Chas Guldemond wins rail session © TTR

The Honda Session, a Swatch TTR FIVE(5)STAR Event, went off last night in Vail, Colorado, USA. A good mix of riders came out to Vail despite the crazy weather that has been making travels a bit difficult in Colorado. Things kicked off at the Session, with the Steel & Sky rail jam, getting everyone pumped up for Saturday’s Slopestyle contest.

Once again, the Session crew didn’t disappoint, with a super creative, skate-style setup that the riders were loving. The course started off with the option of a huge hip, an up-box to hip, or, riders could ride on top of the hip deck to get to a long flat-down box. The next section of the setup had a wallride perfect for some styled-out stalls, a skate-style bowl with a gigantic c-box as coping or an up gap. The last section resembled a rail jam setup with an up box-to gap-to flat down, a standard down box and a burly down-flat-down handrail.

Things kicked off in the afternoon with a qualifier round knocking 40 riders down to 15. The finals ran a combination of the 15 qualifiers plus 5 invited riders for a session under the lights at the base of Golden Peak.

The crowd stayed warm in an unconventional way © TTR

In the finals, it was a jam format with one hour for the women and one hour for the men with top runs being decided every 15 minutes. A pretty cool format… as Preston Strout, one of the announcers for the jam, explained, “you could be killing it the first fifteen minutes, and blow it for the last 45 minutes and still walk away with an award.”

Mike Casanova destroyed the rails for best trick © TTR

In the end it was American riders Chas Guldemond and Molly Aguirre who proved their jib skills, taking home first place in the rail jam under the lights at Vail. Chas had some clean runs, one that included a gap to backside lipslide, straight into a McTwist in the bowl, a 50-50 to 180-out on the c-box and a Cab 50-50 to backside 180-out on the flat down box at the end of the course. Current women’s Swatch TTR World No. 1, Jamie Anderson, took a close second with some charging runs as well.

Jamie Anderson stoked © TTR

Chas was stoked on his first place finish tonight saying: “Here at the Honda Session rail jam - got first tonight, took home some cash, pretty stoked on that. Amped for the Swatch TTR FIVE(5)STAR Slopestyle tomorrow. This event is pretty heavy. Every year this event steps up to another level, so I’m curious to see what people are throwing down.”

Tune in to sessionvail.com for a complete webcast of the Honda Session Slopestyle, a Swatch TTR FIVE(5)STAR event. Also, check back to ttrworldtour.com for video and news coverage straight from Vail. Webcasts from the Steel & Sky and Slopestyle contests are also available for your viewing pleasure on go211.com.