print page | send as email | email editor

Clockwise from left: Jess McMillian, Matt Annetts, Crystal Wright and Griffin Post will represent Jackson at the invitation-only Nissan Freeride World Tour beginning Jan. 27 in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTOS / BRADLY J. BONER

View our entire photo gallery >>

Four valley residents met up at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort on Monday, hoping to carve a few turns underneath gray afternoon skies.

Crystal Wright, Jess McMillan, Matt Annetts and Griffin Post aren’t your typical Jackson ski bums, however. In fact, this foursome represents the most elite and accomplished big-mountain freeskiers in the area.

And they’re about to travel around the world to prove it.

Next month, Wright, McMillan, Annetts and Post will compete together in the prestigious, invitation-only Nissan Freeride World Tour. The tour begins Jan. 27 in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France, and includes stops in Sochi, Russia, Squaw Valley, Calif., and Verbier, Switzerland.

The field is dominated by Europeans, which makes the inclusion of four Jackson residents that much more impressive. In fact, Wright and McMillan are two of the three American women on the tour, which includes a field of nine female skiers overall.

“That’s something that is really neat,” Wright said. “The fact there are only three American women on the tour and two are from Jackson.”

Each of the four, who all call Jackson home, has taken a different path to qualify for the tour.

Wright received an invitation after winning the 2009 Subaru Freeskiing World Tour title last season. She has decided to compete on a limited basis on the Freeskiing World Tour here in North America this winter in order to focus on the Freeride tour.

“Now that I’m on a different tour, I guess the ultimate goal is to win that tour,” Wright said. “I’m only doing a couple [of stops] on the Freeskiing tour. So, I guess my goal is to win the Freeride.”

McMillan, meanwhile, is a Freeride veteran. This will be her third straight season on the tour. She qualified three years ago when she won the 2006-07 International Free Skiing Association championship.

Now, she’ll have another Jackson woman competing alongside her.

“I’m psyched to have [Wright] on the tour,” McMillan said. “It’ll be great. We ski together a bit in Jackson. So, it’ll be nice to have another familiar face out there.”

Post, meanwhile, is a newcomer to the Jackson scene. A native of Sun Valley, Idaho, he spent the last four winters living in Salt Lake City. He met and started a friendship with McMillan on the Freeride World Tour the last two years.

“Jess is a great person to travel with,” Post said. “She’s very street smart. She’s kept me out of trouble a number of times.”

Post moved  to Jackson a few months ago because he wanted to escape the metropolis of Salt Lake City for a small town. He also wanted to ski the challenging terrain around the Tetons.

“The French and the Europeans have giant basins in their backyard,” Post said. “Jackson is the closest thing in North America to that. You need to be comfortable to that exposure on the faces. That’s where the Europeans have the advantage. I feel like there is so much risk in Jackson, and it’s the right place to replicate that risk and get comfortable.”

Post also met and got to know Annetts last year on the Freeride tour. Annetts, the only snowboarder among the bunch, got an invitation to the Squaw Valley stop on the Freeride tour last year after he won a North Face Masters tour event in Snowbird, Utah.

Annetts placed fourth in Squaw Valley and was invited to the next two stops on the tour. He finished fourth on the tour at the end of the year, which gave him an invitation to the first three stops on this year’s tour.

“I’m pretty stoked,” Annetts said. “I think Russia is going to be amazing. I hear the skiing there is great. It’s going to be fun.”

The Freeride World Tour is typically dominated by big-name European riders but has seen an influx of Americans in recent years. The tour stops on three past and future Winter Olympic Games sites and includes huge cliff jumps and bills itself as “the best riders on the best mountains in the ultimate freeride competition.”

The tour is very heli-skiing intensive, and skiers and riders are judged based on the overall impression they make on judges.

“The neat part about the tour is the small number of people,” McMillan said. “Any person can win on any given day. It’s whoever has the best day. It pushes you to ski your best every day.”

Post said the Freeride scene can initially be intimidating. But Post has recorded several top five finishes in his career.

“At first I thought I was outgunned because all these big European names were there,” he said. “I thought I could hang with them. Not only could I hang, but I ended up on podium.”

All four said their goal is to win. But regardless of their performance, they’re all glad to have a few familiar faces together sharing in the experience.

“I’ve traveled with all of them, they’re all pretty entertaining,” Post said. “It’s nice to travel with people you know and look out for one another.”