Thursday was not consistently sunny, but it was very much a spring day with a temperature of about 55 degrees and a light breeze. Still, Josh Dwinal went snowboarding on fresh snow from Mount Hood.
With an elevation of 11,249 feet, Mount Hood is snowy year-round. However, Eugene is not. Fifty-five tons of snow were trucked to the corner of Kincaid Street and East 14th Avenue from Oregon’s highest mountain Thursday morning.
The snow covered 85 feet of scaffolding as part of the second annual Cricket Campus Rail Jam Tour, which 21-year-old Dwinal won.
“I was stoked,” he said. “It was super exciting to ride well and get some recognition for it.”
Rail Jam is a competition where skiers and snowboarders do tricks while going down a rail. It’s an “effort to grow snow awareness, to grow snow sports on college campuses,” said tour organizer Dan Genco.
Genco – who is marketing director for Galvanic Design, the Portland-based events and marketing company that manages the tour – said while he was attending Oregon State University, he noticed that mainstream athletes got all the glory.
The Rail Jam Tour was conceived two years ago at OSU as a way to let snow athletes show their peers what they can do – a rare opportunity, since Corvallis is a few hours from any ski resort – and to bring something different to college campuses.
“I was sick of seeing the same old programs,” Genco said. “I wanted to come up with something different to shock everyone and show what students can do.”
The next year, the Rail Jam Tour was launched, making additional stops at the University and California State University, Chico. And this year, the tour was expanded to include stops at 14 colleges and universities in seven states.
“We’re helping Galvanic put this thing on,” said University senior Ben Robertson, one of three coordinators of the UO Snowboard Club, which hosted the event. “We’re just a bunch of kids who like snowboarding and having fun.”
Robertson, who has been snowboarding for 10 years, is from Salt Lake City, a city that’s located within 60 miles of 11 ski resorts.
“I’m used to going up (the mountain) all the time,” he said. “Three hours is kind of far so coming out and being able to do stuff like this is awesome. I’m just glad a lot of people came out and had fun.”
Skiers and snowboarders uploaded photos and videos of themselves performing their best tricks on the Rail Jam Tour’s Web site.
From the thousands of applicants, 60 finalists were chosen to compete at each location: Seattle; Spokane, Wash.; Fresno, Calif.; San Diego; Reno, Nev.; Boise, Idaho; Salt Lake City; Denver; Boulder, Colo.; and Fort Collins, Colo., in addition to Eugene, Corvallis and Chico. Of the 60 skiers and snowboarders who participated in the University’s stop on the Rail Jam Tour, 20 were University students.
The five top winners from each stop will compete for the $5,000 grand prize during the final round May 23 at Portland State University. One of the top five was Calvin Brawner who is a University student and a skier.
Dwinal was named the winner because “he had the most consistency on his tricks. He also did the most tricks and he gave the judges an overall impression of a good rider,” said Logan Fuquay, who served as head judge at the Rail Jam Tour.
“Basically, I do a 540 on the rail,” Dwinal said, explaining the complicated series of turns he performed without falling off the rail.
The Rail Jam Tour included music and giveaways; hundreds of University students watched the competition as Frisbees and Clif Bars flew through the air.
“It was awesome,” said University junior Alex Unger, who snowboards but “is not good enough” to compete.
“It was right in the heart of campus. A lot of kids were out enjoying it, whether or not they’re into snowboarding,” he said.
Unger said this year’s event was much better than last year, which took place on the Humpy Lumpy Lawn, located on Agate Street by Hamilton Hall.
There were “bigger ramps, bigger jumps, better turns and having fun watching people eat shit,” he said. “That’s the best part for sure.”
[email protected]