When a professional snowboarder can’t make it to the slopes, he makes the slopes come to him.
“Every time it snows,” Pat Milbery says, he and his friends make a beeline to their cache of snow under a bridge near the Pepsi Center.
The area is a dumping site for snow cleared from the Pepsi Center, Invesco Field and other public areas. The shade from the bridge shelters the snow.
When he came across the piles of snow earlier this year, Milbery, who is a professional rider sponsored by Winter Park Resort and Arbor Snowboards, recognized an urban snow park in the raw. With other riders, he rearranged the snow into ramps, jumps and other features.
“It holds up pretty well,” he said, demonstrating a snow park builder’s version of house pride.
Rangy but muscular, with lank, blond hair and blue eyes the color of washed-out denim, Milbery, 28, visits his snow park almost daily. During and after snowstorms, he and his friends bring shovels to transfer the maintenance department’s latest snow dumps to the snowboard features.
By building up the packed snow between storms, Milbery and his friends have created a sweet little place to practice their tricks.
Another bonus: Shoveling and stacking snow is a sweaty, full-body workout. Other people pay big bucks to take “functional fitness” classes engineered to employ total-body movement patterns. Not Milbery.
“My lifestyle is my gym,” he says.
Bob Holme, the terrain park and youth marketing manager at Winter Park, marvels at Milbery’s creativity.
“The fact that he looks at staying fit and training as doing everyday things is another way he amazes me in his perspective,” Holme said.
“It seems simple but it’s true: If you stay active, that’s what’s key. Most people think exercise is an hour or two of time that involves changing clothes and sweating and then climbing into a shower afterward. But fitness can mean just being active by moving.”
Milbery routinely commutes by skateboard, often following his relentlessly perky West Highland terrier, Tora. Together, they skateboard from 45 to 90 minutes at a time.
Milbery began riding 18 years ago, when he was still in elementary school in the Midwest. He turned pro after moving to Colorado — first Breckenridge, then Denver, though he frequently visits Winter Park to help with Railyard, the terrain park there.
He also works on , the Railyard website, and has been in films for Think Thank, a production company of snowboarders who create snowboarding videos. During the winter, Milbery’s schedule is so crammed that he rarely would have time to visit a fitness club, even if he belonged to one.
“You don’t need to run or bicycle to be in shape,” Holme said.
“Parents are always asking me, ‘Should my kids start to run to stay in shape for riding?’ I ask, ‘Do the kids go to the skate park?’ Parents say, ‘Yes, they spend all afternoon there, but that’s not exercise.’ I say, ‘Yes it is!’ In some ways, a rider can’t get more specific training off the snow than skateboarding.”
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
