Haven't a clue about what you just read? Perhaps you'd better get a handle on this lingo because it's the entry fee to understanding freerider-speak in the parks and pipes at the ski resorts– and most of the teens prefer to hang out among the jibbers these days.
Whether your teen jibbers or groms (younger jibbers) prefer to ride the rails or slide over fun boxes, can do 540s off the side of a pipe or just huck with more enthusiasm than skill, discussions about playing in the parks and pipes make entertaining dinnertime conversation.
Where the Peer Pack Plays
You'll find the peer pack playing in the terrain parks, which are proliferating faster than moguls on a steep slope after skiers on twin tips have shoved around two feet of fresh powder. From Stratton and Killington in the East to Whistler Blackcomb and Heavenly in the West, you'll find dozens of terrain parks open to both skiers and riders. The newest ones are designed for specific skill levels, from newbie parks with tiny rails hugging the ground, to parks with roller-coaster rails and 70-foot-long tabletops, to the two-mile-long Playstation 2 created for the ESPN X Games at Buttermilk, one of the four mountains -- Buttermilk, Aspen Mountain, Snowmass, Aspen Highlands--owned by the Aspen Skiing Company. Whistler Blackcomb, the resort in B.C, Canada, with the mile-high vertical, has several parks ranging from the Terrain Garden, which is the easiest, to the Nintendo park filled with table tops, spines, fun boxes and jumps so freestylers can do extreme tricks and maneuvers.
Sliding Through Pipes
Pipes lure teens in, too. The Superpipe at the base of Blackcomb is open for public use in the evenings. You'll see lots of teens at Steamboat in Colorado, where the Maverick reputedly is the longest Superpipe in North America (800-feet-long, 15-foot-high walls) but the resort also has Mini-Mav, a 250-long mini-pipe version of Maverick with 10-foot walls.
Places to Learn to Play in Pipes and Parks
New-school ski school clinics and programs rule, in response to the increasing demand— especially among teens—to learn how to play in the parks and pipes. Park-ology at Beaver Creek in Colorado, is a parks and pipes program featuring progressive learning terrain with three parks and learning competitions for aspiring freeskiers and riders, ages 3 to 17. Othello's Rail Riders, led by former competitive skateboarder and snowboarder Othello in conjunction with the Ski & Snowboard School of Aspen/Snowmass, in Colorado, offers a step-by-step progression teaching advanced riding techniques focusing on riding rails and jumps in terrain parks. Keystone has A-51 which rocks, from the loud music played over the speakers and the maneuvers by skiers and riders, is the scene for X-Pression Session, designed to teach teens the essentials of terrain park skiing and riding.
Teen programs and camps are "tight," or "superfun," a teen might tell you. Link onto the resorts' websites in late summer for a list of next winter's programs, in case you want to plan a winter vacation around one of the clinics or camp. The Canyons in Utah offers all-day programs for ages 13-18. The Copper Mountain Freeride camp is a two-day affair for advanced and intermediate teenage jibbers that stretches from on- snow (or in the air) training to post-snow parties and competitions.
So what does a "switch cork 9 on a 70-foot table in the big line in the park" look like anyway? It's a maneuver only a very skilled jibber can do: riding backwards into an off-axis two-and-a-half revolution maneuver over a 70-foot-long tabletop on the most difficult line of features laid out in the park.Eager to Watch the Players?
If you want to see what some of the these maneuvers look at these photos of snowboarders and skiers in the parks and pipes, or visit Next Snow Search. It's the website for Sports Illustrated Next Snow Search, an annual winter competition to find the nextXtreme generation of skiers and snowboarders. Next Snow Search.
