Air bag or water ramps?

HabitualShred

HabitualShred

Member
I've only ever hit an airbag and found it really nice and painless. I ate it hard a few times and never got hurt and I've never heard of any accidents having to do with the bag? Are water ramps less painful than air bags or are they about the same?
 
He ended up in the future but it was in the same place in space and the air bag was gona and it was like 6 months later and he fell like 30 feet to solid ground a rock
 
I have hit both many times. The airbag is much softer. Water ramps, or at least the ones at Ohio Dreams, are hard to land in. You come into that pool so fucking hot it hurts almost no matter how you come down. Even if you stomp.
 
That, and most water ramps use m-snow for their drop ins. Even if you're comfortable skiing on m-snow, going down a long steep path tiled in m-snow is pretty horrifying.

When somebody goes down on the in-run at Ohio Dreams, they go to the hospital.
 
I prefer water ramps. I've hit far more water ramps in my time. Having a carving accident on either could be a game ender. I like my jumps with a lot of kick so that's probably why I like water ramps more than airbags.
 
The air bag came to my home mountain for a weekend, it was sick! They had an issue with a guy hitting the jump and somehow getting knocked out and being out for a half an hour!

They had to deflate the fucking bag, drag his limp body off and then inflate the bag lol. And some one broke their wrist.
 
This. My brother got shredded up at OD. Mad fun, but sketchy as hell. Air bag is much softer and much more fun. Plus, you can take it right to snow the next run. Can't beat it.
 
I spent a day at the ohio dreams water ramps. At the end of the day, i seriously felt like I was in a car accident or am MMA fighter kicked the shit out of me. You just come down from so high into the water it can be rough.
 
I've never hit a bag but I would think it could be more gentle. Water can be brutal. I used to dive in high school. If they aerate the water that helps so you land in bubbles though. Also an in run on snow is much more my thing than snowflex or especially stuff like dendex and whatever else. Eating it on some of the inruns sounds like a bad day.

Either way gives you confidence to bring stuff to snow. Hoping to hit a bag this season at whiteface and try some dubs again.
 
dumont broke his ankle. I've heard good and bad things about airbags, does anyone know if the type of airbag used can make it more or less safe? the one closest to me (blue mountain, PA) seems pretty legit. Anyone have experience with it?
 
Never jumped into an airbag, but I've seen someone breaking nose and jaw on waterramps by having his knees tucked at the landing.
 
At my local summer airbag last year, It was a windy day, but my coach still called me to go. In the tranny of the jump, I felt a huge gust of wind, but I couldent stop. The bag flatened infront of me, and bulged in the side. 30ft air to gravel. It was tight. Pic of bag below.

x-a-d-11_air_bag_4.jpg
 
No matter how good the landing is it's still inherently dangerous. At the same time I think if you hit the bag where you're supposed to you're probably good 99 percent of the time. You can get hurt doing pretty much anything but if you aren't landing horribly or very unlucky you should be fine.
 
Yeah, if you can do the trick confidently but you just need that extra confidence before snow, an airbag is the perfect thing. Landing well shouldn't be a problem.
 
some dumb motherfucker hit his head on the jump last year trying to double when the US Airbag did their tour to my home mtn. so fucking funny
 
from what ive encountered, you can get seriously injured on an airbag if you land the wrong way but if you dont its much softer. with water ramps each impact hurts more but you cant get seriously injured. I did water ramps at lake placid and it hurt when i first started doing it but by the end you get used to it and i could pretty much throw anything and be perfectly fine. On the last day i hucked a tip in top up double backie and made it about 1.5 rotations and took it to face and it didnt hurt much at all
 
Hitting an air bag is probably the scariest thing I've ever done, period. Idk how you guys can just huck dubs into them, I'm way more confident trying stuff off real jumps.

Never hit a water ramp but seems like it would have a lot less risk of injury if you have a bubbler running to break the surface tension...
 
Interesting. Maybe I'm not missing out. Never tried either. After destroying my head a few too many times I still think I might hit whiteface and try and get dubs comfortable and then get some in the park in that springtime weather.
 
water ramps for sure if they're good ramps like park city, lake placid, d-structure etc. you can land on your head on ramps, it wont feel good, you might get a concussion, but you wont break your neck. bubbles are key for ramping, i hit the placid ramps once when the bubbles weren't on...did not feel good, but as long as they're ripping its normally a pretty soft landing. you've normally also get a bigger area to land on. i'm always terrified of clearing or going off the side on the smaller bags.

i remember in the summer of 2009 on blackcomb they had an air bag set up so it was angled down hill so you could try and ski off of it. cool concept i guess other than the fact that it was way more sketchy then just hitting a jump and when you fell on it you got thrown in to a mogul field at high speeds haha.
 
water ramps are sick. i had a full day sesh and i fucking loved it and didn't even come close to getting hurt. air bags are sketch… i hit the one at sunapee sometimes and i always walk away hurting. my first ever hit on it, i landed a bit forward, double ejected and slammed my face. blood everywhere.

so airbags are definitely great for try stuff into and much better then snow, but they are still hard as fuck. so i would chose water ramps all day
 
I don't understand....An airbag has a separate chamber on the bottom that is inflated to a higher psi to prevent someone from hitting the ground.

Hitting a water ramp for sure is more dangerous. Water hurts like a mofo, and can cause serous harm. You flop just right from those heights, it is going to hurt, much more then an airbag. If the pool as a really good bubble system, it will help with breaking the surface tension of the water, which will make it less painful.

People have had collapsed lungs, broken ribs, broken vertebrae in backs from jumping into water.

Not understanding how people are getting messed up on airbags. Aside from missing the airbag entirely.

