“The atmosphere’s brilliant” - freeride ski champ Katie Small on the appeal of the Scottish Freedom Series

By my count the Scottish Freedom Series turns five this year, so on Saturday, as the nation’s best backcountry skiers and snowboarders prepare to take turns launching themselves down a gnarly slab of unpisted mountainside somewhere on the north shore of Loch Tay for the 2019 Lawers of Gravity event, they will also be preparing to launch the fifth season of the SFS. True, Scotland’s first ever freeride ski and board contest, the Coe Cup, was held on Glencoe’s fearsome Flypaper way back in 2012, so you could argue that the SFS was really born then. However, the first time there was a proper series with multiple events was 2014, when there were contests at CairnGorm, Nevis Range and Glenshee as well as Glencoe. The series also ran in 2015 and 2016, it took a year off in 2017, when the Canadians stole all our snow, but it was back with a vengeance in 2018, as the Beast From the East dished up stellar conditions for the tail-end of the season.