SLVSH Cup Grandvalira: First Looks

Imagine you’ve arranged a ski trip to an exciting foreign destination. There’s a sick terrain park, all your homies are there, the booze is cheap and the food is good. Imagine this, and you’ve already got a decent idea of what it’s like to be at the SLVSH Cup in Andorra, a unique gathering of freeskiers partaking of the SLVSH “contest” format that pits riders head to head, trick for trick, until only one man is left standing.

It’s a balmy 13 degrees Celcius flying in to Barcelona, which seems worlds away from anything ski-related. But after a few hours’ bus ride to the north, the pastoral, hardscrabble Catalonian countryside gives way to the upthrust of the Pyrenees—scraggy, brushy valley slopes that ascend and ascend on either side till they give way to snowy high-alpine mountainscapes, gleaming brilliantly under the Iberian sun.

Welcome to Andorra, the Pyrenean micro-state sandwiched between France and Spain: haven for tax evaders, British vacationers on affordable Continental ski trips, and of course, park skiers like the SLVSH crew. After all, this is Henrik Harlaut’s adopted home—which has accepted him so enthusiastically as to name the local terrain park, Sunset Park Peretol, after him.

Spanish OG freestyle skier Pako Benguerel picks me up at the Andorra La Vella bus station, and we head straight to Peretol. At first glance, it doesn’t look like much: a solitary hotel on the side of the road with one small slope and a rope tow. But this is one of the best terrain parks on this side of the Atlantic. The park crew has filled every available space with rails, boxes, walls and other jibs of every variety. There’s an unusual jump with a tunnel through the middle accessing an up rail, and a sprawling plaza of features that hosts one of the park’s most popular features, a sizable gap to flat-down box.

For the past two days the routine has been simple: eat, sleep and ski! At midday, a squadron of some of the world’s best park skiing talent—from Olympians to tomorrow’s big names—comes stumbling out of our hotel, packs into our hotel shuttle van until it looks like a clown car, and heads up the road to Peretol for shred sessions lasting until late into the evening under the lights. The first round of SLVSH games have already wrapped up; I can’t give away any of the game results just yet, but here’s a photo gallery to keep you hyped until the games start dropping next week. Stay tuned for more from the SLVSH Cup here at Grandvalira.