What do you get when you combine the banked turns and gates of a boardercross with the kickers and rails of a traditional slopestyle course? The answer, obviously, is a ‘Snake and Hammers’ course.

Yep, by pushing the boundaries of what is possible in snowboard park construction and following on from the epic Nike Chosen Sessions last year (also in Montafon), the Swoosh have well and truly done it again.

Seriously, how rad is this course? We literally almost wet ourselves with excitement when watching these video highlights. Banked turns preceding stairsets, tunnels with rails poking out of them and mandatory halfpipe hits are just some of the features in this creative beast.

They should build stuff that’s so odd you can’t even do a double cork – even if it’s ten whoop-di-doos into a drop down. Some crazy shit. It should be about who can ride this thing creatively.

Interestingly, David Benedek, whom Nike invited to the event, told us in issue 102 that this is the kind of creativity he hoped to see in slopestyle courses – to stop the discipline from becoming like freestyle skiing. In his words: “They should build stuff that’s so odd you can’t even do a double cork – even if it’s ten whoop-di-doos into a drop down. Some crazy shit. It should be about who can ride this thing creatively.” No wonder he was stoked to ride it.

Is this the future of snowboard slopestyle courses? We here at Whitelines sincerely hope we’ll be seeing more of this and less a bunch of standard down rails into three monster kickers in a row’ style setups. So rad.

Nike Snakes and Hammers Results:

Men:

1st Christian Haller
2nd Stephan Maurer
3rd Peetu Piiroinen

Women:

1st Spencer O’Brien
2nd Nicola Thost
3rd Aline Bock

Best Hammer: Jamie Nicholls