What Is The Backcountry Invitational? Freeskiing's Newest Competition

The Freeride World Tour continues its march towards Olympic officialization. Travis Rice’s oft-lauded Natural Selection Tour made a big Alaskan splash last winter with the launch of a first-ever ski edition. The X Games is rapidly evolving with the debut of a new skiing and snowboarding league in 2026. 

Now, another newcomer, the Backcountry Invitational, has joined the ruckus with two trial events appearing in Ushuaia, Argentina, and Treble Cone, New Zealand, this austral winter. The series pairs big-mountain skiing with handcrafted slopestyle jumps—a concept honed at the Nendaz Backcountry Invitational, launched in 2021. It also nods to past, beloved competitions, like Red Bull Linecatcher.

Held annually at the titular Swiss ski resort Nendaz, the Nendaz Backcountry Invitational has a monthlong weather window, allowing organizers to identify the exact date with the best snow conditions.

Just before the Nendaz Backcountry Invitational kicks off, event crews build several poppy jumps. Three competition runs allow skiers and snowboarders to take risks and experiment. Plus, thanks to the prolonged weather window, untouched snow often awaits them. It’s the ski competition equivalent of a sugar rush.

Keep reading for more on The Backcountry Invitational.

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Cyril Lanfranchi, the CEO and founder of Nendaz Freeride—the organization that hosts the Nendaz Backcountry Invitational—said the competition is all about finding the “perfect day.” Reviewing the highlights from the 2025 stop, it’s easy to see what Lanfranchi is talking about. The athletes threw triple backflips and other absurd tricks—the competition’s like a ski movie, but live.

The Nendaz Backcountry Invitational is a distant cousin of the Freeride World Tour (FWT) and its lower-level circuits. Nendaz Freeride hosts several qualifier competitions that feed into the FWT, and Lanfranchi is a former freeride competitor himself, but the two disciplines occupy different lanes. On the FWT, athletes face steep, unaltered faces that test their big mountain chops. In contrast, at the Nendaz Backcountry Invitational, skiers and snowboarders are greeted by a manicured off-piste terrain park—you could call it backcountry slopestyle instead of freeride.

Pro skier Alex Hackel said the course and format in Nendaz allow competitors to construct and ski their dream runs. For someone with Hackel’s talents, that might involve a floaty backflip followed by a stomped cork 720. Then, near the bottom of the venue, a rail slide. “You're able to do your best tricks and your funnest tricks,” said Hackel.

Hackel appreciates another unique element of the Nendaz Backcountry Invitational—it’s competitor judged. Instead of a panel awarding rankings, those skiing down the venue themselves that day decide who performed the best.

With this format, Hackel said he found himself thinking less about points as he dropped in. Instead, he noted, you’re trying to do “something that would get your friend hyped up”—not unlike the attitude you’d adopt during a casual powder day with your buddies.

The success of the Nendaz Backcountry Invitational and glowing feedback from the competitors is what drove Lanfranchi and his team to take the concept abroad. So far, in 2025, they’ve only announced the two additional trial events in Argentina and New Zealand.

The Ushuaia event goes off today, August 15, and mirrors the format of its Nendaz forebear (there's no livestream for this trial—you can follow along on Instagram, though). The Treble Cone stop has a weather window that starts on August 25. The trial events preserve the rider voting, but add a head judge to help with scoring.

But Lanfranchi said the plan is to take the Backcountry Invitational further. That might mean even more events in places like North America or France, although the details aren’t yet concrete. According to Lanfranchi, for now, the priority is to see if moving the Backcountry Invitational to new locales is feasible—that's what the trial events are for—and find more mountains that could become future hosts. 

Unsurprisingly, Hackel’s stoked about the Backcountry Invitational venturing beyond Nendaz, and he’d like to participate in as many new events in the series as he can.

“The idea that we're going to get more of it, and it's going to happen in more locations, and there's going to be more opportunities and in different venues, I think it's just really, really positive for the sport,” Hackel said.

To stay tuned in to all the Backcountry Invitational happenings, check out the series’ Instagram page.

Related: Arizona Snowbowl Announces Opening Date for 25/26 Ski Season

What Is The Backcountry Invitational? Freeskiing's Newest Competition first appeared on Powder on Aug 15, 2025