The Snowboarder's Journal - frequency 17.1
STREET GOLD IN THE GREEN MOUNTAIN STATE
Words: André Rober Beriau 2019-09-23 13:48:08
In a state better known for its syrupy glades than urban environments, Vermont has long kept a foothold in street snowboarding’s history. The natural progression from ski hills to the streets made its debut in Burlington in the early 2000s with the help of JP Walker in Forum’s True Life. While who hit Burlington High School’s picturesque handrails first is up for debate, it is without a doubt heavily documented in JP’s 2001 ender. A few clips of the young, do-rag-clad jib pioneer hitting the kinked rail gave us our first glimpse of this now-iconic spot, one that would shine an unlikely urban spotlight on the Green Mountain State.
With a natural inrun and three options surrounding the BHS stair set—a down-flat-down, kinked creepers and a flat rail to drop—the aluminum-built setup had a near-perfect recipe for jibbing’s early progression. New England native Chris Grenier says, “That rail looks good, it’s a great size and it films really good, so that checks all the boxes as far as a good spot, aside from the fact that it’s aluminum.”
Aluminum is soft compared to steel, and it’s easy to catch an edge. After taking years of abuse, an entire era of snowboard progression can be seen in the edge-nicks and gouges left in the rail, like cave drawings marking the historic sessions. Lifelong Vermonter and BHS alumni Ralph Kucharek explains the uniqueness of the spot, “As far as Burlington goes, the BHS rail was arguably the first multidimensional rail spot.”
While the University of Vermont offered bigger kink rails, Ralph says, “Having a down-flat-down with a creeper option and a flat rail—that’s as diverse as it gets in Vermont.” Once JP and fellow Forum rider Jeremy Jones helped showcase the double set’s potential in True Life and The Shakedown (2003), it soon became a place of pilgrimage for young New Englanders such as Chris Rotax and Tanner Pendleton. At the onset of the earliest sessions the obvious down-flat-down rail was the main focus, but as snowboarding evolved, so did the spot.
“People started moving toward the creeper,” Ralph says. “Then Chris Rotax did a nosepress on the flat bar up top—that was in the mid-2000s—and we’ve come so far. That feature was one of those things people came to Burlington to hit. It got to a point where Nike reproduced the Red Ledge and the BHS rail at the [Mount] Seymour Park, which is kind of crazy to think about, that it’s that iconic.”
In addition to featuring the BHS stair set alongside other widely recognizable street-spot replicas in the Nike 6.0 Greatest Hits Park at Mount Seymour, BC in 2010, it was also integrated into the slopestyle course at the Breckinridge, CO stop of the Dew Tour that same year.
“In the mid-2000s Burlington ironically was one of the first destination rail spots, which is peculiar to think about because it’s in a pretty rural state,” Ralph says.
“When you’re on the East Coast you don’t see any pros, ever, so when a pro comes to your town and drops a certified A-grade trick at a spot, you definitely want to go there and make your mark,” Chris says. “It provides a little bit of hope and obtainability when you see the rails that the pros are hitting and see if you can do something that stacks up next to theirs. It makes them a little more real.”
Despite its undesirable aluminum construct and a shortening list of never-been-done tricks, the BHS stair set continues to attract a new generation of Vermonters such as Maggie and Joey Leon, LJ Twombly and other riders who shot the rails for Killington’s Darkside Snowboards shop crew movie, Mercy (2018). Affirming the staying power of the spot, Ralph says, “To boil it all down, the BHS rail put street snowboarding in Vermont on the map.”
While Burlington will never have Salt Lake City or Helsinki’s abundance of workable features, the BHS rail has proven itself instrumental to our jibbing history, and street gold for riders in the Green Mountains.
Photo Caption: Chris Rotax, nosepress on the flat bar at Burlington High School, VT, circa 2005. Photo: Dean “Blotto” Gray
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