Where is the snow? Snowboard brands are trying to find out for themselves.

On February 1, 2021, during the biggest blizzard to hit New York in five years, snowboarders turned the city's spots into playgrounds. Hollis DuPre, 23, crushed rails at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Jayell White, a 30-year-old Bronx native, jumped off a brick wall in Battery Park.

All of this was documented in the first film produced by Hell Gate, a rambling snowboard team. Last year, the team's second video, "Gate 2 Hell," started on a much darker note. Trung Nguyen, 29, climbed over a mound of road salt. At the top he fell and slipped sodium chloride.

Cooper Winterson, a 28-year-old Hell Gate runner, said Mr. Nguyen's trick "plays like a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for what we have We don't have enough snow to get clips, so we're snowboarding on salt,” which he pointed out is used to fight blizzards.

New York City is in a snow drought Hell Gate members had to travel to Buffalo, Albany and Poughkeepsie - or Big Snow, considered the first and only snow stadium covered in America, at the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, N.J. The sealed slope guarantees that, according to its website, "Every day is a snow day."

This message is happily reinforced by the mountain's Yeti mascot, who on a recent Sunday was seen twerking near the chairlift as house music played on loudspeakers. resonant speakers. Big Snow opened in 2019 and its eternal winter has been repeatedly disrupted, first by the pandemic and then by an electrical fire that broke out inside the 180,000 square foot dome. .

As climate change alters global weather patterns, skiers and snowboarders, and the companies that equip them, consider a snow-free future.

"Our season is definitely shorter than in the past," said Ali Kenney, 44, Chief Strategy Officer of Burton Snowboards. Thanksgiving and Christmas rush Now most of our business is from January to March."

Over the next few decades, the winter window is expected to shrink A recent study by researchers at the University of Waterloo warned that by 2100, only one of the 21 previous Winter Olympics venues will have enough snow and ice to reliably host the Games. In response, many snow sports businesses are branching out. Salomon, once known for its skis, has become largely a supplier of running shoes, while snowboard manufacturer Lib Tech now also manufactures surfboards.

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