Snowlines: A feeling for snow is essential to the art

By COLIN MOORE

The art of sculpting in snow and ice is being given a new twist for acrobatic snowboarders.

Boarders love to "get air," using the lip of small banks in the snow to take off and, if they are good enough, complete some aerial stunts before landing.

So ski areas build halfpipes, large ditch-like features in the snow which allow board-riders to take off from side to side.

But such is the evolution of boarding that building and maintaining a halfpipe to satisfy the demands of young snowboarders has become an art where the eye, a feel for the snow and an understanding of board-riding is as important as purely technical skills.

One of the best practitioners of the art is Wanaka's Dave Collett. In the summer he drives earthmoving and haymaking machinery. And for the last nine winters, from June to October, he has driven one of the snowgroomers at the Cardrona Alpine Resort.

Collett's expertise in sculpting halfpipes has developed with the growth of snowboarding.

He started by making a steel blade in the skifield machinery workshop that he attached to a snow groomer. Now the equipment is much more sophisticated and can shape halfpipes in many ways.

Halfpipe shapes vary in the radius of the pipe and the angle of the sides, according to the steepness of the snow slope and the type of move board-riders want to make off the lip.

Collett doesn't snowboard but he takes experienced riders with him to offer advice.

Halfpipe riding is hugely popular among the hundreds of Japanese boarders who spend the winter in Wanaka and with a growing number of skiers using today's shorter skis.