to the shop sore and wet, shovels are returned to their racks, and gloves are hung to dry. Seven full hours or moving snow has come to an end…another seven tomorrow.

After witnessing this crew almost literally move a mountain, it is clear that the builders are the unsung heroes of Natural Selection.