Skatepark Review : Saint-Léonard skatepark

It’s awesome to see that every year, there’s more and more skateparks popping in our province. Saint-Léonard is the latest one built on the island of Montreal and it’s really, really good! Not only there’s another flawless concrete park around, but the park was also built by some of the best out there: our good friends at Papillon Skateparks Inc. Trust us, this one is definitely worth checking out.

Located close to freeway 40 near the Lacordaire Boulevard, the Saint-Léonard Skatepark is easy to access, has the smoothest concrete around, is surrounded by trees for shade, has every obstacles you can wish for and a corner store right in front for all your bevs needs. The park has lights and is open late every night. Like we said, the park is super easy to get to. Car, bike or public transportation, you won’t have trouble finding this one. Check the map below for more details on how to get there.

THE STREET SECTION

The Saint-Léonard skatepark street section is really well built and offers a perfect mix of ledges, rails, stairs and other funkier obstacles. Basically, everything a skatepark really needs. What’s cool about this park is that the street section is separated from the transition section, allowing for more space in the park and less collision chances when it gets crowded. The street section still got a bit of transitions and banks just so you can cruise around without pushing too much.

Everything in the park is about medium size, making it challenging enough for the experienced skaters, but also perfect to improve your skills if you’re a beginner. As you go down in the park, the obstacles are getting bigger and offer different levels of difficulty to the skaters. If you like to skate a ledge and a flatbar, you’ll be pleased at Saint-Léonard. If what you like is a big double set with a street looking rail, there some for you too. As we mentioned earlier, the flat ground is extremely smooth and there’s enough surface for you to never feel stuck in the park. All in all, the street part at the Saint-Leonard Skatepark is just perfect.

THE TRANSITIONS SECTION

The transition section of the Saint-Léonard park is sick because it’s different from most parks we see. The bottom part of the park offers a series of banks, quarter pipes, hips and other weirder types of transitions so the ramp dogs can actually get thrills skating this park.

Even if the transition section has been really well thought out and greatly helps with the mechanics of the park, the only thing that can be frustrating is that after skating the transition section, it’s hard to go back to the street section without getting off your board. That being said, the bowl is so fun to skate that it’s totally worth it to make your way down there. It’s also ideal to warm up as the bowl, ¼ pipes and hips aren’t too big. Big enough to bring you a bit of adrenalin, but small enough for a nice warm up sesh before hitting the bigger stuff.

THE FLOW

The Saint-Léonard flow is really good. As we mentioned before, the flow going up the park can be tricky, but the opposite direction is sooo good though. The fact that you can start a line with a ledge trick, then hit a rail and then roll down to the transition section with speed and without pushing totally makes up for the fact that once you’re done in the tranny section, you need to push back up there to skate the street section.

After skating the park for a few hours, you will start to realize that this kind of “2 sections” flow is actually really fun and helps to concentrate on skating an obstacle for real instead of just flowing around the park.

Plus, if you don’t switch between the transition and street sections, you’ll notice that both spots have their own flows and each one is really good. For example, the street section has a quarter pipe on one end and a bank to ledge on the other, making it easy to skate from side to side without having to get off your board. Same thing for the transition section. There’s the bowl, a bank to wall, a hip, banks and a speed bump so you can shred the section non-stop.