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How To Backside 180

Find a small to medium sized park kicker and get comfortable with some straight airs. Make sure you’ve got the necessary speed dialled. Head up the transition with a flat base and your weight low and centred.

Don’t carve hard off your toes! Just like the frontside 180 (see previous page) this is a slow spin that requires a very subtle movement on the take-off. So… as your nose approaches the lip, apply a faint pressure to your toes, simultaneously popping a little off the tail and turning your shoulders gently back up the hill, so you’re facing away from the landing. The bigger the jump, the less aggressive you need to be with this movement – in fact on a large kicker like this the take-off is almost like a straight air.

You should now be in the air and on your way to a smooth, slow 180 degree spin. Stay calm and immediately suck your legs up, reaching down with your front hand for the melon grab (heel edge between the bindings). Hold it there.

Just as with the piste version, it’s important not to crane your head around searching for your landing. Instead, keep your eyes looking down at the snow between your bindings. You should be able to gauge roughly how far you are through the rotation and how high you are in the air. Enjoy the weird, weightless feeling!

As you begin to descend, let go of your grab and keep your eye on the moving snow between your feet. Extend your legs to meet the ground, and try to set the toe edge down first to help kill the rotation (if you’re washing out onto your heels/arse then you need to slow down the spin by being gentler on the take-off). You can also set the nose down a fraction before the rest of the board to help it correct itself if you’re less than bang on 180 degrees.

Turn your head to face back down the slope and ride away switch, stoked in the knowledge that you’ve just nailed one of the funnest tricks ever.