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I Just Watched Natural Selection's New Super Sessions: Here Are My Honest Reactions

Originally posted on Powder | By Ian Greenwood | Last updated Mar 18, 2026 10:40 AM ET

The waiting game is over.

The footage from Super Sessions, a new qualifying event for the ski side of the Natural Selection Tour, is officially live.

It went down earlier this season at Palisades Tahoe, California. Now, after organizers cut up the proceedings into a neat package, we can find out who from the eight invited skiers punched their ticket to Alaska.

These are my reactions to the inaugural event. Spoilers will come with it, so if you haven’t already watched Super Sessions, I recommend that you do so right here on Red Bull TV.

The Production Was Top Notch, but Missing Something

The crew behind Natural Selection knows how to put on a show. Drones captured helicopter-camera style footage as skiers raced down the slopes of Palisades Tahoe. Tight editing and musical backing kept the pace fast. Unsurprisingly, Michelle Parker delivered as the commentator.

At the same time, the slick production left a bit to be desired. The magic of ski competitions is just that—they’re competitions with close calls, narrow victories, and moments where you can’t wait to see what happens next. In my opinion, all those pros outweigh the cons of live broadcasts, like the downtime that comes after a skier crashes.

The Super Sessions recap, which amounted to a short ski movie, had all the action, but the stakes felt less weighty. It didn’t include scores and, unlike last year’s Natural Selection event in Alaska, wasn’t presented as a live event. For instance, comparing the performances of the skiers to each other wasn’t easy. All of it was removed from the signposts that remind viewers, yes, this is a competition.

Whenever the Freeride World Tour happens, I always do my best to avoid social media so I can watch the latest event as if it’s live. This way, I don’t know who wins and can play one of my favorite games: trying to guess each skier’s score before they’re revealed.

In the future, I hope the next Super Sessions add that tension. The broadcast model for the previous Natural Selection ski stop, a hybrid that made it seem like it was live, worked. Recreating that might be too big a financial or logistical lift to do for the Super Sessions events, though.

It’s Good To Have More Natural Selection

My minor gripes with the presentation of Super Sessions have nothing to do with Natural Selection itself. Skiing needs more competitions that reward creativity, and this circuit does that in spades. Even if we only caught a snippet of the action that went down at Palisades Tahoe, the whole event looked like a blast for those involved—cameras or not, that’s worth celebrating.

As hinted at in the previous section, making competitions of this scale happen isn’t easy. Sponsor commitment to unique events like this ebbs and flows over the years. So, it’s good to see a concerted industry push to make Natural Selection happen, especially adding another event this season. I feel the same way about other upstart competitions that break from the mold, like the Sun Valley Stampede, Sugar Bowl’s Silver Belt, and Jib League.

Skiing’s fun, and the more competitions that highlight that fact, the better.

How About Jonah Williams?

If you told me ten-odd years ago when I first stumbled across Jonah Williams’ skiing that he would earn a ticket to a freeride competition in Alaska, I doubt I’d believe you. As far as I know, he was mostly a terrain park ripper back then, best known for stylish tricks.

But in the last few seasons, he’s come on strong as a backcountry jibber, as evidenced by Seeing Flowers. Still, I wondered how he might fare in a competition setting, especially one stacked with skiers more associated with the big mountain side of the spectrum. Well, he came out on top, turning out to be a great pick for the Super Sessions roster.

That's the benefit of Natural Selection's invite-based approach. While someone like Williams might not be interested in slugging his way through the Freeride World Tour Qualifiers, he clearly had no issues in giving Natural Selection a shot. Doling out invites lets the organizers assemble the equivalent of a fantasy skiing roster and, going forward, could get more unexpected—but exciting—names on the start list.

Granite Chief Showed Out

Much of Natural Selection’s allure revolves around its venues. They’re often aspirational, featuring zones coated in deep powder that the average skier won’t ever try themselves.

This time, though, Natural Selection opted instead for Granite Chief, an inbounds area at Palisades Tahoe covered in tracks from other skiers. This could’ve made Super Sessions less interesting to watch, but it didn’t.

Palisades Tahoe has some of the gnarliest inbounds skiing on the planet, which, of course, helped. What this Super Sessions really proved, though, was the effectiveness of its format.

Throw a few talented, hand-picked skiers at the mountain, give them a few chances to hone in their run, and you’ll end up with something worth watching. That approach pays in Alaska. I bet it would be exciting at plenty of well-trafficked inbounds areas, too, though, which could point towards creating an iteration of Natural Selection that focuses more on in-person resort viewing.

I, for one, wouldn't mind catching a stop in my backyard. Live, in-person events may not always do numbers on social media, but they're the lifeblood of skiing.

This article first appeared on Powder and was syndicated with permission.

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