Pipe riders get a lot of stick for being the jocks of snowboarding. Whilst hiking the deck of the pipe on a powder day is a bit keen, we think that, that statement couldn’t be farther from the truth. Yes, to be a good pipe rider, you need to be fanatical about it, but that dedication to transition, leads to board control that can’t be matched. 

What that means is that you end up with riders that know how to ride a snowboard. Think Blauvelt, Müller, Longo or Håkonsen – they’re all riders with super-human levels of skill on a snowboard. When translated to the backcountry, you can see that they know how to read terrain.

In this case we’ve got 5 very talented pipe riders turning their hands to the park. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again; transition riding matters. Beni Farrow, Brett Esser, Arielle Gold, Chase Josey and Taylor Gold have pretty sizeable pop on when it comes to hitting the kickers, a skill honed on the sheer faces of icy pipes across the globe.

It’s always rad to see crossover edits, and there need to be more of them, especially in a time where people see snowboarding being polarised into different disciplines. Our opinion? Snowboarding’s still snowboarding whether you do it in the pipe, the streets, the park or on the piste.