Quali Day of FWT Kirkwood Ends with Whistler's Laurent Gauthier in First!

The last Freeskiing World Tour stop of the year kicked off today at Kirkwood, California. The Sun was out this morning as the Qualifiers went down on Lookout Vistas with 42 guys and 10 gals fighting for a spot into the main event taking place Friday. The venue skied very well today, despite having a smaller than normal snowpack, a common story this year on the tour. It didn't take very long to get through all the girls with only 10 skiing today. Robin McElroy of Squaw Valley took the top spot of only 3 going on to tomorrow.

Next up were the guys with a lot of great skiing going down on Vistas. The standouts of the day were J.J. Shillers impressive backflip, and the usual business coming from Laurent Gauthier of Pemberton who charged down the hill, stomping all the cliffs larger and faster than anyone else to end up in 1st place!

Second place went to Rob Gosiewski from Vail, scoring 35.17. Max Weintraub out of Squaw Valley scored 34.80 to place third in today’s Qualifier event.

The Kirkwood Qualifier marked the final 4 Star event of the 2012 season. Gauthier’s win earned him enough points to be named the 4 Star Tour Champion of the 2012 season with 3250 points. The ladies 4 Star Overall Tour Champion is Alex Riedman from Crested Butte with 3540 points.

Day 1 of the Subaru Freeskiing World Championships taking place on the permanently-closed venue, The Cirque. The snowing is coming down hard this evening so tomorrow should be promising with Sun in the forecast! Tune into www.freeskiingworldtour.com to watch the event live!

For more photos from the Qualifier, check out the slideshow.

(Author Matt Francisty qualified 5th and is ready to rock the main event)