Nate Hanson looked over the ramps and rails outside Stevens Pass’ Granite Peaks Lodge with a critical eye and planned his run.
"I’m going to start off with a 50-50 to front board slide," he said. "Then I’m going to head to this next one and do a 50-50 to downboard fakey to tail butter 180 and I’m probably going to try to 5-0 the picnic table.
Um, so what’s that mean, Nate?
"I’m going to try to spin around a lot."
The ski area is holding "Burton Friday Night Jams" on the first and third Fridays of each month, from January through March. The next jam session is Feb. 6, beginning at 6 p.m.
The idea, said Patrick Walker, Stevens Pass’ events coordinator, is to give people at the base something to watch and provide snowboarders and freestyle skiers the chance for some friendly competition.
"It was really just meant to be what it is," Walker said, "something for people to come out and have fun, not too many rules."
The first jam, Jan. 2, attracted about 50 competitors and drew several hundred curious spectators. A local radio station provided some music and sponsors provided a few prizes for the crowd’s favorite riders.
"We had 50 competitors and we turned another 20 away because we only have so much time and so much room," Walker said.
The competitors queued up atop a short, steep hill. Sliding down the hill to pick up speed, they jumped off a ramp onto a rail — basically a handrail mounted atop a sloping platform — slid down the rail on their boards or skis, sometimes spinning on the way down, jumped off the end, then onto a second set of rails, did a few more tricks and finished by sliding across a picnic table.
"Having the crowd and the music and people cheering when you do something good makes it so much more worthwhile to go big," said Brian Pickard of Bothell.
A few skiers showed up, but most of the competitors were snowboarders.
"This is really cool, it’s not a contest, it’s just having fun," said Jasen Rolfe, a Skykomish resident who works at the ski area at night so he can snowboard during the day.
"A lot of these guys aren’t super good snowboarders. They’re just hyped up," Rolfe said.
Reporter Andrew Wineke:
425-339-3465 or
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