At the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix at Killington Resort, I walked up the side of the half-pipe for a closer view. But when I reached the half-pipe’s deck—the flat strip on either side of the pipe’s lip—I found myself clinging to the fence.

Looking down at the bottom of the half-pipe—22 feet below—I felt like I was standing on the roof of a two-story house! And a slippery roof at that.

While the 2002 and 2006 Olympics were held in 18-foot half-pipes, the new breed of superpipes are these 22-foot monsters. And the half-pipe at Cypress Mountain outside Vancouver, which will host the 2010 Olympic half-pipe competition, has 22-foot walls.
With four more feet to work with, snowboarders are changing the way they ride.

“Basically you have a lot more transition,” said 2002 Olympic gold medalist Kelly Clark, referring to the time between tricks. “You can carry more speed. It can be intimidating, but if you’re comfortable riding at speed, 22-foot pipes are way better.”

Gretchen Bleiler, 2006 Olympic silver medalist, likes the bigger pipes too.

“You have the ability to go so much faster because the transitions are so much more gradual and easy, and they cradle you,” she explained. “But there’s also more room for mistakes. You have 22 feet of transition catching you instead of going straight to flat like you do in an 18-foot pipe.”

With more speed and more time between tricks, riders are doing harder and harder combinations, said 2002 Olympic bronze medalist JJ Thomas, who started riding full time again this year, with his eye on making the 2010 Olympic Team.

“Back [when I went to the Olympics], it was like seven, seven, nine, McTwist, maybe a 10,” he said, referring to how many spins he would do with each hit. (A seven is 720 degrees or two spins, a 10 is three, a McTwist is an inverted 540.) “Now it’s nine, nine, 10, 10, and all really big.”

But not all ski resort half-pipes are 22 feet yet, and many of the riders are having trouble going from an 18-foot pipe up to 22 feet, then back to an 18-foot pipe. For example, at the first stop of the Grand Prix series in Copper, Colo., in December, the riders competed in an 18-foot half-pipe. But the Grand Prix at Boreal, Calif., in February and Killington, Vt., in March were both in 22-foot pipes.

“If you ride with the same timing as you do in the 18-foot pipe, you’re going to be in trouble,” said Bleiler, who says in the mid-’90s, when she first started competing, the walls were only 12-feet high. “So every time you go from one to the other, it’s like learning how to do it all over again.”

She explained that the equipment used to create and maintain the big half-pipes—typically a Zaugg Pipe Monster, which resembles an elephant’s trunk sticking out from the side of a grooming machine—is expensive and that “not all resorts can justify buying one because your general public doesn’t want to ride a 22-foot pipe.”

“It would be nice to have some consistency and be able to ride a 22-foot pipe all year long,” she added. “It was kind of a tough year going back and forth.”

Next year all the Grand Prix will be held in 22-foot half-pipes, she said, as well as the Olympics.

So how high are the snowboarders going over the top of these monster pipes?

“If you’re getting eight to 16 feet up over the lip, that’s big,” said Thomas. “Because you’re already up over a 22-foot wall!”