Snow Park

Yesterday Dominique and I took a road trip to Snow Park, about a two hour drive north of Queenstown. Snow Park is New Zealand's premiere freestyle resort. In fact, its terrain is composed solely of freestyle features, and they cover their bases quite well. They have boxes and rails and wall rides in all shapes and sizes, two staircases with three rails each, jumps ranging from six feet to sixty feet, and the only superpipe in the country. It was a perfect bluebird day, with only a slight breeze and not a cloud in the sky, and although the snow was pretty hard in the morning it had softened up nicely by 10:30 or so. Game On! We alternated between taking runs down the beginner's park and the big-boy rail line, and I forced Domi to try lots of jibs that she didn't really want to try; she took a few diggers but didn't sustain any real injuries.


There were some really really good riders there that day. I saw people spinning stylish corked 900 nosegrabs over fifty foot tables, which is not a common occurrence at the Remarkables, or even at Aspen for that matter. They were definitely inspiring me to step it up a few notches, so after lunch I started scoping out the two medium-sized jumps (read: relatively medium-sized) and eventually decided to try the smaller one. It was big and scary, but I cleared it pretty comfortably, so on my next run I hit it again and continued on to the jump after it at full speed. Weeeeeeeeooooooooooo!


This was the biggest jump I have ever done in my life, and it felt awesome. We continued shredding the slush for the rest of the afternoon and having a grand time. Here's a video I shot of myself riding the rails and boxes: