The 2023 Gritt Coaching Camps were certainly one for the books. The warm weather and recent rain had the Canterbury Clubbies looking more tussock than snow, which resulted in multiple mountains pulling their closing day forward. This included Craigyburn Valley, which was the planned first stop. Luckily, we were able to move this camp to Broken River, which duly received a 40cm dump of snow on day 1. After the clouds parted, our all-star roster of coaches including Craig Murray, Jess Hotter and Andrew Pollard were able to get into the nitty gritty.  Jumps, technique, avalanche safety and competition clinics were all held on snow with soft skills such as sponsorship, equipment, safety and further competition advice held in the evenings. These were all put into practice at Broken River's first ever "Knob Off" Freeride event on the Nervous Knob run.

We then moved onto Mt Olympus who are no strangers to the camps where they have been run for the previous 5 years. With another dusting of snow, we were able to take groups out of bounds to the Back Ridge freeride zone to put the newly dialled skills into practice. Jump building skills were also put to good use and many new tricks were learned.

It's safe to say the future of Freeride is in good hands with a stacked group of young rippers eager to learn and push themselves. We can't wait to see where they end up heading over the next few years.

We would like to thank SSNZ, Inspire Foundation, POC, Chill, Arc'teryx and Small Planet for their support.

- Gritt Coaches (Jamesa Hampton, Nick Pascoe, Craig Murray, Charlie Murray, and Kenji Boekholt)