You look at a decent-sized park and there are a load of different features. Here is a guide to the all the features you might find on the mountain.
Sliding Snowboard Features
Boxes
A box is the starter for any park rider. They are nice and wide, often low to the ground and they hurt less to fall on.
Bivvies
Bivvies are big plastic tubes ranging from 1ft up to 3 or 4ft. They are great to learn on as they are round like a rail but they are wide which makes it slightly easier to work out your balance point and stay on. Being plastic they usually hurt less to fall on as well. Most tubes are corrugated like construction piping, but you also get smooth ones.
Tubes/Pipes
Tubes and pipes are basically metal bivvies. They are huge round tubes of metal that are easy to stay on, they are usually short as well so great for learning new tricks.
Rails
Rails are much narrower than boxes; they are made of metal, usually steel. They are harder than boxes because you have less to balance on. There are a few different types of rail you may find in your park. Here are the most common:
Round Rail is the most basic, just a singular tube of metal. They are often thin, around 2-3 inches, but you can also get fat ones up to 6-7 inches that are great fun.
Shotgun Rail or double-barrel rails are two thin, round tubes welded together that make it feel more like a thin flat rail because of the two contact points.
Flat Rail is a square or rectangular section of metal. They are fairly easy to learn on, being a halfway house between a box and a rail. They are more favoured by snowboarders than skiers, generally.
Rail Shapes
These types of Rails/bivvies/tubes/boxes come in a variety of combinations that make up different-shaped features. Here are some of the most common features:
Flat
Simply a flat in relation to the earth, normally has a drop off the end because of this.
Down
Angled down with the slope, a variety of angles.
Flat Down
Down Flat
Elbow
Up/Cannon
Down Flat Down
Battleship
Basically, a up flat down
C
S
Wavey
Any of these shapes can be combined to make whatever you want, even a down flat down left elbow flat down flat rail.
All these features will either be ride-on or side-on gettons.
Ride on features are easy to learn on because you do not have to think about jumping onto them. They are either dug into the ground or have a small kicker to enable you to ride up onto the feature. Plus, they are usually low to the ground.
Side on features are the proper way to do it, which involves a small gap on either side of the feature so that you can ride alongside and pop up onto the feature. Inspired by Street riding.
Kickers
Snowboard Kickers range from tiny 1-2 metre jumps to when Mads Jonsson stomped a huge frontside-three over a 57-metre Hemsedal gap jump back in 2005, which is still the world record.
There are a few different types of kickers, which we will go through below:
Standard Kicker
Big drop after the kicker, and then the knuckle rises to the landing. Most common, Scarier than a tabletop, but just don’t land on the knuckle!
Table Top
This is a safer kind of kicker because if you go too short, then you have a lot less distance to fall than a standard kicker. They are usually more common on smaller kickers and great for learning stuff on.
Step-up
A step up is a kicker that sends you upwards with a landing higher than the kicker, so you step up to the landing. They are scary because they need a lot of speed. Once you have that nailed, they are great because you land at the top of your trajectory, so there is no downward force on the landing, making it really safe, as long as you make it.
Step-down/Drop off
Less common in the park but more in the off-piste with cliff drops.
Step-up Step-down
Also like a Whale Tail.
Pipes
Halfpipe
These range from mini 6ft fun pipes up to the 22ft super pipes.
Quarter Pipe
Half a Half pipe.
Bowl
Creative pipe-shaped bowls make for interesting features, like at the late Wangl Tangl, which used to be run in Mayrhofen, Austria.
Other Stuff
Stalls
Wall Rides
