During my Thanksgiving Break, I visited Snowmass mountain five times looking to try some new maneuvers and practice some form basics. I was ecstatic to see that the Aspen/Snowmass park crew has been doing a great job, in my opinion, of setting up their annual early season park (the Lowdown Park) under the Village Express lift at Snowmass.

The park opens up to three features. There is a butterbox, a slightly thinner box, and a flat rail approximately six feet long. All of these features are relatively small and fall into the ten foot and below category (again, this is an approximation,) in length. After these three features, the park offers a slew of challenging features like a flat-box, a box to fence gap to dual rail feature, and a large silver tube close to half a foot in diameter that extends upwards at the end at around a 30 degree angle in relation to the beginning of the rail- which is the majority by a good four feet. I always try the flatbox and my goal is to try new and innovative tricks as I try it. All of those lastly listed features are parallel to each other and therefore the park has a very linear feel although there are, in basicallity, three main lines setup.

After the first three path beginnings, there is an up down triangle-like rail, a double rail setup, and a down-flat-down-flat-down rail-also known as a dfdfd. In seventh grade I actually tried to hit a rail like the up-down (possibly this up-down) and I broke my collarbone. It is an intimidating feature for me and I always think about the things I could learn to do on it.

The next brick of features offers many interesting and innovative park additions like a “waterfall rail,” which is a rail that has three parts in which each segment gets around five inches lower than the next in a sheer drop. Additionally, there is jump with a gap of roughly ten feet that is great for practicing fundamental park tricks like 360s, 180s, 540s, and flips. For those interested in down boxes, there is one of those as well.

The park finishes up by waxing into a two lane area with a straight kink right rail and a funhouse jib feature.

All around, Thanksgiving break was great and gave me time to explore Snowmass’ equally great early season park, and I would encourage anyone that is interested in putting in some work in the park to visit Snowmass during Winter Break. Happy holiday season!!!!