Freestyle Snowboarding

One style of Snowboarding is Freestyle Snowboarding. The Freestyle Snowboarder wants hard snow to do flips, spins, tricks and jumps on ramps, rails or pipes. The Freestyle Snowboarder rides forward, fakie (backwards), in the air and on the ground and variations of all of these.

In Freestyle Snowboarding it is the new tricks and the risks that come with them that challenge the Snowboarder. The Freestyler creates their own tricks and practices them with other Freestylers. The Freestyler uses every opportunity to play with his Snowboard. Complete control of the Snowboard is essential.

The development of the Freestyle field was determined by the surf and skateboard pros from America. Many of them switched and became Snowboard Freestylers. They transferred the sequence of movements from their former sport to Snowboarding. Only a few tricks were developed solely by Snowboarders.

Snow Facts

Snow is atmospheric vapour frozen in crystalline form. Snow occurs when the temperature of the atmosphere at cloud level is below freezing; it falls either as individual ice crystals (always with six sides) or as snowflakes composed of several crystals joined together. No two snowflakes are alike.

Most snowflakes are less than one-half inch across. The largest snowflake recorded was fifteen inches in diameter. Scientists think that there are six main snow crystal shapes - plate, stellar, column, needle, spatial dendrite, capped column - and each snowflake is made up of two of more of these snowflake building blocks.

Some snowflakes are wet and sticky while others are light, dry, and fluffy. It is never too cold to snow. When the temperature goes down, there is less water vapor in the air so it is harder for snowflakes to form. Scientists have been studying snowflakes for more than 400 years. Snow is good for all living things.