by CHRIS BARRY

Hey kids, looking for something rad to do this winter that doesn’t cost a lot of money? Want to improve your boarding skills without having to spend an hour and a half trekking out to the snow parks and ski hills? Want to impress the chicks with your outlaw ways and most likely end up sporting a cast that they can all sign afterwards? Of course you do! So it’s time you got hip to the new winter sensation that’s sweeping the land: urban snowskating.

Smaller than a snowboard yet slightly wider and a touch longer than a skateboard, most snowskates are plastic boards with tracking on the bottom and foam gripping on top. Retailing between $80 and $300, over the past two years sales of the little buggers have skyrocketed, to the extent that some in the industry are predicting that snow skating will soon eclipse snowboarding as the winter sport of choice among the young and adventurous.

“We expect to increase our sales of snowskates by 80 per cent over last year,” says Scott Arkin, owner of Diz, a popular snowboard shop located in Montreal West. “And we started to move one hell of a lot of them last year. They’re cheap and practical, closer to a skateboard than a snowboard, really.”

Not that you necessarily need to go out and buy snowskates in order to ride public stair rails—you can always use your snowboard—but urban riding will beat up your board pretty quickly, and, for a variety of reasons, snowskates are a lot more suited to renegade urban snow activities. For starters, they don’t require any special boots, nor do you need to strap yourself in to them. Considerably lighter than a snowboard, with snowskates it’s way easier to make a quick getaway once the cops get wind of what you’re up to and start to give chase. Which, rest assured, is going to happen if you’re not discreet about where and when you decide to go riding public stair rails. Place Ville Marie at lunch hour on a Friday afternoon is probably not the best time to practice your jibbing.

But there are still plenty of spots in Montreal where you can get a fix of snowboarding or skating without having to head out of the city. The Mirror lassoed long-time winter sports enthusiast Patrick Seymour to get the skinny on a few of the better locations in town to go riding. Here, unadulterated, are his recommendations, with the caveat that trying some of these stunts on snowskates could be extremely hazardous to your health.

Mount Royal: “Up near Beaver Lake in the woods behind where the ski tow is. It’s right downtown, it doesn’t cost anything, and you can build some amazing kickers there. Also, unless you start riding the BMX trails, nobody is going to hassle you on the mountain. The only down side is they don’t really have any good rails up there. But overall, I give Mount Royal Park four stars out of five.”

The fountain beside City Hall near Place Jacques Cartier: “This place is great for riding rails after a big snow storm. Lost of stairs with plenty of open gaps between the rails, good for jumping. The only bad thing is that for most tricks you need to have somebody push you to really get any speed going—especially if you’re on a snowboard. In some ways it’s more work than fun, but if you get a friend to push you, you can really do some crazy stuff there. The best time to go is after 11 p.m. when there’s nobody around in Old Montreal. Four stars”

Behind le Palais des Congrès in Chinatown: “What I like about this spot is there are lots of rails with good gaps between them and not too many people walking around. Yeah, this is a good spot but only go at night. If the security guard comes do what I did and pretend that you’re deaf and can’t understand what he’s trying to tell you. But he will, eventually, kick you out. Three stars.”

PVM: “The rails are okay and it’s right downtown. The best ones are heading down towards McGill-College. But there’s a lot of security and you get kicked out of here pretty fast. Anyway, you can only do so many tricks here so it’s not like you’re gonna wanna spend hours at this location anyway. I’ve been hassled by the cops for snowskating here. They told me I was too old to be doing this. I’m 29 years old. But they didn’t arrest us. Two stars.”

Outside any arena anywhere: “Just check out where they dump the snow and go there. This is really the best because there are so many things you can do: build a huge wedge out of the snow that’s already been dumped, build a four- or five-foot kicker, and if it’s next to a fence or something like that, you can get gutsy and try to boardslide or grind the fence. Usually the arenas are in a park so you can find metal bars and things like that to build with. Or just build a jump beside the arena wall. If the snow is sticky enough and the wall is high, you can just do wall rides. It’s really fun, and it doesn’t cost anything. Some guys even do it in the summer, but that’s a lot more work. Four stars.”

Also worthy of note: Snow removal dump sites. You can find some minor mountains right here in the city after a couple of good winter dumps. Except, as inviting as they may appear, our expert Patrick advises against them, saying the quality of snow and amount of ice found at the snow dumps outweighs any benefit you might find in their size. Instead, he suggests you look for streets with major inclines in ’em, like St-Dominique between Sherbrooke and Ontario. “Except” says Patrick, “you might get hit by a car. But that can happen on a skateboard in summer too, right? :