Step up Your Pipe Game

By Brooke Geery…. For the truly athletic among us, there is the halfpipe. If you get good at riding pipe, you can excel at a contest almost every weekend, or maybe win an Olympic gold medal. But even if you don’t care about the fame and glory, that feeling of boosting high above the lip and linking tricks back-to-back makes the halfpipe a worthy venue. “Halfpipe is awesome,” says US Snowboard Team rider Tommy Czeschin. “You can get like seven hits in most pipes, which equals a lot of air time. There’s not much like it.” But of course, just getting over the lip can sometimes provide a challenge, so here are a few pro tips to take your pipe game to the next level.

Pick Your Line
If you were to ride a freshly groomed pipe and then turn around and look at your track, you should see smooth lines, angled slightly down the pipe with no sluff or scraping. “Land going the right angle that you want to hit the next wall with,” Olympic gold medalist Kelly Clark says. “The less adjustments you make in the flat, the more speed you will carry [into the wall].” The same goes for what tricks you plan on doing. Figure that out before you even drop in: “Know what tricks you want to learn and where you want to go with it; it will make it a lot easier,” says Mason Aguirre.

Pump It Up
“If you learn how to pump the walls you can go just as big as your first hit all the way down,” Clark says. “Even if you fall after two hits, you can be going your biggest again if you pump.” How do you achieve that perfect pump? “Right at the point where the transition and the flat bottom meet, you want to extend your legs and go from there. It’s like pumping tranny on a skateboard,” advises Winter X Games bronze medalist Scotty Lago.

Stay on Edge
Sharpen up your edges, because you’re gonna need them. “Ninety eight-percent of riding halfpipe, you’re on one edge or the other,” Lago says. “I think that’s the most important part…practice working your edges.” Cranking up your binding’s forward lean can help you hold your heelside edge, but it’s really just about learning edge control.

Go Fast(er)
According to pipe powerhouse Andy Finch, there are three things you need to carry your speed all the way through a halfpipe run: Hold a strong edge with no speed checks! (see above); land high on the transition; and don’t carve up the pipe but, instead, hold a straight line slightly angled down it. “[Shaun] Palmer once told me, ‘When you feel like you are going too fast, go faster!’ Basically, sack up!” Finch says.

Timing is Everything
When you watch a rider like Danny Kass—who seems to spin in the pipe more comfortably than most people can ride groomers—his tricks are about using the entire wall. If you wind up your head and shoulders, your body will follow, but the real trick is knowing just the right second to let go. “You start to wind up right when you get to the transition, then you wait for the lip,” Lago says. “A lot of halfpipe riding is about timing. You have to wait for the lip and get a good pop on it.”

Practice Makes Perfect
“I think the most important thing is be able to do solid straight airs before you try and learn a bunch of [spin] tricks,” Aguirre says. “Get so you can go a few feet out. If you can’t do straights airs, you shouldn’t be [trying] 540s.” Obviously having a good pipe underfoot will help your case, so try and get to a resort known for its pipe, such as Breckenridge or Northstar-at-Tahoe. But really the only surefire way to get better at the halfpipe is to ride it as often as possible: “Just go do it,” Lago says. “Practice your head off until your head falls off, then practice some more.”