Catching the Sky by Colten Moore

Author:Colten Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria / 37 Ink

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THE OTHER riders were all there on the mountain, looking like pros—real riders. Jeff Mullin hailed from Kipawa, Quebec; Jimmy “Blaze” Fejes from Anchorage, Alaska. Riders came from Idaho and Montana—and even northern Europe. Daniel Bodin—who had finished fourth, just off the medal stand, in the previous three years of freestyle snowmobile at the X Games—was Scandinavian. His hometown was Malung, Sweden, the birthplace of another snowmobiling icon: Mör Hetteen, the sturdy Minnesota pioneer and God-fearing grandmother of Edgar, one of the machine’s inventors back in tiny Roseau.

Yet the north country roots of the other riders—our competition—weren’t our only concern as we arrived in Aspen. The other riders had bona fides, actual accomplishments on real snowmobiles. Justin Hoyer, from Wisconsin, was the previous year’s silver medalist, gunning now for gold. Joe Parsons, from Washington, had collected four snowmobiling medals—in the past two years—including two silver and one gold. Heath Frisby was a freestyle original and something of a snowmobiling god. The son of an Idaho potato farmer, Frisby had been doing tricks on his sled for nearly a decade, long before Jim Rippey had ever even attempted a flip. Though just twenty-five, Frisby had been around forever, it seemed, competing in the X Games’ freestyle snowmobiling events since their inaugural year, 2007. He had never finished worse than fourth—mediocrity didn’t suit Heath—and he had picked up three medals along the way. How were we going to compete with that? With Heath Frisby? Or, better yet: How were we going to compete with Levi LaVallee?

Everyone in Aspen loved Levi. He was from Longville, Minnesota, population 156, about two hundred miles south of Roseau. His mother worked at the post office and his father owned the sanitation company in town. From a young age, Levi did two things: bag groceries at the local store and ride snowmobiles. He was particularly good at the latter. Before he even graduated from high school, he had turned semipro, racing sleds in snocross events. The Polaris factory team signed him soon thereafter. Winter X Games started extending invites in 2004, and Levi made an impact right away, winning gold in the hillcross event in his first year. By 2010, he was a five-time X Games medalist, with big-time sponsors lined up behind him. But Levi was perhaps best known for the medal he didn’t win—on national television the year before.

In 2009, with Caleb and me watching the X Games back in Texas, Levi announced that he planned to throw down a double backflip in the best trick competition. It was the sporting equivalent of Kobe Bryant saying he planned to beat Wilt Chamberlain’s single-game scoring record of 100 points in an NBA game, not by scoring 101, but by scoring 200. It simply wasn’t possible. No one had ever attempted a double backflip on a snowmobile in competition, much less executed one. As the Associated Press reporter in Aspen pointed out, there was almost a “coin flip’s” chance of injury. “And if that did happen,” the AP reported, “it probably would be serious.

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