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Thirteen years ago I wrote a story for The Bulletin about “grays on trays.”

The term was used to describe snowboarders over the age of 30, and the article discussed how they were becoming a common sight on the slopes of Mt. Bachelor and other ski areas across the country.

I was 26 then, not a gray hair on my head. Now, I am officially a “gray on a tray.”

So just what can we aging snowboarders do to retain our sense of youth on the mountain?

Well, keeping up with the current lingo is a good idea. But that is not necessarily an easy thing to do, as it is always changing as the sport continues to evolve. And it’s not just snowboarding. The rise in popularity of freestyle skiing has also had an effect on snowrider slang.

“I think it’s kind of evolved, especially with the addition of freestyle skiing,” says Coggin Hill, freeride ski and snowboard program director for the Mt. Bachelor Sports Education Foundation. “A lot of people have two phrases for kind of the same trick. Snowboarding comes from skateboarding and evolved … freestyle skiing, they’ve morphed it. They’re always changing, and it’s kind of a constant argument of what they’re called.”

Many of the terms stem from terrain-park riding on rails and jumps. Hill says his coaches’ manual was formerly snowboard-based, but now he uses two: one for snowboarding and one for freestyle skiing.

“It’s all come together in a pretty friendly manner,” says Jon Marks, a freestyle ski coach for MBSEF. “Everybody respects everyone and they’re all pushing the sport in the same direction.”

Used to describe snow conditions, types of tricks, performance on said tricks, crashes and more, certain skiing and snowboarding lingo is often not easily understood by those who are only occasional snowriders.

“I think to a certain extent you get tourists who come in and they kind of use the terminology, but don’t necessarily know what it means,” Hill says.

Adds Marks: “There’s a lot of people who aren’t really a part of the industry, more like the weekend warrior, who don’t really know all those terms.”

So here is a chance for us older skiers and riders who maybe do not get up to the mountain as often as we would like, or are not always riding in the terrain parks and executing the latest and greatest tricks, to catch up on some of the current snowspeak.

Hill and Marks are coaching young Central Oregon skiers and snowboarders every day, so they are experts on the hippest snowrider slang heard on the mountain.

In no particular order, the following are 25 slang terms these coaches often hear, and use themselves, knowing that many tourists at Bachelor for the holidays might have no idea what they are saying:

• Low tide: This comes from surfing and is used to describe early-season conditions on the slopes, like when rocks and stumps might be protruding from the snow. Says Hill: “It’s low tide until we have a 50- or 60-inch base.”

• Blower: Exceptionally light and deep powder snow.

• Pitted: Riding through snow that is armpit deep. Example: “I just pitted on that turn.”

• Stomp: To perfectly execute and land a trick. Example: “You stomped that 360.”

• Bolts: Same as stomped. “That was bolts.”

• Sketchy: To almost stomp a trick, but not quite. “Loose” is a synonym.

• Euro-carve: A hard-carving turn on a steep run during which the snowboarder is fully laid out, with his or her chest almost touching the ground.

• Chatter: Going over bumps or though a series of moguls on a snowboard or skis.

• 50/50: Riding straight on a rail in a terrain park, when a snowboarder’s weight is equally distributed on each foot. Skiers sometimes use this term too describe skiing straight down a box feature.

• White room: Being completely immersed in powder. For example, a snowboarder performs a hard heelside turn in deep snow, and the snow comes sailing overhead.

• Park rat: A skier or snowboarder who rides in the terrain park all day long. Says Hill: “It would be an epic powder day, and they’d still be riding in the park.”

• Zeech: When a snowrider attempts a board slide (trying to get perpendicular on a rail) but gets to an angle of only about 45 degrees. “It’s a negative term,” Hill says, “because you don’t fully commit.”

• Kicker: A big jump.

• Jib: When a skier or rider hits some sort of object on purpose — a rail, stump or tree — within the flow of riding.

• Yard sale: More of a skier term used to describe the scene in which skiers crash and their poles and skis are scattered across the run.

• Scorpion: A crash during which a snowboarder lands chest or face first and his feet come back over his head.

• Swag: Free stuff (like clothing or gear) given away after a contest, but now also an adjective to describe something good. Explains Hill: “Free stuff is a good thing, so you can say ‘That trick was swag.’”

• Switch: For snowboarders, this means riding with your opposite foot in front. (If you normally ride with your left foot in front, riding “switch” would be riding with your right foot in front.) For skiers, it means skiing backward.

• Rad/gnarly/sick: Used to describe prime conditions or a nicely executed difficult trick. But Hill says, “People use ‘rad’ or ‘gnarly,’ but in a joking manner.”

• Tech: A particularly technical trick.

• Double cork 1080: A trick that includes three rotations while the skier or boarder is inverted twice off-axis.

• Switch McTwist: A trick that includes 1½ rotations and a front flip.

• Send it: What other snowriders yell to a fellow rider when he or she is waiting to go from the top of a terrain park or jump.

• Dropping: What that rider yells just before he or she makes the move to start from the top of a terrain park or jump.

• Shred the gnar: An older term that basically means “Let’s go ride in extreme conditions.” Hill says to be careful with this saying, though. “That’s more a term that a snowboarder who doesn’t really snowboard a lot would use,” he says. “I would never say it, and if I did, I’d be joking. It was used more in the ’90s.”

It is probably something that an out-of-touch gray on a tray would say. So I guess it’s time to come to terms with the fact that I am one — and go shred some gnar.

— Reporter: 541-383-0318,

mmorical@bendbulletin.com

“I think to a certain extent you get tourists who come in and they kind of use the terminology, but don’t necessarily know what it means.”— Coggin Hill, freeride ski and snowboard program director for the Mt. Bachelor Sports Education Foundation