"This is going to be great to see everybody I grew up with," said Clark. "I will get time to spend with my friends and family and they'll be able to see me in my element up close and personal doing what I do year-round."
Clark, 25, placed second in the superpipe behind Olympic silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler at the Tour's debut in Breckenridge, Colo., last month.
"I think to win it will have to be a combination of amplitude and progression," she said. "I don't think one trick or one specific thing will do it. They will be looking for the whole package."
Many snowboarders are preparing for the 2010 Olympics.
"The Olympics are definitely my long-term goal," said Clark, a member of the US Snowboarding Team. She won gold in the Olympic halfpipe in 2002 and took fourth in the 2006 Games. Last season she won the Chevy Grand Prix halfpipe and an X Games silver medal.
The competition is set at the Carinthia base area and spectator entry is free.
"The finish line of the slopestyle course is literally a stone's throw from the superpipe so all the action can be viewed right in the base area," said Mount Snow spokesman Luke Stafford. "No chairlifts are necessary."
Cranmore celebrates In a classic black-and-white photo from 1939, legendary ski instructor Hannes Schneider, family, and entourage are shown arriving in North Conway, N.H., and walking from the train station under an arch of ski poles held by children. Seventy years have passed since Schneider arrived from Austria, where the ski pioneer escaped Nazi persecution, and Cranmore Mountain is commemorating the anniversary with its Snowtrain Weekend.
On Friday, lift ticket prices roll back to the 1930s cost of $3.30. The yellow train station in Schouler Park is the backdrop for Saturday's reenactment of the Feb. 11, 1939 arrival of the Schneider family, during which Hannes's son and former Cranmore general manager Herbert Schneider, his sons Christoph and Hannes, and two grandsons will walk under an arch of poles held by children from the area.
