The heat turned up a notch in the desert on Sunday as the Red Bull Formation riders crushed the majority of the segments in their lines in anticipation of Monday’s top-to-bottom attempts.

Hannah Bergemann nailed the day’s earliest victory when she dropped in first at the top of her line on a blind roller, dubbed The Ovary, into a chute called—naturally—Fallopian Tube. Bergemann then headed back up the mountain to support Casey Brown, who’s sharing large parts of the line with Bergemann, as she worked toward dropping into the same section, which she did, resulting in another celebratory moment. Sam Soriano and Jess Blewitt later cleaned the same combo, jump starting another round of exhales and excitement.

Bergemann has linked up nearly all of her line now, although she still has a rollover to a massive drop combo to link up in the middle of her run on Monday. Meanwhile, Chelsea Kimball sent the huge drop she’s been working on all week, one that she and her diggers built from scratch, as opposed to using a drop already in existence from Red Bull Rampage, which took place at the same venue in 2008. And Vaea Verbeeck and Cami Nogueira both linked features from the top of the mesa where their line starts, and, speaking of ovaries, Nogueira conquered the double drop she crashed on yesterday that left her banged up enough for a visit to the hospital to make sure nothing was broken.

It was a day marked by full commitment, and celebration as the women greased their landings and cleaned high-consequence lines. Monday is the big day, when the eight riders will attempt to clean their lines top-to-bottom; it’ll be the biggest day in most of the women’s careers and certainly one of the biggest days in women’s freeride history. Stay tuned.

Photos: Leslie Hittmeier