Mountain Layout—Snowboarding

Undulating terrain and wide-open trails call for lots of top-to-bottom carving runs. For challenging fun, try La Chute and Bossanova—both are long with steep pitches that mellow then drop again for little adrenaline rushes. Stoneham is primarily a family mountain and even double-black-diamond trails La Panoramique and La Bomba, though steep, are maneuverable for upper-intermediate riders.

Experts will want to head straight for Peak Four. Little grooming is done here, and the trails are steep, skinny and bumped. Well-named trails Le Zipper, Le Kamikaza and Le Monstre are legitimate double blacks. They are left au natural, so you want to be on the look out for stumps, rocks, cliffs and other such obstructions in lean snow years.

Parks and pipes
Our riders love Stoneham, which has some of the best terrain features in the East. It boasts a huge, well maintained superpipe as well as four terrain parks with jumps, rolls, tabletops, funboxes and rails. On Mountain 2, the 3D Zone starts from the top of the high-speed quad on Les Cantons and winds down Short Cut to La Traverse and La Yeti. For continuous fun, just do laps on the A quad and the superpipe, with 17-foot walls. A Kokanee bus is buried in the park. There’s also a mile-long boardercross course on La Rock-n-Roll.

Even adults have fun in Casimir’s Enchanted Journey, a children’s terrain park with large wooden animal and character cut-outs in the trees off Le Petit Champlain.

Sous Bois is a natural terrain park. This wide, long glade is full of little hits, chutes through the trees, rolling turns and a few gentle moguls.