It’s that time of year again – competition season has begun. With the Copper Mountain Grand Prix and Breck Dew Tour already wrapped up we have already been treated to the sight of the world’s hardest-hitting riders throwing themselves down some truly epic slopestyle courses.
Living in London of course this normally means streaming some piss-poor link at 4am on a Saturday morning whilst still battered from the pub session the night before (sometimes even finishing off the cold pizza you couldn’t quite get in your face on the night bus home).
What would your dream slopestyle course look like? How about something like this…?
It’s always worth it anyway, even if only to see the insanely progressive courses they ride these days. But as dreamy and as nuts as these courses are, imagine what it’d be like to tie in all manner of features from the snowsports world?
What would your dream slopestyle course look like? How about something like this…?
Drop in: The Launch
Mix things up straight away by scrapping the usual first jib feature and replacing it with a jump to get the blood pumping.
And when I say jump, I mean a Nordic “flying squirrel” type booter with a scarily skinny and steep in-run like this – stuck on top of a scaffold, on top of a mountain.
Sammy Carlson shows you how it’s done in this trailer for “The Sammy C Project” a jaw-dropper coming later in 2015.
Feature 1: The Lift
If it’s good enough for Nike snowsports athletes, it’s good enough for our dream slopestyle course.
Unfortunately, back in September 2014, Nike announced that it would be dropping its snowsports programme to focus on skateboarding … but not before releasing this banger edit.
We’d take this lift feature and super-size it. And maybe set it on fire. That should warm things up a bit.
Feature 2: The Burst Pipe
Back in 2011, Simon Dumont created this plumber’s nightmare in Squaw Valley CA. This pipe, riddled with holes, was one of the most creative and craziest jump features of all time.
It would be a real test midway down the slopestyle course, separating the men from the boys as riders throw themselves the epic gaps in the walls.
Get through this section of the course and you’re half-way there…
Feature 3: The Jib Line
After flowing through the broken pipe section, it would be time for our riders to get going on a gnarly jib line.
Level 1’s 2014 flick ‘Less’ featured this line which has everything you need to show off your style; barrel taps, platforms, and enough boxes and rails to keep even the most technical on their toes.
Our ultimate version would of course have more spiky bits like in the picture above – just to incentivise the riders not to fuck up that little bit more…
Feature 4: The Hip Replacement
Rather than finishing things off with two boring old kickers, we’d replace one of them with a hip.
But not just any old hip – this would be at least the size of the monster that Mads “Big Nads” Jonsson built for the Burton movie For Right or Wrong back in 2006.
And no, before some keyboard-warrior wanker tries calling it, that photo isn’t “fake” or “photoshop”. Mads really did go into orbit – check the video evidence.
Feature 5: The Sender
If the hip replacement is all about huge straight airs and slow spins (and avoiding a trip to the hospital) then this is the opposite.
The sender would be a perfectly sculpted step-over kicker, designed to let the riders throw their biggest trick. For inspiration, we looked no further than the Winter X Games 2014 Big Air kicker.
Year-on-year this infamous feature showcases some of the most progressive riding our eyes have ever come across – it got absolutely shut down last season, with Henrik Harlaut’s nose butter triple 1620 taking top spot.
Although of course our “sender” would be better, cos we’d replace those annoying Jeep adverts on the knuckle with a pit of poisonous snakes.
Feature 6: The Wall
For the ultimate course ender, we can think of no better than a nice, BIG wallride.
Once again, we’ve look to our man Sammy Carlson for our inspiration.
His invitational event shows the level of creativity possible on such a feature, which would make for the perfect spectacle for the screaming crowds at the bottom of the course.
Provided the riders had made it through the fire and the spikes and the snakes in one piece…
On a serious note though, given that all these crazy features have actually been built and hit successfully at one stage or another, is it too much to hope that we might one day see them all strung together in one ultimate course?
You’d need a park the length of La Grave to make it happen, but how cool would it be?
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