One of our members, Luli Boffelli from Esquel, Argentina, recently held an awesome park contest down South! We definitely want to support her next year! Thanks for getting those "park rats" together, Luli.

So after a couple of months of really wanting to do something for us girls, I went to talk to the director of the ski resort where I spent most of my seasons since I was a little girl, La Hoya (in Esquel, Patagonia Argentina). At the same time I was looking for sponsors around the city so that I could have a complete presentation to show: how the competition was going to be; show the interest of different shops and brands and support of the local media and some from the "big city" Buenos Aires, capital of my country. Yeah! I promoted the comp so that girls would know about this, talked to a good friend who is also into organizing stuff for chicks so she gave me some contacts from other girls. And there was a freestyle comp going on in a town not too far from mine so I took some days off work to go hit their park and let people know about RATAS DE PARKE (park rats).

Sponsors:
Most of them supported the idea from the beginning, which gave me a lot of energy. In exchange, we would promote their brands in the media and publish something about the comp and also put flags with their names all around the park and the features.There was a restaurant/bar that gave us the place for dinner after the whole day of sessioning and a party with a Cumbia band that made us dance all night!!! Shhhhhake it.

The park:
It's quite special because La Hoya has a sick park but its always better at the end of the season, the groomer comes every once in a while so it's a lot of work to shovel all the features for the park stuff, especially when the conditions are like super hard ice. But for the event, the machine came the whole week before to build and rebuild the features that we wanted. There was a special design that we did with my boyfriend that was a sick combination of an up rail, followed by to two barrels and at the end a lil jump with a wooden stick on the side to hit it! all painted in pink!!! it took us a couple of tries to get it the way we wanted it, but in the end it all came together.

The girls and the organization:
Because it's late in the season and it's spring time down there (October), it's imposible to hit the park in the morning cause it's too damn hard, but at noon it softens up a lot and it gets really nice and smooth, so we started hiting everything then. The environment was cool and relaxed; we started to meet each other and just ride. After an hour of seing the girls feeling more confortable with their tricks, I took a camera and we started doing laps all together hitting the same features which was a lot of fun! There's nothing better than riding with friends! The judging was super chill too for the first time at this kind of event. The prizes were: 1st, 2nd and 3rd place (separate freeski and snowboard), plus worst fall and MOTHER RAT kicking ass! It was so much fun!

We' ll see what happends next year, the director from the resort was stoked and he wants this comp again. I don't know my plan for that time yet. At the moment I'm doing a season in Verbier, Switzerland, so we'll see what comes next, but YES I would definitely love to repeat it either in La Hoya or anywhere else...Keep it up RATS!!!!!

Luli Boffelli