X Games Skier Draws Comparison To Kelly Slater's Iconic 'Bottom Turn'

There are many parallels between surfing and skiing. In fact, Pipeline's first surfer, and every longboarder's favorite longboarding style-icon, Phil Edwards, was known for his parallel "ski" stance while locked in trim on his log.

Spot hunting, condition checking, style, flow, and individuality are hallmarks of both ways we draw lines in nature. But that's not why officials running the X Games Instagram account captioned a video comparing Kelly Slater and Nico Porteous the "Pipe Masters of Aspen."

Since POWDER is the skier's magazine, and not the surfer's mag (that's the iconic SURFER, as the name implies) I'll explain Pipe Masters.

Pipe Masters is held on Oahu at the iconic North Shore spot Pipeline. In the old days, the dangerous and hollow, perfect wave was referred to as "the Pipeline" and has made legends out of surfers who can get tubed--and spit out--by its powerful barrels over the years.

Last Pipe Masters I was living on the North Shore and had the pleasure of seeing Balaram Stack (from the East Coast no less!) win in solid Pipe conditions.

That day, the waves were crashing up on the beach, scattering the crowds back from the ocean as the water took people's wallets, beach chairs, and slippers out to sea. The announcers were screaming at everyone to get back, because when a non-surfer gets caught in the ocean and dragged out to the breaking waves on the reef, it's almost near-death in those conditions.

The reef is super shallow in some spots, and there are big holes where your leash, arm, or leg can get caught if you fall on a wave.

Surfing Pipeline any time it's really firing takes guts. It's like the Palisades/Eagle's Nest spot, or Corbet's Couloir, of surfing.

And similarly, these spots depend on the conditions. Pipeline at 2 feet? Loggable. Nothing to worry about. Eagle's Nest completely filled in with snow? Totally different line.

But with low snow or maxing swell, these spots become absolutely mental.

But there are other kinds of Pipes out there. Like SuperPipes.

And, as it turns out, there are other kinds of bottom turns besides the ones that set you up to get shacked in a deep, hollow Pipeline tube.

Officials running the X Games Instagram asked, "Who had a better bottom turn? @kellyslater or @nicoporteous?"

Nico is an Olympian, 2-time X-Games medalist freeskier by way of New Zealand (a surfy place!) and, as you can guess, he does surf!

While he's not the first skier to take surf technique to the snow, X-Games officials explain that "Nico blessed us with the first bottom turn seeing in Ski SuperPipe history, should we expect to see more to come?"

I hope so. There are so many skiers who also surf, such as Scott Gaffney, Daron Rahlves, snowboarder Jeremy Jones, Chuck Patterson, and hey, even Scot Schmidt lived in Santa Cruz for at least one season to try it out!

It's always cool to see style-transfers from one way of harnessing nature's energy to another: such as skating's influence on surfing (airs!) and surfing's influence on skiing (slashes, "surfing" pow).

By the way, an excerpt from an interview from 1973 by Steve Pezman of SURFER/The Surfer's Journal with Phil Edwards for your reading pleasure. I'm sure skiers and surfers alike can relate to his words.

Pezman (asking Phil Edwards about the different ways he harnesses and rides nature's energy): How do the remote control gliders that you fly fit into the total picture of what you like to do?

Phil: Well, it’s all the same, the surfing and the sailing, and the gliding. They’re all nature’s free ride.

And then Edwards said he preferred surfing over skiing because there's a stationary object involved (the mountain) as opposed to a moving one, like a wave. But Phil Edwards said, "if skiing offered a ride back to the top of the hill, I’d dig that."

He'd sure be stoked today!

Related: Chuck Patterson Claims He Skied The World's Biggest Waves In Nazaré, Portugal

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