If you’re going to shoot a sick snowboarding video, you’re going to need plenty of big jumps to make things exciting. A lot of the time, you’re going to need to build those kickers yourself and that takes a whole lot of work. While you can use any snow-capable shovel to pack and groom the snow, we have a feeling you’ll have an easier time using the Kicker Tool instead.
Designed by DMOS Collective with input from various winter sport professionals, it’s a shovel that’s purpose-designed for building kickers in the snow. From scooping to packing to raking in the snow, it’s optimized to cut down the time spent on terrain-building, so you can spend more of the day actually doing runs and jumps.
The Kicker Tool is a portable snow shovel with a head and telescoping tubular shaft that can separated for easy packing. A 2.5-mm thick aircraft-grade 6061 aluminum alloy construction ensures the shovel head won’t bend an inch while you’re digging through thick piles of snow, with a serrated edge on the head’s bottom lip allowing you to easily groom unwanted bumps and break up cruds on the snow. It’s large, too, at 18 x 9 inches for shoveling maximum amounts of snow, with the thick construction ensuring the serrated edge won’t cut through any fabric or skin during transport. The shaft can compact into 18 inches long for easy packing, all while stretching to 56 inches during use, with indexed locking to ensure it doesn’t accidentally close in while you’re working.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Kicker Tool. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $99.