The Roxy-themed start gate

A chance to see the world’s best female freestylers in action and a weekend of early-season snowboarding - those were the reasons I spent last Thursday evening on a plane full of drunk Christmas party punters to Salzburg.

Luckily I managed to lose the beer monsters at the airport and I headed to the Austrian resort of Kaprun for the Roxy Chicken Jam. The contest was returning to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier in the Austrian Alps for its European leg. With a prize purse of 30,000 euros and key TTR points up for grabs, many of the biggest names on the women’s freestyle circuit were heading there too.

Friday morning, a long line of riders queued patiently to register for the day’s qualifying round, and journalists and filmers joined them to get their press passes too.

Thirty-three girls took part in the qualifiers at the Roxy-sponsored park high on the glacier. The standard of riding was high with the girls putting up a good fight as they tried to secure places in the final against 25 invited riders.

The line of three kickers proved a little slow and the girls ended up missing out one of the jumps to ensure they had enough speed left for the wallride or quarterpipe at the end.

Mid-session, contest organiser Tina Birbaum popped up on the mic and announced that the number of girls qualifying for the finals was increasing from five to eight – giving the girls lower on the leaderboard extra motivation to push themselves in their final runs.

Santa hits the park

Santa, a little tied up with last-minute Christmas shopping, had sent a snowboarding assistant in the shape of British Capita rider Henry Jackson to bring some festive spirit to the event and he handed out sweets and chocolates to the riders and spectators throughout the day.

At the end of the session – as the sun hid behind the mountains and reduced the temperature to an even more eye-wateringly cold level – the eight qualifiers were announced. Aline Bock, Heidi Paumoka, Sarka Paneochova, Britte Van der Bouw, Aimee Fuller, Sandy Gecek, Steffi Hamann and Basa Stevulova were all through the main event.

Later we gathered for a private showing of the new Roxy movie Labor of Love. I hadn’t realised that so many of the international team would be in town but Jessica Dalpiaz called almost all the Roxy riders appearing in the film on to the stage – Torah Bright, Kjersti Buaas, Lisa Wiik, Alexis Waite, Erin Comstock, Lesley McKenna were all there. We settled down with our mulled wine to watch the film – some awesome riding and a great soundtrack.

Roxy had some extra guests enjoying the weekend's activities. They’d run competitions in several British snowboard shops to give away trips to the event. Three pairs of competition winners were in town – two couples and pair of Mexican girls studying English in the UK.

The two girls were so excited to be in the Alps as they’d never stood on snow before. They had seen it once before though

Jessica Dalpiaz from Roxy introduces Labor of Love

and they told us how there’d been a freak storm in their home town one winter. They wanted to play in the snow but they didn’t have any gloves. So they put plastic bags on their hands so they could make snowballs for a snowball fight.

Saturday morning, keen to get a couple of hours riding in before the day’s competition, we hit the lifts nice and early. The gondola opened at 8.30am and we were there at 8.32. It was definitely worth the early start and we got a couple of hours of smooth, empty pistes in before the weekend crowds descended. We also started to get warnings that the competition had been postponed until later in the day because of high winds on the glacier.

Roxy had organised a lesson for the competition winners and we headed up the gondola to the top of the glacier with them for some moral support. Approaching the top we saw that the competition area still was deserted and we soon understood why. It was blowing a gale.

Standing still long enough to get into our bindings was a major mission. We rode away as quickly as we could but the wind was so strong it was difficult to move.

We headed back to the main restaurant area where the Big Apple cafe had turned into a pro rider lounge and media centre with female riders including Jenny Jones, Lisa Filzmoser, Jamie Anderson and Torah Bright killing time until news on the status of the competition came through. Camera crews and reporters swarmed, filming the girls hanging out and grabbing soundbites.

Then we got the news that the contest was abandoned for the day and the scheduled bad weather day on Sunday would be needed after all. That meant the rest of the day was playtime! Given that the rest of the mountain was bathed in sunshine and covered in powder, we went out to make the most of it.

Torah Bright

Scottish Roxy rider Lesley McKenna was up for some powder so she and Tina Birbaum hit the freshies. We met them at the bottom of their run – they hadn’t been snowboarding together since Tina had her baby and they were stoked to get some riding time.

As Tina went back to Chicken Jam duties, Lesley volunteered to show us where they’d just been. We followed her through some rolling terrain covered in deep snow – stopping every now again to watch new British Roxy rider Aimee Fuller and friend throw front and back flips off the humps of snow and landing in plump piles of powder.

The snow conditions were amazing – getting a powder playday so early in the season (especially after last winter’s conditions) was such a treat.

Saturday night was the main contest party but with the finals still to come, the competing riders opted for a more sedate evening. Sure they still hit the dancefloor – they just hit it before anyone else (with a limbo competition thrown in for good measure) and were home and tucked up in bed before some people had even made it to the party.

On Sunday morning the wind had dropped a little and the skies were still clear. Just to be safe, the contest organisers opted to hold the finals in the lower DC park, rather than the Roxy glacier set-up.

The girls only had about an hour to practice before the contest began. Each of the 30 riders got four runs of the course which consisted of a choice of a kicker or flat down box, another huge kicker and then a final hit.

It was on the second and third hits that the stand-out riders really made their mark. Cheryl Maas was throwing down huge backside 7s on the final kicker from the outset and Jamie Anderson and Jenny Jones got in some clean, polished runs. Torah Bright looked superstylish in the air but couldn’t quite stick her landings.

The Roxy Chicken Jam is a crucial contest for riders hoping to do well on the Ticket To Ride World Tour. It’s a six star event, meaning the top placed riders get a large number of points – helping to keep them high in the charts. As a result of previous competitions, Jenny Jones was the only rider capable of knocking Kelly Clark off the top spot in the current TTR rankings if she got the 1000 points awarded to the Chicken Jam winner.

At the prizegiving ceremony, Kjersti and Jenny hobbled up to the podium in a three-legged race style – with Jenny’s race bib holding their legs together. They ended up next to each other in the rankings too – with Kjersti coming fifth and Jenny taking fourth place. Kjersti also won a new Gibson guitar for stomping the moat stylish trick of the day - a backside 360 stalefish.

Cheryl Maas on the podium with her Dad and his flag

Next on to the podium came Claudia Fliri who took third place while last year’s winner Jamie Anderson came second.

Cheryl Maas (who won the TTR series in 05/6) was announced the overall winner through a run involving a frontside 360 indy, backside 360 indy and a backside 720. As she took to the podium to collect her 15,000 euro winning cheque, medal and cuddly toy, her Dad (who had been supporting her from the sidelines all day) appeared with a Dutch flag tied to his ski pole and waved it triumphantly.

Cheryl also got a Gibson guitar for her efforts – cue a new air guitar rock godess poses from Cheryl and Kjersti in celebration.

The contest took Jenny Jones into second place in the TTR tour rankings whiel Jamie Anderson moved to third and Claudia Fliri to fifth position.

As we all headed back to the airport, we knew the riders would be making up for their quiet Saturday night with some Sunday night celebrations.

One of the girls could have a lot more to celebrate when the Roxy Chicken Jam heads to Mammoth Mountain at the end of March. After the conclusion of that event, the TTR tour champion for 07/8 will be crowned - and that sounds like a party not to miss.

For more on the Roxy Chicken Jam series visit www.roxy.com. For the latest TTR series info check out www.ttrworldtour.com