Only a handful of resorts in the world have the equipment needed to build 22-foot superpipes to the specifications required by premier events on the World Snowboard Tour, Association of Freeskiing Professionals World Tour and FIS World Cup. Nobody builds them as well as Snow Park Technologies, the team responsible for the X Games pipe at Buttermilk and the Burton U.S. Open pipe at Vail. Buttermilk's U-ditch is at its best just before and just after the X Games in January, then gets sliced and diced and doubled up into a spine ramp for the Red Bull Double Pipe contest in March. It's a truly humbling experience worth dropping in on, if only to better appreciate precisely how nuts a full-on pro ski or snowboarding competition really is.