Chatham.

Published on: 27th May, 2010

The Saharan sun was not the only thing throwing down on Saturday the 22nd May at Chatham dryslope.

FoTP took our second trip to a permasnow slope this year, and despite the baked plastic loops of Chatham, and the face melting sun, the second stop of the Southern Freestyle Series, was a far cry from the 8 riders pulled in by the previous event at the once unstoppable Bracknell.

As we have become accustomed to over years gone by, Chatham always puts in an epic effort for these events, arranging the mother of slopestyle courses for the afternoons jam. Featuring several variations of rails, kickers and box features for use by a healthy contingent of riders who had navigated their way to the well hidden shred centre.

Chatham has to be one of the hardest slopes to find if you’ve not been there before. We saw one sign post. Google maps has never been so useful!

Even so, plenty of riders made the trip. Only in the UK would you find so many riders, in 30 degree heat, ripping up a plastic slope. And shouts out to all of them for the skill and tenacity that was on show, some of these cats were wearing beanies, let alone snowboarding on a summers day!

But then when you have a park that offers so much variety, you hit it up, rain or shine.

Beginning with a jam session, local legends Alex Spence and Chris Woods were out riding hard, Mr Spence mixing up switch back 5s, board slides off the street bar and some massive gap-boardslides over the flat-down rail. Mr Woods was also in familiar form, boosting huge mute grabs off the bigger booter, and locking out solid 50-50’s over the difficult flat bar.

Impressive riding by any standards, let alone in 30 degrees of heat…but these old boys were just the tip of the trickery.

chatham_thumb Lon Canu pulled out his bag of inverts, throwing frontflip and backflip lines as Sabrina Burnham, sampling the loops for the first time, was killing it for the ladies. She stomped some mean boardslides over the rainbow rail and put up even sicker attempts at front boarding the C-Box. She didn’t quite claim the whole thing, but stomped a clean one after several slams in the sandpaper conditions.

Following a brief re-set and safety check of the features, another nice touch from the Chatham faithful, the final runs were called.

Ed Castle-Henry set the bar high with boardslide 270 out, into a huge front three. This was instantly eclipsed by the shred muscle of Cody Herions. Fresh from his time in Mayerhofen this season, Cody stepped up to nail a switch back one, followed by a styled back 3 which shook the ground as he stomped it. His solid front board along the tricky flat bar was the bomb. Considering the flat bar is about 30 feet long, this was stuck with super glue solidity and nerve. It deserved the applause.

Still, despite the monster run from Cody, Calshot local, Jack Labbett stole the show. Front flip onto a huge backside 5, old school tweaked method and then a super tech boardslide-gap-270 out through the reverse kink bar gave him the props for the afternoon.

It wasn’t his best piece of riding from the day however. His sniper accurate shifty that knocked a prize clean out of the judges hands during a fun jam, got our award for audacity…a cheeky touch from the snowboarding contingent that brought a big smile to many faces!

It was back to familiar territory for Chatham the 22nd. Blazing sun, dry-slope and some familiar action we haven’t seen the likes of for a few years on UK soil.