How To Win Your Local Rail Jam

This guy knows all about Step Three

The rail jam tour is a great way for companies to spread the word about their product, give something back to the snowboard community, and at the same time give up-and-coming shredders a shot at a sponsorship. Often there are actual sponsorships given away as top prizes, as well as occasional cash rewards and you can generally always count on a boatload of free product getting handed out–and often tossed out to the spectators as well. So with all this on the line, you’ve got to be looking for that extra edge because you know there are plenty of other hungry groms out there whose moms have had the contest schedule printed out and put up on the fridge since August.

Step One, Prepare in advance. You may be thinking, “alright…I’ll try to get my 270s on lock and work on my pull backs.” Wrong. Quality tricks are rarely what wins the contests at the local level. You just need to stand out from the rest of the kids. Weeks ahead of time you should be working on some sort of custom outfit full of weird flair and bright colors, this will catch the judges attention more than anything.

Step Two, Gladhand. Walk your shiny self right up to those judges and announce your presence. This is especially crucial if the contest is not at your own home mountain. Judges are usually local reps or diggers, so they’re already going to lean toward the kids they see in the park every day, so get on their good side.

Step Three, Crank up the kook. If your heat of the contest is winding down and the judges have yet to give you a “whaaaaat!” and the crowd has yet to cheer for your solid, technical tricks, then it’s time to get desperate. Eye up any feature that you feel you could flip on to, off of, or over and get inverted. You’ll lose tons of respect from your peers, but it could pay off on the podium. And if you don’t do it, someone else is sure to go for it.