Adventurous athletes and athletic adventurers have always found ways to push the envelope.

How else could they have come up with kite boarding or tow-in surfing?

Well, here’s a new one for you ambitious outdoor sports enthusiasts looking for something different.

Snowskating.

A snowskate or snowdeck is about the size of a skateboard. It’s either a skateboard deck mounted on a mini-snowboard for downhill sliding or just the deck with channels on the bottom for ”grinding” rails and other specialized trick moves straight out of the official skateboarder’s handbook.

The fledgling sport, which is the wintry equivalent of – pardon the retro terminology – sidewalk surfing, is developing quickly, according to John Tullis of Timberline. That’s where a lot of the innovation is taking place.

During the last couple of summers, snowskate manufacturers asked groomers at Timberline’s Palmer Snowfield to build some terrain features for snowskating – in essence, a skateboard park on the slopes.

Recently, Timberline opened its winter skatepark with a bunch of funny-looking paraphernalia: hits, funboxes, quarterpipes, rails and ramps.

One recent afternoon at the winter skatepark, 22-year-old Logan Stewart of Sandy was taking a break from the slopes and trying something different.

”I’m a skier,” he said between wipeouts. ”It’s fun trying something new. It seems easy at the start. But the tricks are really tough.”

Snowskates run between $50 and $100, but you can rent them at Timberline. The snowskate area at Timberline is set to open for the season soon, depending on conditions.

Contact: 503-622-7979.