How to progress at Freestyle without park and barely any sidehits
Hey all, looking for advice from people who've dealt with this.
I ride at Cerro Catedral in Bariloche, Argentina. No park. There used to be one but it was tiny (one jump, one box) and they haven't built it the last two seasons. From what I've heard it was a mix of someone getting hurt on it and the snow conditions not cooperating.
I'm pretty comfortable with my riding at this point, I can get around the whole mountain fine. But freestyle is the part I actually enjoy the most and I have nowhere to practice it.
There's one beginner run with some sidehits so I lap it a few times a day, but being a beginner run it's usually packed and you can't commit to anything without worrying about someone cutting in front of the takeoff. The rest of the mountain barely has sidehits, and the ones that exist dump you off piste into something steep and bumpy, so the landing is sketchy enough that trying new stuff feels like a bad idea. I mess around off moguls too but landing in a bump field isn't exactly confidence inspiring.
Other than that it's a lot of flat ground. Butters, 180s, 360s, presses. But realistically I'm getting maybe a handful of real airs in a full day, which isn't enough volume to progress.
So how do you train freestyle without a park, especially when the few features around have landings you don't want to be learning on? Worth building my own little jump off to the side? Trampoline in the off season? Or is flat ground just the whole game until I can travel somewhere with a real park?
Any advice appreciated.