The Big Mountain Hochfügen 4* FWQ is now an established contest with a very strong field of riders on a slope that can easily compete with most of the FWT faces. This was one of the reasons why the podium places at the 2013 edition were mainly occupied by current FWT riders, above all Loic Collomb-Patton, who qualified for the World Tour with his victory and has been unstoppable ever since. While the conditions on the slopes were pretty good at times due to the difficult winter in the Northern Alps (PowderGuide tested them on site), the mild temperatures and foehn are currently putting quite a strain on the snowpack. Nevertheless, we hope for a successful competition from 08.02.2014 in safe conditions!
The starting places for the established 4* World Tour Qualifier in Hochfügen on Saturday, February 8, 2014 have been allocated. The total of 70 starting places in the ski and snowboard, men's and women's categories were fiercely contested. The start list includes familiar faces from previous years and numerous newcomers to Hochfügen. Numerous World Tour riders will be at the start, including the reigning FWT overall winner Nadine Wallner. The Austrian participation is strong: The two reigning Austrian Freeride Champions Flo Orley (snowboard) and Manfred Rofner (ski) the Tyrolean Fabian Lentsch (ski), Sebastian Maier (ski), Simon Wohlgenannt (ski), Angelika Kaufmann (ski) or Alexander Hoffmann (snowboard) want to convince the eight-member jury in Hochfügen.
The Austrian talents Lukas Steger, Benjamin Kalra, Julian Zenzmaier and Christoph Fuschlberger are over the moon with one of the organizers' five wild cards. In addition to a strong line-up of Austrian riders, riders from twelve nations qualified for the Big Mountain Hochfügen. These include Freeride World Tour riders Davide Cusine from Italy, Felix Wiemers and Johannes Schnitzer from Germany, French riders Chris Charlet and Mickael Bimboes, Americans Ashley Maxfield and Kaitlin Elliott and Amber Schuecker from Australia. Spectators can watch the contest from the terraced open-air spectator area at the 8er Alm. If it is not possible to hold the competition on Saturday due to unfavorable visibility or weather conditions, it will be postponed to the
following days.
