00:00Mia Jones, second in the Region 2 Challengers last year coming out of Truckee, California, riding out of Palisades.
00:07Mia Jones, a member of the Freeride World Tour Overachievers Club, doing an engineering degree at Dartmouth while doing this.
00:15She's studying in Copenhagen right now, so she at least won't be jet-lagged.
00:18And Mia Jones going out with some aggression of the gate.
00:21Absolutely. Rookie on course, Mia Jones.
00:24And she is taking that top section like it's nothing and basically getting into the meat of this space very quickly, quicker than any of the other riders so far.
00:34And she's heading a little bit over to the rider's left as well, making her way through some pepper.
00:39Again, you can see that texture on the snow.
00:41I would call that shestrugi, kind of some wind effect.
00:43So that's where the wind has ripped it but hasn't deposited it.
00:46So it's going to be a little challenging in there.
00:48And again, she's just working to smartly, very quickly, do these small turns through the technical terrain and make her way to her line.
00:54And in the meat of her line, it looks like she's taking a bite out of some very adventurous terrain with what I would call technar.
01:02And she's navigating it with so much composure and fluidity.
01:06It's amazing.
01:07Oh, Mia, losing the heel side edge there.
01:09She's got that trademark style, fast, aggressive riding with an extremely technical board placement.
01:15She gives her brother, Cass, a ton of credit for her riding and her journey in Freeride.
01:21The two of them ride together all the time back home.
01:24And now Mia into this section, closing out, putting her board perfectly.
01:28And look what's underneath her.
01:30She is still in the technar and she's looking for an air up and over that mandatory coming out of that feature and just stomps it right to bolts.
01:38Perfect transition.
01:40The transition angle from takeoff to landing there.
01:43When you line it up, when you do your math, and Mia being an engineering student, I'd say she's probably pretty good at it, it almost looks like there's no impact.
01:51And, of course, these riders are unbelievably strong.
01:54But that was really well-scoped.
01:56Keep in mind visual inspection.
01:58These riders do not get to go on this face before the event.
02:02Amy, how hard is that for them to line up a transition like that without having actually ever stood on that feature?
02:07It's so hard because the thing about mountains and terrain is they look different from every angle you look at them.
02:12So you think there might be a landing on a feature when you look at it from the side or the bottom.
02:16But when you're coming in from the top with speed, it might look different.
02:19But that one was perfectly scoped.
02:21That was a great, really solid, sizable air to an awesome landing.
02:25Again, she made quick work of that line.
02:27And we'll see, you know, there was a small loss of control, like you said, on that heel side edge.
02:32So as we look back, we'll probably get a closer idea.
02:36Mia Jones there working through that chute just like it's nothing.
02:41And there you saw she kind of dug in, like in her heel side there, gave her a little white room.
02:45And this is that lower air.
02:48Just confidently just finding that greasy, greasy landing right there.
02:52That was so perfect.
02:53Laid the tail into the landing.
02:54And looking on that replay, I'm not as sure as I was if she actually went down there.
03:00She may have just hit a patch of snow and it burst up control from the video judge.
03:05Keep in mind, those video judges, the video judge bars are just to give us an idea of what that video judge saw.
03:11But looking at that video, what I saw was more of a speed check kind of white room, not a loss of control.
03:17Again, I'm not a judge, but that actually just looked like she hit a little kind of honey hole of wind pow.
03:22Yeah, exactly.
03:23A bit of a stack of powder there.
03:25So the judge is quick with their score here and going up to a 69-6-7.
03:30So Mia Jones, the truckie California rookie, taking over the hot seat in her very first Freeride World Tour competition.
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