It's 7 p.m. on Sunday night and Olympic snowboarding silver medalist Danny Kass is "training."

The flagrantly rumpled rider and his Mammoth Lakes, Calif., posse wheel their logo-riddled Winnebago into a parking lot on the Lionshead side of Vail, unload snowboards and shovels and begin stacking chunks of frozen snowplow debris to form a 4-foot ramp some 20 feet above the concrete stairs leading to town.

A ribbon of stale snow maybe 2 feet wide and 2 inches deep is spread across the asphalt between the ramp and railing, leaving a gap of roughly three stairs between the white crud and the cold steel high-wire they are aiming for. The riders will need enough speed to ollie off the asphalt and onto the railing, but not so much that they overshoot the 15-step staircase altogether and land on the dusting of frost splayed over the sidewalk below.

As a final preparation, a few drops of beer are splashed on the stairway, presumably an offering to some unsung deity of urban jibbing.

The first of the riders climbs up the ramp, straps on his board and drops in. Sparks fly as his metal edges grind the handrail, and again when he hops down on the sidewalk, dissipating as momentum carries him over dirt and grass on the hillside below and flaring up out of the darkness once more before he comes to a halt in the street.

Lens caps come off the video cameras as Kass straps in atop the ramp, ostensibly to gather material for a new movie project titled "Night of the Living Shred." But the tape nearly transmutes into courtroom evidence when Kass misses the ollie, bashes down the staircase and careens headlong toward a bus making its evening rounds. Amid another shower of street sparks, the disheveled Olympian slams on the brakes and exchanges salutations with the bus driver before hiking back up the stairs for another crack.

Apparently, near-death experiences are the best way to prepare for the Mountain Dew Pro Nationals this weekend in Breckenridge. There is method to this madness, as the first stop on the annual Vans Triple Crown of Snowboarding series this year incorporates the Mountain Dew Rail Jam, a new addition to the established series in which riders take a stab at pulling off the gnarliest moves on a specially built competition rail for a $5,000 prize. Buses, however, are banned.

Kass won't be the only big name basking in the Olympic afterglow in Breckenridge this weekend. Gold medal winners Ross Powers and Kelly Clark are also scheduled to compete in the marquee Super Pipe contest on Saturday and Sunday, along with Olympic bronze medalist JJ Thomas of Golden. The $110,000 Mountain Dew Pro Nationals mark the kickoff of the post-Olympic competition season and are sure to draw the hottest young guns alongside the establishment.

"The Mountain Dew Pro Nationals at Breckenridge have been the perfect start to the Vans Triple Crown of Snowboarding for five years now," said Steve Van Doren, Vans' vice president of promotions. "With nearly every big contest rider coming out, we'll get an early look at who is going to take snowboarding to new heights this winter."

In addition to the Olympic champions, the event will boast a competitive snowboarding field more than 100 riders deep, including Aspen's Gretchen Bleiler, Vans Triple Crown 2001 overall women's champion. Breckenridge team riders Todd Richards and Chad Otterstrom will attempt to defend their turf against the likes of Tommy "The Machine" Czeschin, Doran Laybourn, Daniel Franck and Abe Teter.

And everyone will be challenged by one of the world's great park and 'pipe combos as Breckenridge once again enters the season rated by snowboarders among the top three mountains in America, thanks in no small part to the award-winning Freeway Terrain Park.

Competitors at the Mountain Dew Pro Nationals will be the first to ride Breck's new Super Pipe cut with a Zaugg Pipe Monster. With walls over 18 feet high and 400 feet long, Breck officials are touting the new pipe as the largest in Colorado.

Competition gets underway with Slopestyle qualifying throughout the day Friday and finals for men and women at noon on Saturday. In slopestyle, riders make an untimed run through the terrain park, hitting tabletop jumps, spines, rails and a quarter pipe as judges score them on fluidity and level of difficult.

Super Pipe qualifying takes place throughout the day Saturday followed by women's finals Sunday at 12:30 p.m. and men's finals at 2:15 p.m. Pipe riders are judged on tricks they perform based on difficulty, execution and amplitude out of the pipe.

Rail competition will follow the slopestyle finals at 2 p.m. Saturday. For those who can't make it to the event, NBC will televise the Mountain Dew Pro Nationals at 3 p.m. MST on Jan. 26.

All features of the Freeway Terrain Park, including the Super Pipe, will open to the public on Monday, Dec. 16, qualifying it among the earliest parks in the nation to open.

— Scott Willoughby, MountainZone.com correspondent