Welcome to Morzine-Avoriaz, Freestyle Heaven...

Morzine is one of the best places in Europe for freestyle snowboarders & skiers

Try a local area with 5 different snow parks, the Burton Stash forest park, a super pipe, touring pro competitions with giant quater pipe, local competitions, giant air bag....

Firstly though some geography. If you are thinking of freestyling then you should be thinking Avoriaz. Often infact you'll hear the term "Morzine-Avoriaz", as there are two villages very close to each other that share the same ski area. If you want to ski & snowboard in Avoriaz then you can stay in either village, though we would of course recommend Morzine as the better option!

Parks - let's go through your options in the local area:

The Big Park

Firstly there's the big jump park. This is really, really big. A great place to sit and watch the top riders do their thing. It's commonplace to see people doing double flips without blinking an eye here.

The Big Rail Park

Attached to the big park is a monster rail park for those looking to hone what would need to be already very impressive skills. There's all sorts of shapes of rails - though all are serious undertakings, there are other places to start your rail riding career.

An Extra Half Pipe

Sometimes they'll also build a smaller half pipe near the exit from the big park, this is a great place to learn pipe riding at your own time and pace.

The Baby Park

Onto what's known as the baby park. This has three lines of jumps. The smaller ones are quite reasonable, but the medium and large ones are pretty sizable indeed (I've seen people pull corked double front flips off these jumps). So you should take "baby" park with a pinch of salt, all that means is it's smaller than the big park! There's also a few boxes that are a nice entry to rail riding, a good place to cut your teeth. The smallest line of jumps though are perfect for trying your very first jump.

The Air Bag

For lots of the season the air bag is running, that's next to the baby park. We've a hill, a ramp, then a giant air bag for you to land on. Perfect for trying all sorts of crazy flips and twists, even if you've no idea what you are doing! There's a charge for this, last winter that was 10 euros for an hour and well worth that for some incredible photo shots (you might want to photoshop out the airbag afterwards...)

The... mini park?

There's another tiny park in Avoriaz for people to do their very first jumps in true peace and quiet. I've never heard an official name for it, so I think MiniPark's quite apt. There's no one here who knows anything about jumping, so if you are type who likes to experiment on your own without anyone watching then why not start here?

The Burton Stash

Burton Snowboards decided they wanted to come to Europe and build their own forest park. The picked Avoriaz as the place to build this. It's a park running through a forest all made of wood. So if you'd like to use tree trunks as touching posts or maybe snowboard over a park bench then come and give it a go - it's a great run through the forest and there's lots of objects at all sorts of levels so you don't need to be a pro to enjoy yourself here.

Hidden throughout the same forest there's also a collection of wooden rails, great fun for the brave & those that can find them...

The Superpipe

A superpipe is simply a big halfpipe. The superpipe in Avoriaz tend to be quite quiet and you can go as high or low up the walls as you like, so it's something that can be attempted without the need to be a pro first. Get the right time of day and you can lap round and round with the pipe to yourself, a queue here is very rare indeed.

Jibbing Central

Finally it should be said that Avoriaz is a great place for jibbing (skiing & snowboarding on the normal pistes, but doing all sorts of jumps and tricks on whatever lumps & bumps you can find). The reason it's so good? Well, because there's so many people here doing it. That means lots of eyes to find all sorts of new lines and hits and also they get nicely carved in for a good run in and a clear marker of the lines to take. A personal favorite for this is the run from The ridge behind Avoriaz village down into Les Lindarets valley, always makes me smile.

And then there's the rest of the Portes Du Soleil

Morzine-Avoriaz is just one part of the Portes du Soleil, which is the name of the full ski area. This is made up fo 14 joined ski resorts. What I've listed above is just in Avoriaz. Every other joined resort has at least one park as well, so add that all together and you've more parks than you've fingers and toes combined to count them on.