Back in 2017, with a certain large contest coming up in Korea, Ben Ferguson had some tricks he wanted to learn. Mt. Bachelor arranged for a private spring superpipe session and I wandered up to hang for the day. The mood was light but became tense as Ben worked up to attempting a particularly dangerous trick. No cameras were out—it was just Ben, a support crew and a few friends lapping the giant transition. 

The silence and tension broke when Aaron Blatt came ripping uphill atop a snowmobile. He was dressed casually and smiling broadly with his camera slung over his shoulder. He rode straight to the bottom of the pipe, where Ferg hopped on like he had just requested an Uber, and they doubled up the narrow deck at top speed. Everyone was still laughing at Blatt’s morning entrance as the duo U-turned at the drop-in and Ferg hopped off in motion. Blatt hit the throttle, quickly positioning himself halfway down the deck of Ben’s frontside wall in the time it took Ferg to strap in. 

“Get it, dog!” Blatt hollered. Ben dropped, suddenly going a magnitude higher than he had all morning, while Blatt snapped away. Just like that, Blatt had a sequence of one of Ferg’s first switch double Michalchuks…

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