Meet Utah’s newly crowned king and queen of skiing

Competitors in one of Wyoming’s most challenging winter sports contests don’t get to practice their entrances to the narrow, 30-foot drop they face. Nor can they rehearse the tight turns they’ll have to zip through to escape the steep chute unscathed.

That makes what Tim McChesney, 34, accomplished all the more marvelous.

McChesney, a newcomer to the invitation-only Kings & Queens of Corbet’s contest at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, had barely laid eyes on the couloir before he catapulted into it. As the first competitor in the lineup that features some of the world’s best and most creative freeskiers and snowboarders, the Salt Lake City skier didn’t even get the luxury of studying how others made their entrance. He just had to act on confidence and instinct.

Yet when the competitors voted a day later on their favorite runs, they crowned McChesney the king. Another Salt Lake City skier and contest rookie, Ana Eyssimont, earned the queen’s crown. And together they kept alive the royal line of Utah freeskiers. A Utahn has taken one of the crowns every year since 2021.

“I think there’s a ton of people out here who make skiing like their priority and make trying to be a professional skier happen, which is, like, such a crazy dream,” Eyssimont, 28, said. “It’s cool to feel like you’re not just on this weird path in life, and nobody gets you. Everybody gets you here.”

Snowboarder Madison Blackley seized the throne for Utah in 2021, when she became the first, and still only, snowboarder to be christened Queen of Corbet’s. Piper Kunst kept the royal line alive with the queen’s crown in 2022. Both live in Salt Lake City. Then Colby Stevenson of Park City was named King of Corbet’s in 2023, a year after he won a silver medal in big air at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.

Organizers canceled the 2024 event for lack of snow — the resort needs at least a 50-foot base to cover the refrigerator-sized boulders in the chute. When it returned, McChesney and Eyssimont made the first all-Utah sweep since the contest began in 2018.

McChesney set the tone.

The night before the contest, all the athletes pull numbered pingpong balls out of a raffle cage to determine the competition order. Eyssimont auspiciously picked No. 19 — her lucky number, nine, with a one in front of it. McChesney, to his dismay, pulled No. 1.

“I was excited, but I was also extremely nervous, because I never jumped into it. I’ve never seen someone jump into it from the top,” he said. “So it was like, ‘Oh dear. I have to just kind of go for it and figure out the speed and everything, but also at the same time I’m going to get the best conditions.”

Staring down so many unknowns as well as the sheer drop, McChesney could have been forgiven for taking a conservative approach to his first of two potential runs. He did not.

“I got up there, and the crowd was like hyping me up, and it was just a lot of energy,” he said. “So I said ‘All right, I might as well go for the hardest trick.’”

Shortly after ski patrollers dropped the rope to officially open the couloir, McChesney hucked himself off the cliff with a whirling double cork 1080. After landing in a nearly full lay-down position, he sprang back up to hit another jump. Then, he punctuated the run with a backward approach to the ramps set up near the bottom, from which he spiraled into a switch dub 10 blunt (three revolutions with a ski grab). McChesney said those were the first 1080 jumps he’s done this season.

McChesney returned to the lip of the cliff to watch the rest of the competition and contemplate whether to take an optional second run. Yet as he saw skier after skier after snowboarder crash, he opted to let his statement stand.

Eyssimont was one of those to make it through cleanly. Though she skied near the end of the 24-athlete lineup, when much of the powder had already been sloughed off and the entrance had become icy, she made a straight-line drop over the lip. She almost lost control as she streaked through the chute, but held on to pull off a backflip on the natural jump within the course and a ski grab on the constructed one.

Hungry for more, Eyssimont took a second run. This time, after the entrance had been tromped down by competitors as well as ski patrollers aiding those who crashed, she had to skid partway down the entrance. She made a smaller drop to the center of the couloir but crashed, losing a ski. Once she’d recovered, she managed a front flip on the first jump and wrapped up her competition with a backflip.

“It was just so fun. I couldn’t wait to go again. I would have gone a third time,” Eyssimont said. “I mean, the conditions obviously changed a lot, but it’s just, like, a really cool feeling to be the only one skiing the couloir.”

Some of McChesney and Eyssimont’s strongest competition came from other Utah skiers and riders. Blackley and fellow Salt Lake resident Jed Sky placed second among snowboarders, while Kunst and Tristan Lilly, a recent Salt Lake City transplant, swept third place among skiers.

Veronica Paulsen, the 2020 queen, won the People’s Choice award in the women’s category, followed by Kunst, Eyssimont and Blackley. Paulsen crashed hard after making a double backflip entrance into the couloir. Lilly claimed the men’s honor, followed by University of Utah student Ridge Dirksmeier, Alex Hackel and McChesney.

Their success bodes well for the Utah royal line of succession.

“I feel like the Salt Lake City athletes ran really deep,” said Eyssimont, who along with McChesney plans to return to defend her crown. “It was really cool.”