State Highway 13 is a lonely country road, coursing along the Rio Blanco in western Colorado. Pickup trucks full of ranchers and natural gas field workers are usually the only traffic, but every January, Utah professional skiers like Joss Christensen traverse the empty thruway en route to X Games in Aspen, CO.

That’s exactly where Christensen found himself in January 2014, piloting his Subaru through a snowy morning, out of cell range as thoughts bounced through his head. Despite winning the final Olympic selection event a week earlier in his hometown of Park City, UT, it wasn’t enough to punch a ticket to the freeskiing debut in Sochi.

The solitude was playing mind games with him. Would team USA get a fourth spot on its new Olympic freeskiing team? If it did, what were his chances against his childhood buddies Alex Schlopy and McRae Williams, or Utah transplant (and Olympic favorite) Tom Wallisch? His good friend Gus Kenworthy, who along with Bobby Brown and Nick Goepper had already clinched spots, had texted him earlier that morning, “Hey, I think you got this.” Kenworthy was in the car ahead, the caravan leapfrogging their way toward the Rockies…

Buy issue

Subscribe to start your collection of The Ski Journal.