A trick like the switch double cork 1080 happens in a blink of an eye and with athletes always attempting more spins, there are moments when even seasoned freeski judge Victoria Beattie asks, "What the heck was that?"
"Your thought processes do have to be quick ... but there are four judges on the panel and a head judge and you do have time to sit and discuss it, within a short amount of time," she said.
Freeski judging is not the world's most highly paid profession - Beattie (29) might get about $200 a day but then not get another event for a couple of weeks - but it is her passion and it takes her around the world.
"I feel like I am giving back to my sport. Also, with my injuries and having to walk away from skiing, when all my friends are in skiing and all my passion is in the industry, it's a good way to be up on the hill with my friends without putting my body on the line," Beattie said.
The former slopestyle competitor, is the only New Zealand-based female freeski judge and one of a handful of women judging athletes on the international circuit.
But although freeskiing is now an Olympic sport and New Zealanders are at the top end of the game, Beattie will not be able to preside over the competition in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.
"Sadly, no. I have no chance of being able to judge at the Olympics. There will only be four guys who will be going," she said in an interview with the Otago Daily Times during the NZ Freeski Open earlier this month.
Beattie was introduced to freeskiing while studying at university in Vancouver. An Australian by birth, she ended up in Canada after a year studying geography at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
She had followed her mother to the UK as a teenager but found Cambridge life was not her cup of tea.
"So I transferred my university to British Columbia, but that was close to some pretty major ski resorts and the amount of time I spent on snow went up while the time spent on studies when down. I ended up leaving," she said.
Beattie began competing in freeski slopestyle events when the sport was still new for women. She competed successfully at a couple of international events before seriously injuring her knee in 2006.
"I got caught up in a bomb hole at the bottom of a rail and blew every ligament, tore the meniscus and put compression fractures in my femur. I went into surgery pretty quickly but I was on crutches for two months and had a long 12-month rehabilitation," she said.
Last year, Beattie tried competed again, in the big mountain event at the New Zealand Freeski Open.
"I had been judging it for a couple of years and I flippantly said "I think I could do that" and they told me to put my money where my mouth was. I was last, but it was fun," she said.
So she has kept skiing and recently was first-equal with Australian athlete Hannah Fisher at a big mountain event at Craigieburn.
Beattie is on the list of judges for this year's big mountain competition but has not decided whether to ski or not.
Wanaka is now Beattie's home, where she has a house and a cat.
"It was definitely the snow that brought me here. Wanaka is as close as I have to a home and it's the place I always come to and leave from," she said.
