Watch Natural Selection Day 2: Finals Live Now

From visionary snowboarder Travis Rice, The Natural Selection Tour is a world-class snowboard competition series that combines freestyle tricks with freeriding artistry at three epic North American locations. This year, the Tour kicks off with its first stop at Jackson Hole, featuring a collection of the best male and female big-mountain snowboarders in the world duking it out in some of the rowdiest terrain in the world. Lucky for the riders, it's been snowing hard in the Tetons.

Riders: Click Here for a full rider list.

Judges: Judges have been hand-selected for their level of expertise & professionalism. The judges are Sandy MacDonald, Chad Otterstrom and Connor Manning.

Judging Criteria: The rationale for utilizing the Overall Impression Judging System is to take advantage of the spontaneous flow of the riders competing and to give qualified high level judges the ability within the OI system to judge more effectively by taking the whole run into consideration rather than a specific criteria area. 

All phases of all the runs are evaluated by the OI judges. The judges will score each run from 0-100 by evaluating the run’s overall precision which includes the execution of the run and the sequence of tricks attempted. The emphasis of the OI judge in the OI judging system is to evaluate the whole run with all elements of the criteria combined but not placing a major emphasis on any facet but rather evaluating what makes the most dynamic creative run in the contest at the specific moment. Things that are taken into consideration when comparing runs are: 

LINE / RISK: riders use of features and the difficulty of the line chosen

FLOW / AMPLITUDE: how rider moves down the run (fast or slow, traversing or fall line, charging or timid)

CREATIVITY / TRICKS: how and what a rider does with features and terrain (this includes style)

CONTROL: is the rider in control on all aspects of the run (turns, in the air, landings)

The OI judge must recognize subtle as well as obvious changes in a run to determine what makes it more difficult, as well as what tricks are being performed at the highest standards for that specific heat or round. As always, the OI judge does take falls into consideration.