crossing over

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Apr 16, 2004 | by DEB ACORD THE GAZETTE

To get inside Jill Baker-Haight's head, all you have to do is watch her approach a patch of spring snow that's nearly hidden in the trees on Pikes Peak.

The snow is soft and slushy, more like soft-serve ice cream than snow, really.

But that doesn't matter to Baker-Haight. It's April, after all, a time of year when lingering patches of snow are hard to find. And it's a weekday, when most adults are working, so Baker-Haight has the mountain to herself.

Her job right now is doing just what she's doing on this day -- seeking the perfect snow and riding her board. In Baker-Haight's idea of a perfect world, snow would be a 365-days-ayear proposition and a real job would be unnecessary.

So she parks her dusty SUV in a gravel pullout off the Pikes Peak Highway, pulls on her snowboard boots and heads for the steep hill with her board tucked under her arm. Along the way, she plunges to her hips in the soft stuff, grins, and tugs her legs out. A moment later, she's riding downhill, grunting as she muscles a twisting jump.

As she works the snow, passing cars slow down. Some pull over, the occupants straining to see what's going on. Who's there? Is it somebody famous?

Haight's car windows tell them she is somebody. Earlier in the week, she scrawled "Women's Boardercross National Champion!" on them with soap.

The fact most of the windshield tourists watching Baker-Haight on Pikes Peak don't have a clue about Boardercross doesn't bother this blonde boarder at all.

She's pleased with the title -- last month, the 24-year-old Woodland Park resident buried the competition in the U.S.A. Snowboard Association's National Championships at Angel Fire Resort in New Mexico -- but even more than that, excited... no, ecstatic, about the sport.

That victory helped Baker-Haight cement her plans for a future as one of the best women in Boardercross, also called Boarder-X, a wild sport with its origins in motocross. Boardercross is part roller derby, part NASCAR and part roller coaster ride, all done strapped to a snowboard on a steep course with big jumps and wild turns.

The object of a Boardercross race is simple: to get to the bottom of the mountain before the other three to five racers who are screaming down an elbow pad's length from each other.

It's all about the speed, and no one but expert boarders need apply.

RECKLESS LOVE

In many ways, Baker-Haight is typical of her generation. She's never skied and says she never will. She first strapped on a snowboard when she was 12, on a field trip with other seventh- graders from Woodland Park Middle School.

"When I first started going, I went with all my guy friends. I didn't know many girls who were snowboarders," Baker-Haight says.

As those guy friends improved on the mountain, Baker-Haight did too, leaving many of them in her powder wake.

She began boarding as often as she could -- going to Monarch, where she started, and Summit County resorts dozens of times each year.

Then, last season, she saw an announcement for a Boardercross competition at Copper Mountain. She entered, won, and fell hopelessly, recklessly, in love with the sport.

At the beginning of this season, she was ranked No. 1 in the women's Boardercross proam division in Colorado and, with her nationals win, has even bigger plans.

"I'd love to get to the X-Games, and maybe even the Olympics," she says. "That's my dream right now."

Never mind that Baker-Haight, ancient in snowboarding years, often competes against riders who are 15.

"I have to do this now. I'm ready," she says.

WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN

To win in Boardercross, a rider has to have it all. Racing down the course of tables, jumps, banked turns and hips is like snowboarding in a pinball machine.

The sport stands out in snow competitions, says Tom Collins, executive director of the USASA, based in Truckee, Calif.

"It's real racing. There are no clocks, no judges. The gate drops and it's you against five others," he says. "It requires speed, agility and the ability to get out of everybody's way and handle traffic."

Collins says Boardercross is more popular every year, and in 2006 will be included in the Olympic Games as snowboard cross.

To prepare for the challenge her sport presents, Baker-Haight works relentlessly on terrain park rails and jumps. She spends lots of time at Breckenridge's massive Peak 8 park and also boards at other resorts, on Loveland Pass and on the flank of Pikes Peak, launching most often from mile 15 3/4 on the highway. This season, she's trying for 85 days on the snow in Colorado, where the season lasts about 150 days, and she almost has reached that goal.

She usually heads for the mountains with her snowboarder husband, Dominic Haight, and their two dogs, a pit bull-St. Bernard mix and an Australian shepherd.

At resorts, the dogs wait patiently in the car. In backcountry areas like Loveland Pass, the dogs get to play in the snow while their owners ride.

Haight is an expert boarder, but he doesn't compete. Instead, he's working on getting his coaching credentials in the USASA. That's the next step for the couple, who want to start a snowboard team for young boarders from El Paso and Teller counties with their friend, Andy Bruce. Bruce was ranked seventh in the nation at the USASA competition at Angel Fire, and travels with Baker-Haight and her husband to contests around the Rocky Mountains.