Taupo freeride skier Fynn Powell, 17. Photo / Jason Beacham
Taupo freeride skier Fynn Powell, 17. Photo / Jason Beacham
Skiing off a cliff? The thought of it is enough to make your average skier tremble with fear, but these two do it for fun.
And Taupō students Lach and Fynn Powell are both so good at it, that they've both been invited to attend the Freeride Junior World Championshipsin Kappl, Austria, in late January.
The twin brothers, 17, gained wild card selection for the Championships following the New Zealand Junior Freeride Tour in September. They are among 30 skiers invited worldwide and the only two from New Zealand.
Freeriding in a nutshell is the athletes skiing over or along a mountain face and over drops, while also trying to score points by performing some cool moves in the air.
Lach describes freeriding as "an event where you pick a face off the mountain that's untouched for the skiers to ski down and you get judged on different categories".
Those include air and style, fluidity, control, technique and line and skiers will ideally try to get a good mixture of all of them for maximum points.
But the catch is that skiers must ski the face without having set foot on it before, and they only get one run. They are allowed to study the area where the competition will be held beforehand, but cannot enter it.
Taupo freeride skier Lach Powell, 17. Photo / Jason Beacham
"In the junior world tour you just get to look at it from the outside," says Lach. "You can get pretty close but you can't go inside the venue so you can't look at the top of your line or your drops so you've just got to do it on the day and just know where you're going and kind of trust yourself.
"It's a lot of visualisation as well thinking about it and picturing the line in your head and doing it over and over until you've got it."
Fynn says as well as looking for the best line, riders and skiers also need to remember where to go to best access it.
"A lot of the time you're trying to look for landmarks, for example 'I'm looking for this turn so I have got to go off this area' and it's a lot of experience and practising linking things up."
The size of the drops tends to be up to the skiers. High risk, or bigger drops, score more points. Drops in New Zealand can get up to 20 metres high and the drops in Austria for the junior freeride tour are expected to be similar, although Lach says they tend to be steeper and are therefore graded more difficult.
"The tougher it is, the higher the score."
Juniors are not allowed to do flips, but can do spins and grabs to add to their air style points.
Taupo freeride skiers Lach (left) and Fynn Powell, 17, have been invited to the Freeride Junior World Championships in Austria in January. Photo / Supplied
While skiing runs in the family, with dad Rick a former speed skier, the boys got into freeriding in their intermediate years via a freestyle ski programme at Turoa with Ruapehu Snowsports. Fellow Taupo freeskier Hugo Cameron has also competed overseas.
Lach says what he likes about freeriding is that it gives him the freedom to choose his own lines and create his own runs.
Fynn says it's different from racing where skiers must follow a set course.
"It's a really creative sort of thing, it's a lot up to the skier."
Numbers at freeride competitions are limited to avoid the course getting skied out, so spots are highly sought-after. This is the first year the boys have been eligible and Lach says while they were hoping to be invited, they were thrilled to get the news.
"Just super-excited to get the invitation and kind of surreal."
For the last three seasons the boys have trained at Whistler Freeride Club in Canada at Christmas. This year they will return to Whistler after the school year finishes until the competition in January and until then are hitting the gym for strength and fitness.
The boys have to get themselves to Austria but their costs there are covered and they have had sponsorship from Taupo's Mitre 10 Mega.
While comparisons between them are inevitable, Fynn and Lach say having each other is a benefit, to talk about their lines and bounce ideas around about ways to ski them.
Their mother Mel Powell says the pair are supports to each other, not rivals.
