A terrain park is an outdoor area that contains terrain that allows skiers and snowboarders to do tricks. Terrain parks have their roots in skateboard parks and many of the features are common to both. One of the first in-bounds terrain parks was the "Snowboard Park" built in 1990 at the Vail resort. The park was copied soon in other resorts. Today most resorts have terrain parks, with many having multiple parks of varying difficulty. Some resorts are almost exclusively terrain parks such as Echo Mountain Park in Idaho Springs, Colorado, USA. In Colorado there has been a recent trend for defunct resorts such as Squaw Pass (now Echo Mountain Park) to be reopened, catering to terrain park users.

Difficulty

Terrain parks (in the United States and Canada) have designations with respect to safety similar to standard alpine slopes. They differ in their designation and degrees of difficulty. They are identified with orange ovals to differentiate them from standard slopes, and are further distinguished by Large, Medium, or Small features. While features vary between resorts, commonly Small features will be short jumps and rails that are even with the slopes surface, Medium will be 0 - 10 foot jumps along with jibs requiring small jumps to get on top of, and Large will include 5 - 90 foot jumps along with complex jibs and large vertical pipes.