NEGAUNEE, Mich. (WJMN) – A rail jam is a combination of different sports.

“I race motocross and like ride mountain bikes and stuff like that so I’m not a big board sport person,” said Julian Rienas. “It was mainly moving up to Marquette that made me start riding and snowboarding and stuff because I’ve always had an interest but I lived in Florida for most of my life.”

“Rails are actually a very new thing for me,” said Shane Buza. “I used to be terrified of them until like here actually, when I was able to build them myself and feel comfortable hitting them.”

Julian and Shane welcomed Local 3 News to check out their moves as they hit the rails on an area that Julian made in his yard.

“It all started last year when I got a snowskate for Christmas and I created a little snowskate park,” said Rienas. “And a lot of my buddies had seen it and their like, ‘Dude, this is pretty sick. But, we can’t ride in our snowboards it’s too small.’ So this year when I started building, that started early. I started our first snowfall in November and we’ve been building since and I just kept in mind, scale it for the snowboards.

Local 3’s Rebecca Bartelme gave it a try and clearly is not going to be competing anytime soon. But, Julian and Shane will be in the Irontown Rail Jam as part of the Heikki Lunta Winter Festival on Friday night. The event is being put on with the help of The Compound Ski & Board Shop.

“A rail jam is where skiers and snowboarders hit rail like features like hand rails and features that are not common to a ski hill,” said Brandon Croney, owner, The Compound Ski & Board Shop. “And you’re trying to grind on them like a skateboarder would. So, skiers and snowboarders are basically challenging themselves to do tricks as they slide those features and as they end up doing a trick, they get scored or judged. In this case, it’s a jam format so we’re going to have scaffolding set up, three rails and then these features are going to be used over and over for 45 minutes and out of that we hope to come out with the top five riders for skiers and the top five riders for snowboarders and have like a finals and each class, skiers and snowboarders separately have the opportunity to win $300 for first place, $200 dollars for second place or $100 for third place.”

If you want to try it out, but not compete, there is a general public option before the competition.

“We would like them to come out and enjoy in some of the early activities between 5:00 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. to be able to enjoy doing it without a competition like atmosphere.,” said Croney. “So, we really want people to come out and learn what a rail jam is and enjoy one.”

“I’m just looking forward to having a good time with everyone out there and being able to snowboard with a group of people,” said Buza. “Watching everyone push themselves.”

“I’m going to be on the build crew,” said Rienas. “So I’m going to be helping build and everything. So whatever you see here is a little predisposition for what’s going to be at the rail jam. I’m really going to put a lot more hard work into that. This has just been me messing around in my yard so me building out at the rail jam I’ll be putting out some serious work and getting some nice features built.”

The Irontown Rail Jam kicks off Friday night at 5:00 p.m. on the 300 block of Rail and Iron Street in Negaunee. 5:00 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. will be for the general public, that costs $10 to participate. Then the competition will begin at 6:00 p.m. Cost is $20 to compete. That will go until about 10:00 p.m. The public is welcome to come out and watch.

For tickets to participate, click here.