Xscape Castleford - Why I Like It So Much

It's been a while since I've been boarding at Castleford and I'm looking forward to going back. So why do I like it so much?

Well, when it comes to freestyle I think Xscape Castleford has a lot to offer. I haven't been to 'loads' of snowboard parks but I have been to a few; and to be honest, they're not all that good.

The very first park that I rode at was Switzerland's Les Diablerets - on the glacier. Unfortunately, this was by far the best park I've ridden, nothing since has come close. Diablerets had a really good pipe that was perfectly maintained. The kicker line was 6-deep, with the first four hits being 3-wide (you had a choice of three different sizes) and the last two being small-ish kickers. There was a decent selection of rails, two really table tops, some camel humps, and to top it off the t-bar serviced the park precisely. You could hit six kickers each run! The only problem was that at the time I was a complete beginner - so I couldn't use the park to anywhere near its fullest.

Since then I've been to a park on Zermat's glacier, a park a Chamonix, one in Tignes, one in Val d'Isere and two in Merible. The Zermat park was quite good but I didn't think it was very well maintained. The pipe always had a huge rut on one of the walls and the kicker run-ins were sketchy; not to mention the kick line was only 2-deep. The "park" in Chamonix (Grands Montets) isn't really a park. When I was there you could go through a pretty naff border-cross course, and then hit one of two kickers.

The parks in Meribel and Tignes were OK, but they didn't have enough kickers and the lift service was pants. For example, in Tignes you had to take a really long chair to access the park. Once you got there you could hit two kickers - but the first one was really stupid because they made it difficult to take enough speed by putting a chicane at the park's entrance.

The Val d'Isere park was good. There was a line of three beginner kickers and then some really well maintained "proper" kickers. In addition, there was a healthy selection of rails that covered a good range of ability level. They also had a lift system directly servicing the park.

So how does the indoor slope at Castleford compare? Naturally it is small in comparison, but what it lacks in size it makes up with the frequency at which you can session the park obstacles. Take the kicker for example. Now I know that the slope isn't big enough to host a selection of different kicker sizes, but if the kicker they have out is right for you - you can hit it over and over again. In one freestyle night you must be able to hit the kicker somewhere around 50 times (total guess)? It's not necessarily easy to hit that many man-made kickers on a real mountain (at least not where I've been riding).

Of course a real mountain had a load of natural terrain to offer, but that's a different story - I'm concentrating here on what the indoor slope has to offer.

Rails. Jibbing. In my opinion this is where the indoor slope comes into its own. Each run you take you can often hit 3 or four rails. Compared with hitting rails in a mountain park, you get so much more. More time to practice, more time to get better, more time to have fun on rails.

I don't really know any of the regular riders at Castleford - but I've seen some amazing rail riding while I've been there. If you want to hit rails or you want to learn to hit a kicker - the indoor slope kicks ass!

Oh, did I mention that it's expensive and setting off home to Newcastle at 11:30 on a Friday night sucks? :-)