KIRKWOOD, Calif. – The Natural Selection Tour is taking place at Kirkwood on Feb. 12-15, offering young athletes on the Kirkwood Freeride team a full circle glimpse at a potential future. For professional freeride athletes like those competing in the tour, their journey often starts at a young age on these home mountain teams.

“I certainly believe that our athletes will be inspired by this competition to continue pursuing their dreams in hopes of maybe competing in the Natural Selection Tour, or the Freeride World Tour, or the Olympics,” Kirkwood Freeride Team head coach, Garrett Wisniewski says.

The Natural Selection Tour (NST) event at Kirkwood is one of the tour’s DUELS happening around the world where two snowboarders complete head-to-head on natural terrain. However, unlike traditional freeride competitions, NST athletes incorporate jumps and maneuvers into their lines in a more trick-oriented big mountain competition, the likes of which are gaining momentum.

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“This has definitely shown how park skiing and big mountain riding have melded over the past few years,” Wisniewski explains. “It’s just been really cool to see the sport evolve and be a part of it and help guide the next generation.”

On the Kirkwood Freeride Team, that next generation encompasses 72 athletes of both skiers and snowboarders, ages 11-18 who dedicate December through April to training on weekends and holidays.

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The team competes in numerous competitions within the Tahoe Junior Freeride Series, consisting of both regional and national competitions. They also travel to one out-of-region event each year. This season the team will travel to Whitefish Montana, and has traveled to Whistler in British Columbia, Alyeska in Alaska, and Crystal Mountain in Washington in prior years.

The Kirkwood Freeride Foundation raises money for athletes who may have financial barriers and otherwise wouldn’t be able to join these out of state competitions.

Kirkwood typically hosts a handful of each season’s competitions, including this year’s Junior Freeride Championships, bringing athletes from both north and south America, including Argentina and Chile, as well as Canada.

“We’re just super proud of the terrain we have,” Wisniewski says, “and the environment that we have here in the mountain.”

The program has already developed athletes who have gotten a taste of next level competitions and received sponsorships from respected brands in the industry such as Salomon Skis, Moment Skis, Parlor Skis, Fly Low, Spyder, and Oakley. These athletes include Madison Ringham who competed at the Freeride World Tour Junior World Championships in Kappl Austria two years in a row (2022 and 2023) and Evan Kim the following year (2024).

“It’s a really great journey to watch these athletes coming up through the program and then watch them evolve as athletes, but also as young adults and people,” the coach says, “and to see them learn more about themselves and what they’re capable of and then apply that on the mountain.”

“It’s a very, very beautiful thing to see.”

These young athletes are judged on numerous parameters. Not only are they gauged on the line they choose down the mountain—the more vertical the line the better—they’re also judged on how well they control themselves as they hurtle off features. More points are given for fluidity.

“They don’t want to see athletes stopping and looking at a cliff and then going off of it,” the coach explains. “They want to see an athlete that is confident in where they’re going and how they’re able to approach said feature.”

An athlete’s skiing or snowboarding technique is also judged along with style and energy.

“It’s an art form in a way,” Wisniewski says, “how they’re being judged on the aesthetic of their skiing, is somewhat similar to any other sport in the Olympics, such as ice dancing or gymnastics.”

These might be the expectations athletes are held to on the terrain, but the Kirkwood Freeride program also holds their athletes to an additional set of standards both inside and outside of competition.

“It’s super important to us that our athletes conduct themselves respectfully to our guests and just to other employees on the mountain and to their teammates as well,” Wisniewski says.

One of the cornerstones of Kirkwood’s program is creating not only good skiers and riders but also ambassadors for the sport of freeride and Kirkwood.

“I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned through skiing and snowboarding that can be applied to a broader spectrum of life,” Wisniewski says.

“Hopefully these athletes can take what they’ve learned in the program and apply it to a lot of different aspects of their lives as they grow, get older, and then,” he adds, “they have that confidence in themselves to overcome whatever’s in front of them with a smile on their face.”