Building a snowpark in our Seytroux back yard.
Since we now live in Seytroux, about 7km from the good slopes of Morzine/Avoriaz, I have taken to building a snow park in the back garden! I still drive into Morzine for snowboarding but only when the conditions are very good and the road is drivable.
On the first day I spent creating the first jump, I had my usual snowboarding gear on. Within 15 minutes I had my coat off, hat off and was down to just my hoody. It’s hard, hot work collecting up snow and trying to compact it into a jump but good exercise I suppose. The first incarnation of my jump or kicker as it’s called in snowboarding was around 1.5ft high and really did kick you up in the air. So after the first run I had to build up the jump a little more, trying to make it longer and not throw you backwards/up quite as much. By the time it was getting dark the jump was much better, I had a few runs on it but as it was nearly dark I called it a day.
Next day I had a cold! So I didn’t venture outside again for about 3 days and besides, it was snowing pretty much constantly so it wouldn’t have been very nice building a jump when you can hardly see outside.
Yesterday, when I did finally get out I had about 1ft of extra snow on the ground to play with. It was very hard to work with as it was so fluffy but I managed to add more than a foot to the length of the jump and about a foot to the height. Since I got out pretty early I managed to have a good few runs over the jump and chance to practice a few grabs. I also realised that there was a big pile of snow down near the bottom of the garden/field just before the road, so I’ve since built a bit of a spine/hip there.
So that’s two things I have in my little back garden park. Hopefully as the season goes on and we get more snow I can build up the jump, add a rail and increase the size of the hip at the bottom.
Right, I’m going outside to session my park before it gets dark!
February 1st, 2010 at 7:28 pm
lovely clear picture s it looks as if you are doing a good job making your own boarding area sorry to hear you had a cold hope you are ok now