No idea how simon dumont broke his ankle. Out of the airbags I have hit, I have absolutely landed in some of the worst possible ways, and never once did it even come close to hurting.

I have seen a kid huck to hard and hit his head on the lip, getting ko'd in the air, kids miss the airbag...ect..

But I have never seen someone actually land on the airbag and get hurt.

 
I like water ramps because the jump is essentially the same as a park jump (if you're hitting the small jump) while airbag the jump is way kickier.
 
Airbags don't really hurt at all and its pretty hard to get hurt on them. I've probably done 50 or so hits on bags and never once came close to hurting myself.
 
At the Camp of Champions we've done both Water Ramps and Air Bags for years and we stopped doing water ramps because airbags in general are so much better, safer, you can get more hits in less time and best of all they are more fun. We had the first Air Bag in North America and have owned one of almost every manufacturer's bags out there from Acro Bag, BagJump and Big Air Bag.

Dual Chamber Speed and Safety

We now use Big Air Bag exclusively for our air bag needs because they are the only bag with a double chamber set up that ensures you land safely every time. Also, the bag cycles (reinflates) in 10 seconds so that if you are doing it in a public sort of set up, the line up doesn't make you want to go back to ski racing. The Bag Jump etc style with a single chamber, the bags cycle in about 45 seconds to a minute. If you rush it in the cycle and drop in early, you land on a semi inflated single chamber bag... In other words you hit the ground. 20 people in line, at a minute a drop and all of a sudden you are waiting forever for your turn. At 10 seconds a person you can get in so many hits that you learn more tricks, faster than you ever thought you would.

Missing The Bag

If you miss the bag... It's not the bags fault you had a painful landing. That is one thing that is better about water ramps to Air Bags. If you carve hard off the lip, you can miss the bag. If you carve hard off the lip into a pool, you miss the bubbler. Still hurts but definitely not as badly.

Dual Chamber Adjustability

With the Big Air Bag design, the top chamber can be adjusted from soft to firm depending on the ability of the people hitting it. If you know everyone is just learning to jump you can set it up super soft so that even when you land on your face, it's mellow. The second, lower chamber is always inflated to the same firmness so that on impact, the first chamber gently slows you down, the second chamber stops you. If the crew hitting it are all rippers we set the top chamber of the bag firmer so you can actually get the feeling of stomping it and riding out. Big Air Bag is the only bag that gives you this flexibility.

Soft... Hard...

Soft is a relative term. If your bag is set up to hard because the people watching it aren't paying attention or they actually just don't care or you are poaching a national team set up Air Bags aren't super soft. If the team taking care of the bag pressure is on it, the landing is soft. With a Big Air Bag you can adjust the air pressure in the top chamber to dial in the bag perfectly for the pressure to match the tricks.

Slanted Sides Keeps The Wind From Affecting The Bag As Much

With the slanted sides Big Air Bags don't get that "All the air blown to one side" problem as much that square sided bags have when the wind picks up. Water Ramps, you don't get as many hits. Even with a bubbler they leave you feeling beat down and mugged after a session, no to mention cold and wet. Also you can't train on a water ramp in the winter unless you want a REALLY hard landing.

Check Who's Calling Out Big Air Bags

If you hear water ramp facilities talking about how bags suck, just remember who has invested at least a million dollars in a water ramp facility and is exceedingly threatened by air bags taking away their business.

Pay In Money or Pay in Blood

The best material for the in run is definitely Snow Flex. When you wipe out on it you don't look like you had a run in with a cheese grater. You can bail on it in shorts and walk away laughing. You can't say the same for the cheese grater effect M-Snow has on your clothes and skin. Most places use MSnow on their run ins because it is about 1/10the the price of Snowflex. After a couple good scrapes on M Snow, we switched to Snowflex two years ago and it has been the best thing ever.

Ken

 
yea but the whistler ramps suck dick compared to ones at other places. hopefully thats not what you are making your comparisons from.
 
Not completely true. Last summer our camera man put on some of my friends gear and hit the ramp. He was ok at first but started sliding up the jump on his back towards the end. Everywhere from his shoulders below was shredded, but he toughed it out.

somewhere in this edit you can see him plop right over the ramp.
 
the only air bag injury ive ever heard of was bellemare. he landed way at the end of the airbag and fell off on his ribs or head or something.. he broke 3 ribs or 4 and punctured a lung, he was spitting blood and almost dying. he woke up in the hospital and could not recall any of all this. pretty sweet. i guess he's retarded though for overshooting an airbag
 
At Sqauw they had a bag for like 2 weeks then took it down after some guy got taken out on a stretcher

At seven springs some little kid was still on the end of the bag and someone hit it and the "blob" effect took effect. No injury though.

That same day my friend did a double backflip head clip
 
used to use foam pits on rollerblades at woodward west. Being the heavy guy I am, I would sink in afterwards for what seemed like an eternity until they throw in a rope to pull myself out.
 
Two of my friends have gotten concussions from airbags in the last week, I doubt water ramps would be much softer. I feel like that when you fall into an airbag, if you are tense in any way you will get hurt.
 
Airbags for sure. It's honestly all about how you land. I over rotated a backie on an airbag and landed on my ass and I was fine. If you land on your feet or on your back/ass you'll be fine. Just don't land on your head or shoulders.
 
Both are useful.

Water ramps I find are better for training a certain trick or skill until perfected. Jump, speed and slope are always the same. Having the drop time is also useful when learning tricks. Not being able to edge can be challenging but also useful for fixing bad habits.

Air bags are for the most part less painful but do have greater potential for injuries if you miss judge the jump or snow conditions. Good for taking a trick to snow, because you can adapt the jump and similar conditions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top