Sporting Chance

Think you've got skills gnarly enough to hang with the big dogs? On Friday night, forty of Colorado's best riders will shred, slash and slide at Boulder's first annual Heavy Metal on the Hill, a rail jam competition sponsored by the 150-member University of Colorado snowboard team.

"We're going to set up twelve-foot scaffolding for a multi-level drop-in to a 25-foot kinked rail," explains CU senior and team secretary Matt Gawronski. "There's going to be some pretty extreme stuff being thrown down."

And while the snowboarders are showing off their skills, spectators can rock out to live entertainment by local bands such as Boulder punk rockers Grace Like Gravity. "This is the first urban rail jam to be thrown in Colorado, and everyone is really joining together to support us -- local businesses, the university, students -- so we're really excited by it," says Gawronski, who is expecting about 1,000 people to turn out. "We're closing down the entire street."

Heavy Metal on the Hill will take place this Friday night from 6 to 9:30 on a closed-off section of Boulder's University Hill, 13th Street between College and Pennsylvania avenues; admission is free. For further information, visit www.cusnowboardteam.com.