Terrain Parks and Snowboarders are Not Synonymous

If you read a newspaper article, book chapter or other publication describing a place where people go skiing and snowboarding, commonly known as a ski area, you’re likely to find a mistake.

Here’s an excerpt from an article published in the Daily Herald, a newspaper published in the suburbs of Chicago.

Stats: Five slopes: two beginner, two intermediate (includes terrain for snowboarders), one advanced; around-the-clock snow-making capability and a routine grooming schedule to ensure best possible conditions.

Did you catch the error? It’s partly obscured, so let me call it out for you: terrain parks are for snowboarders, and the natural place for snowboarders is in a terrain park.

It is true that for many snowboarders, their snowboarding experience is largely confined to hitting the features in a terrain park. But not all snowboarders spend most of their time there. Nor is snowboarding defined exclusively by what happens in the terrain park. There’s also alpine carving and, for lack of a better word, freeriding, which is what you might simply call “snowboarding.”

In addition, not all terrain park users are snowboarders. Thanks to the development of twin-tip skis, terrain parks are increasingly popular with skiers.

So confining snowboarders to the terrain park is a disservice to both snowboarders and skiers.

My own freestyle experience is limited to doing a 50/50 boardslide down a funbox or making some turns in a halfpipe. My impression is that most snowboarders over 40 spend most of their time outside of the park, too.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment.