A park is an area step-up on the mountain that has features used to practice tricks and freestyle snowboarding. Most parks will have some of the following: boxes, rails, jumps, handrails, vehicles, stairs, bumps, rollers, half-pipes, berms, and/or other features. Some parks will be set up for the Boarder X, which is a race course with features, or more freestyle like pipe, jumps and rails. Most mountains that have good parks have a lot of mild slopes with no double fall lines. Parks are set up on terrain similar to beginner slopes like green or mild blue trails. Of course, more extreme parks use very steep slopes. Park riders may not care about the rest of the mountain trails and many areas specialize just in parks and pipe. They ride freestyle snowboards which are designed for freestyle riding (soft flex, twin tip, detuned edges). You want to be an intermediate snowboarder before going into the park.
Where To Find Parks?
If you’re a park snowboarder, do your research, since a lot of resort areas either specialize in great parks or great trails and steep slopes. When you can find a resort that has both you’re in a prime spot. But, in general, it is unusual for a mountain to have great parks and pipe along with great free ride trails. If they have a great park, they may not have as many black trails or steeps. For instance, Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado has great parks/pipe along with steep terrain and lots of off piste, trees, steeps, and black diamond trails. The parks are setup so you can hit the small park at top, the medium park midway, the big park near the bottom and the pipe at the bottom. It’s where I got my freestyle certification. However, Park City Resort base in Utah has great park/pipe but not many long steep off piste trails, it is still a nice beautiful mountain great for families, but if you’re looking to go off piste or in the backcountry there isn’t as many options. Park City merged with Canyons to become a super resort. If you’re looking for parks/pipe ride the Park City base side and hit Canyons base side for the off piste freeriding. Since they’re one now it’s a great resort for freeriding and freestyle riding.
Case in point: if you’re vacationing or new to an area and looking for a great freestyle park, don’t randomly pick a resort, ask around or you may be disappointed. Take a look at the resort map and you’ll see the areas that are parks. This will help you to Ride Right.
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