Parkite Colby Stevenson was only eight years old when he had his first Corbet’s experience. Already familiar with ripping lines off Jupiter and 9990, he climbed out of the Jackson Hole tram with his family, skied down the edge of Rendezvous Bowl, and peered into the ubiquitous chute with a sheer face drop-in point and massive rock sidewalls that are not forgiving.
“I remember just looking at it and then hearing about all the history,” he said, reminiscing about his time there shooting a Teton Gravity Research video at just 8 years old. “I was like, ‘who’s crazy enough to jump into this thing?’”
He didn’t drop in to Corbet’s that day. But he was back just a few years later as a budding teen, carefully and slowly picking his way down through the moguled out-chute.
After winning his third career X Games gold medal in January, Stevenson headed back to Jackson earlier this month. There was no trepidation like there was a decade earlier. And he didn’t just drop in – he flew – launching backwards into the couloir, landing a 540 switch rodeo (backwards entry to a backflip, with one and a half rotations).
The legendary Corbet’s Couloir is a signature run at Jackson Hole. Ski it and you’ll have bragging rights for life. I remember my own first visit, skiing first tracks with a group of U.S. SkI Team trustees. We looked over the lip and at least I made the prudent choice.
It was first identified by mountain guide Barry Corbet in 1960, describing it as a narrow crease of snow shaped like an upside-down funnel. “Someday someone will ski that,” he said. They did, just a few years later.
In 2018, Jackson Hole began a contest to name the best skiers or riders willing to huck themselves into that narrow funnel. Kings and Queens of Corbet’s was born, a contest where the athletes are their own judges, scoring each other over pizza and beer at the local theater a few nights after the contest. For weeks before the content, the run is closed to allow buildup of natural snow for the event.
Stevenson moved from New Hampshire to Park City when he was young. Mom and dad were enthusiastic skiers, proudly talking about their son’s freeform approach to the mountains as his Hometown Heroes exhibit debuted at the Alf Engen Ski Museum last week.
He grew up hucking cliff bands under the Jupiter chairlift, hiking the Park City ridgeline to the rock faces off Square Top and ripping laps on the 9990 Express. In 2020 he became the first X Games rookie to win double gold (slopestyle, knuckle huck). The next year he won the FIS World Cup slopestyle plus overall park and pipe titles. Just 12 months ago, he claimed Olympic big air silver at Beijing. His third X Games gold came last month in slopestyle.
King and Queens wasn’t on Stevenson’s radar this season, with a busy schedule of X Games, World Cup and filming. But while at Jackson Hole filming in December, a chance encounter at Teton Thai with one of the organizers got him on the invite list. “He said he would buy us dinner if I committed,” laughed Stevenson. “It’s too funny because I definitely wouldn’t have gotten an invite or wanted to come if I didn’t meet him at that dinner that night.”
Flying direct from the Mammoth Mountain World Cup, Stevenson built a two-week plan at Jackson, competing in Kings and Queens, shooting more on his film with Tom Wallisch and ripping some powder in his snowmobile.
He drew a late start number in the contest, so the course was starting to get bumpy. On his first run, he launched off a jump 10 feet from the lip, soaring another 40 feet into the steep transition in the heart of the couloir. As he skied out into the open bowl below, he ripped a double cork 1080 (two flips, three rotations) off the final crowd jump.
For a kid from Park City who once said, “I thought, I never want to launch off this thing because it looks so intimidating” — well, it was a pretty good week.