A favorite car ride pastime of ski-obsessed children (if they're sans-iPad) is to look out the window and imagine skiing through the streets, jumping off every snowbank along the way. For the lucky kids of Bad Gastein, Austria, their dreams are realized every winter about this time when Red Bull hosts its annual Playstreets contest. The quiant European city of Bad Gastein has a natural downhill pitch, and event organizers use this, along with 780 truckloads of snow, 460 square feet of wood planks, and Europe's litigation-free nature to build a slopestyle course with jumps, hips, and rails that weaves 1,700 through the streets.
As this heart palpitation-inducing video shows, the competition and the course are not for the faint of heart. While a normal course on a mountain might allow for ample time and space to set up between jumps, the Playstreets course is ridiculously tight and quick, with little room for error. Some in-runs are only a couple feet wide, and the final feature sends skiers out onto a box slide that's been placed above a house, which culminates in an eight foot drop into a screaming crowd.
· VIDEO: The best of Red Bull Playstreets 2013 [Red Bull]