The POWDER Staff Reacts To NST Ski Moving To Palisades Tahoe, California

Natural Selection Ski made waves earlier this week by announcing a departure from Alaska and a pivot to Palisades Tahoe, California. It was big news, but it drew criticism.

The POWDER staff is feeling a mix of emotions, so we decided to write them down. Writing is what we do, other than skiing, after all.

Tap into our opinions below and vote in our reader poll at the bottom. We want to know how you feel about NST Ski moving to Palisades Tahoe.

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Matt Lorelli- Senior Editor

Hosting a big mountain freeride event in Alaska is ballsy, but that’s what made Natural Selection Ski so cool in the first place. 

Last year’s competition was a bit of a letdown due to avalanche conditions, but 2025’s competition is one of the best things I’ve ever watched. That showdown between Sam Kuch and Craig Murray in the Finals will live with me for the rest of my skiing life, but with that said, moving the competition to Palisades Tahoe makes sense.

Alaska is untamed, unpredictable, and ultimately, unfeasible for a major ski competition to host its big show each season. 

The Freeride World Tour (FWT) tried to get Alaska back up and running, and while they hosted a successful competition last year, pivoting to Snowbird in 2027 was a good call. The live crowd will be larger at Snowbird, and more money will flow as the 2034 Olympics approach.

Moving NST to Palisades Tahoe seems like a similar approach. By bringing the best freeride skiers to a resort that’s easily accessible, familiar to the masses, and already steeped in freeride history, NST has aligned itself with a partner resort that should send its street cred through the roof and secure its place in the annual ski calendar for years to come.

I’m excited as a Palisades Tahoe skier. The fact that I’ll drive 20 minutes to my home resort in February and more than a dozen of my favorite skiers in the world will be there is incredible, but I’m a bit nervous about the conditions.

Palisades Tahoe is one of the best ski resorts on the planet when conditions are favorable, but as any Palisades skier knows, rain, ice, and strong winds are all too common throughout a given season. A storm that dumps six feet of snow could be immediately followed by six inches of rain, or a long period of high pressure could settle in and cook the snowpack into oblivion.

And then there’s the venue question. NST SuperSessions attempted to host its inaugural competition in Palisades Tahoe’s venerable Silverado zone last year, but a massive avalanche released on the morning of the competition. The comp pivoted to Granite Chief Peak, which was fun to watch but not befitting of the biggest, baddest freeride competition on the planet.

Some commenters have suggested a rehashing of Tram Face, but ask the Freeride World Tour what happened when they attempted to host competitions there in 2010 and 2011.

Then there’s KT-22, Palisades Tahoe’s most famous chairlift, but is 1,700 feet of vert enough for NST? Watching the world’s best skiers descend the Nose to Fingers sounds delightful from a spectator’s perspective, but with KT-22’s low elevation, what if the snow quality isn’t up to par?

I have a lot of questions that can’t be answered at this time, but I think that shows just how much I want NST Ski to be successful at Palisades Tahoe. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see!

Max Ritter- Print/Gear Editor

When Natural Selection held its inaugural snowboarding event in Jackson Hole in 2021, it was undeniably pretty sick. Standing in the venue’s media tower watching the world’s finest sideways sliders attack a piece of terrain I was pretty familiar with (it was inbounds at my local ski hill, after all) was pretty eye-opening. It never gets old to see the world’s finest view your mountain through their own lens, putting your own riding in its place. It was run after run of “holy sh*t, did they just do that?,” something that doesn’t quite come through when watching riders hit a manicured slopestyle course or halfpipe. 

That said, the whole point of NST was to become the fantasy-level contest that truly was the product of the wildest dreams of the best riders ever. When skiing (and ultimately mountain biking and surfing) joined the show, it seemed that things were heading in the right direction, and when Alaska joined the chat, I was truly excited. It harkened back to the days of competitions like Red Bull Cold Rush and Linecatcher, the World Heli Challenge, the Swatch Skiers Cup, and other generation-defining events that cemented the careers of skiers and riders for years. I mean, Craig Murray’s 360 spine transfer air at the top of the 2025 venue lives rent-free in my mind.

Begrudgingly, I understand that putting on competitions in the Alaskan wilderness is a Herculean feat, but it is possible. Moving to Tahoe seems like forcing the Milwaukee Brewers to play their next season in whatever minor league stadium happened to be available after winning the World Series. No offense to Palisades, it’s undeniably one of the sickest places to ski in the lower 48, but it’s never coming close to the experience of skiing in Alaska. I’d say the same about Jackson Hole, or any resort, for that matter. 

At a time when the ski industry as a whole is going through rough times, I was hoping that a brand like NST would still be willing to dream big and showcase something unattainable for the masses. 

Isn’t that the point of this? This is the Red Bull Rampage of skiing—it should be somewhere that can truly showcase the wildest possible things on skis, in the wildest possible environment. I’m all for making skiing more accessible, but I’m also in favor of keeping a few things in the mix purely to advance the sport.

I look forward to being proven wrong.

Ian Greenwood- Senior Writer

Folks (and fellow POWDER staffers), I hear ya: losing out on Alaska is a bummer. But you know what? I’m not at all torn about the Palisades pivot. First, let me state my obvious bias: I live in the Bay Area, so I’ll be at Palisades this winter. I’m telling myself, though, that my excitement goes beyond personal interest.

Here’s the pitch: while North America is home to countless amateur-level freeride competitions (they rock, you should go), we ought to have more pro freeride events in person. Yes, Alaska is in North America, but the mainline NST events there have so far been outside ski resorts. For the average skier, that’s kinda like the moon—very cool, but really, really far away. Somewhere at Palisades Tahoe, though? Now we’re talking about the ski equivalent of Madison Square Garden.

After all, so much wild, impressive skiing already happens on the other end of a screen. That flattens the skills of our sport’s best and brightest. When they’re in a stream—the only way you could watch the past two NST Ski competitions—they’re competing with every other skier on Earth and all the other mind-numbing but unfortunately very entertaining junk on the internet. Oh, another dub 10? Swipe.

Mostly kidding. Have you actually seen a dub 10 in person, though? It’s crazy. What about Manon Loschi or Sam Kuch throwing down? Also crazy. Sports stadiums exist for a reason, even when you can watch basketball or football from the couch. Real life is undefeated. 

Yes, I know, you’re right, not everyone can make it to Palisades in February for the big show. But with NST heading there, we now have several major freeride competitions happening in North America this winter, covering a decent swath of the map. I’m thinking of outings like Kings & Queens and the recently announced return of the FWT to Snowbird.

To me, this is worth missing out on Alaska for a season. The FWT, at least, hopes to return there eventually, so I don’t see this as the end of competitive spine skiing. And in a world that’s increasingly digital and just plain weird, the more freeride events that pull their athletes out of the cloud and drop them in front of skiers, the better. It makes the action more amazing and more relatable at the same time.

Beny Huckaby- Social Media Producer

There’s an obvious change in terrain with the move from Alaska to Palisades Tahoe. That’s the elephant in the room, but let’s take the elevation drop out of the conversation for a second.

The environment and geography in Alaska give the contest access to relatively soft, untracked snow that helps make the competition especially entertaining to watch.

That said, if Natural Selection goes down amid ideal post-storm Palisades conditions, in an El Niño year, on terrain we already know can produce some serious moments… we could be looking at one of the more legendary marks ever left at Palisades Tahoe.

I’m seeing the glass half full, but damn, that glass looked good in AK.

Reader Poll

Related: Natural Selection Ski Switches Finals Venue From Alaska To Palisades Tahoe, California