"The Breckenridge Park is Super Huge and that's the Triple Truth"

A couple of days ago I took the bus to Breckenridge, rode around and ended up on Peak 8 the home of Breck's Freeway Terrain Park. Freeway is rated as the fourth best park in the world by Transworld Snowboard Mag and that's no lie.

There must be about ten main table-tops, none of which run under thirty feet. To hit the Big Air Jump you must clear a sixty foot table before handling the super-steep eighty foot landing. The spine combined quarter hit sits at a tremendous eighteen feet and the perfectly cut superpipe also runs at about the same size. If you're a stonking little jibber and rails are your things then, yet again, Breck has a big range of offerings. There are straight bars and step-ups, a twenty-foot rainbow rail, single kinked, double-kinked and even quadruple-kinked rails.

The options for throwing yourself up into the air are numerous and, since Breckenridge was hosting the Mountain Dew/Vans Triple Crown of Snowboarding, that was exactly what was required. This high level tournament featuring riders from all over the United States and beyond, presents Halfpipe, Slopestyle and Big Air events. In the Slopestyle final I watched big-name riders like Shaun White, Bjorn Leines, Eric Lienes and Kurt Wastell stepping it up in the name of freestyle snowboarding. The eventual top four of the men's Slopestyle, were: Todd Richards, Travis Rice, J.J. Thomas and Chad Otterstrom. Ben Hinkley rode away with the Men's Big Air and Tommy Czeschin took the Halfpipe. For the women, Kim Bohnsack held aloft the Slopestyle trophy and Gretchen Bleiler earned the title, Triple Crown Women's Halpipe Champion.

It was an amazing contest, featuring incredible riders and supported by a scary, but perfectly built park. Although Breckenridge proved an excellent host, I personally hope they shrink the park, just a little, for the regular folk.

Report from Sam Marfleet & Melissa Cannon - Natives Resort Reporters in Keystone

Mail this page to a friend
What do you think? Tell us on the Message Boards