Lucky Seven

About 30 minutes prior to what is billed as the biggest rivalry in Winter X Games history, flakes of dandruff-like snow start to fall on the Buttermilk pipe. It seems fitting for Tanner Hall that snowy weather would follow him to arguably the most important contest of his life, in which he has three runs to move to the top of the X Games all-time gold medal list. The 24-year-old Montana native knows his run, completely revamped since last year during intense pipe training in November and December, will hold up in any condition. He looks up into the night sky and mentally returns to a quiet, peaceful place where he'd just physically left.

Sick of hearing about Tanner making history, Simon went out and threw a history-making first hit.

Two weeks ago, while nearly every other X Games competitor was hiking the pipe at Keystone or Breckenridge, Tanner was in a cat skiing lodge deep in the rugged interior of British Columbia. While his competitors tried to fine tune runs and increase their amplitude, Tanner elected to clear his head and pursue his true passion, skiing powder in the mountains.

"The vibe up here, man, it's so mellow," Tanner said, sitting in the Retallack lodge during a break from filming the famous pillow lines and bottomless tree shots that the zone is known for. "And the snow is always the best. For me, it's the perfect place to be before X."

Back at Buttermilk, Tanner's foil in the aforementioned biggest rivalry in Winter X Games history—Simon Dumont—stares down the pipe and scowls. All the buzz during the last few days of practice and elimination rounds surrounded Tanner's innovative run. It placed the pressure directly on Dumont, and as the fresh flakes gather in the middle of the pipe, he knows that his skis will run slower than they need to if he's going to do the thing he's been training for in the weeks leading up to Aspen; the thing he is best known for: soaring higher than anyone above the lip of the SuperPipe. The pressure intensifies.

Take a good long look. This may be the last time you see Tanner in a pipe.

"Look, it's going to be the same thing every year with me and Tanner," Simon says, a shiny silver medal wrapped around his neck. "I knew he was killing it. But I think the big deciding factor was five hits compared to seven hits. I'm not a judge. I just ski my run and get to the bottom and it's not in my hands anymore. The crowd comes out here for amplitude. I'd much rather have a gold, but the crowds' cheers do it for me as well."

Tanner knows he has something every great athlete needs: a rival who defines his greatness.

Once again, Tanner and Simon made it a mentally agonizing night to be a judge. And while Tanner has always been known as a fierce competitor, tonight it is his passion for powder and an ever-growing desire to prove himself as an all around skier that led him to escape to a place where he could put his mind at rest leading up to the limelight he knew would be waiting for him at Winter X. And the reward for such a lucid head space was another gold medal—the seventh gold medal; the one that puts him ahead of Shaun White and Shaun Palmer on the all-time list. But Tanner's no longer interested in whether or not he's the greatest Winter X athlete. He wants to be the best skier. And he knows that can't be achieved in a halfpipe.

Still, he admits: "To be a pow kid and come here and kill the pipe feels that much better."