Winter X Games 13 will include a bigger superpipe and two new events this year.
With snowcats running “18 hours a day” at Buttermilk, according to terrain park director Greg Boyd, the 470-acre mountain is getting ready for its annual global spotlight, which kicks off Jan. 22.
Perhaps most exciting is a new halfpipe with four additional feet of vertical, bringing the wall up to 22 feet. Last year’s pipe was 18 feet.
The higher walls could lead to record-setting amplitude in this year’s skier and snowboarder superpipe competitions. Boyd said he hopes for 30 feet from skier Simon Dumont, whose superpipe battles with Tanner Hall have become X Games legend.
The pipe’s foundation was set this summer, with dirt walls built 19 feet high, which is 7 feet higher than last year’s dirt. The slope’s pitch has also been brought to 18 degrees, up about one and a half degrees from last year, Boyd said.
The 22-foot pipe is the biggest in X Games history and is the same size as the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler. Along with similar pipes in Park City, Utah, and Mammoth Mountain, Calif., Buttermilk’s is one of three 22-foot pipes in America.
“The pipes used to be 10 feet and have just progressed from there,” Aspen Skiing Co. spokeswoman Meredith McKee said. “We’re leading the industry, again.”
New events at Winter X this year are the Snowmobile Best Trick and women’s Skiing Slopestyle.
The snowmobile event is an adaptation of the snowmobile big air contest, but the Best Trick competition pits together a limited field of athletes, each of whom will attempt to land a move that has never been pulled off in competition. Look out for a double back flip, or something equally extreme.
“It gives you a little glimpse of where the sport is going,” said X Games event coordinator Tim Reed, noting that the winner of the Best Trick will be decided entirely by text-message votes from the fans.
The women’s’ slopestyle will give the two-planking ladies their first shot at one of Winter X’s most popular disciplines. The slopestyle course requires athletes to negotiate a series of seven terrain features, including rails, 40- to 50-foot jumps and the occasional picnic table. This year’s course has been altered slightly to provide a more direct line through the features, Reed said.
ESPN spokesman Danny Chi said this year’s games are “full steam ahead,” with no pulling back due to an economic recession. At least from the production side.
“We want to give a proper Winter X Games for all these great athletes to show what they have done since last year,” he said.
Chi and McKee both report an easier experience booking hotel rooms for the brigade of athletes, media, sponsors and industry representatives that come to Aspen each year for the games.
Advance bookings for X Games weekend are looking relatively strong, but are 8 to 10 percentage points off of last year’s mark for the weekend as of Dec. 31, local tourism statistics show.
Stay Aspen Snowmass Inc., the area’s central reservation agency, had nearly 80 percent of its inventory booked at the New Year for the Saturday night of X Games, which is the highest occupancy night. Last year in early January, 88 percent of the inventory was booked.
X Games weekend is “right up there with New Year’s” as far as busiest times of the year, SkiCo Vice President David Perry said.
“I would describe it as a time when the valley is at its highest energy level,” Perry said.
And if you look at the rest of the season, being 8 to 10 points off is “pretty good,” Perry said.
Winter X weekend has the most advance bookings of any weekend for the rest of the winter, at least at this point, said Stay Aspen Snowmass president Bill Tomcich, adding he has no doubt the weekend will sell out, at least in moderate price lodging.
With more available inventory thanks to lagging advanced booking, last-minute bookings have increased this year, and will likely do so for X Games, Tomcich said.
“That means we will probably turn a lot fewer people away who would like to come visit,” he said.
curtis@aspendailynews.com