EXETER, R.I. — Five miles from the beaches of Narragansett, somewhere between Vail and Zermatt, there are 28 skiable acres. They don’t cover a mountain, just a modest hill that gets about 34 inches of snow a year. That slope is the unlikely canvas for a collection of snowboarders whose wild imaginations have earned them more cachet than many of the sport’s most accomplished athletes.

The place is the Yawgoo Valley ski area, and the snowboarders call themselves the Yawgoons. They’re the equivalent of a world-beating beach volleyball team based in Saskatoon.

In a sport where bigger, higher, longer, and more spinning and flipping define the boundaries, the Yawgoons get creative. They use the natural terrain (rocks, trees, grass) as well as the unnatural (buildings, snowcats, pipes) to construct landscapes with one I’ve-never-seen-that-before feature after another. Then they shoot video of their runs and let the snowboarding world watch in awe.

“Those guys at Yawgoo are sitting there scratching their heads thinking, ‘What can we do?’” said Mary Rand, one of the group’s most accomplished snowboarders, who has moved to Seattle.

Everyone has seen video of snowboarders roaring down the steepest, snowiest descents in Alaska and Switzerland. Somehow, watching a Yawgoon land a backside 180 to switch 50/50 while gliding down six corrugated tubes is even more impressive.

“To me, they’ve pushed snowboarding in a very important direction, showing again that you do not need the biggest mountain, park or even film budget in order to stand out,” said Christian Haller, an Olympic snowboarder from Switzerland.

I had seen their videos and wanted to see the terrain for myself and meet the Yawgoons — Brendan Gouin, Marcus Rand, Dylan Gamache and Brian Skorupski. I arrived on a crisp, clear mid-December day, and the snow guns had been working hard to get the ski area open for the season. (Mother Nature’s 34 inches a year isn’t sufficient.)

The ski area — the only one in the state — had been open for only a few days this season, but the group was eager to produce its next video. We were there a few hours before the ski area opened; the owners of the resort give the Yawgoons special access outside public hours.

“We are just mad lucky to have that little place there,” Marcus Rand, Mary’s brother, said. “It’s so random, this far south in Rhode Island.”

Rand, a 29-year-old from Narragansett, has been coming here since he was 2. He works as a mason.

Gouin is the main cinematographer. His camera was trained on Rand, but he knew he would need to shift his focus soon. On the edge of the trail in the trees he could see Gamache eyeing something. No one was sure what Gamache was thinking. He had set up several obstacles in a row and was trying to figure out what to do on each and how to get from one to the next.

Meanwhile, Skorupski saw potential in a small bump that could launch him through a group of small trees under the rope tow and back onto the main trail.

“I have no pressure to make videos,” Gouin said. “If we don’t have cool footage, or if I’m sitting at my computer and I’m stuck, there won’t be a Yawgoons video until I figure it out, or we figure it out together.”

Gouin, at 32, is the Yawgoons’ elder statesman. A native of Charlestown, R.I., he is a dentist who schedules patients in a way that gives him three days to film and snowboard during the week. He is the one who forged a relationship with the owners of Yawgoo Valley, Tracy and Clay Hartman.

“I remember the first year where Yawgoo closed and there was a ton of snow and we were like, ‘How cool would it be like if we could just ride the snow after the place closed?’” Gouin said. “And I went and just asked, and they were like, ‘Sure, you guys are cool.’”

Gamache, 25, grew up within walking distance of Yawgoo Valley and studied horticulture at the University of Rhode Island.

Skorupski 25, is also from Charlestown and has worked as a lifeguard for the past 10 years. He recently moved to Salt Lake City in search of a longer winter season but confessed, “I still watch the Yawgoo Valley webcam every night to see how the snow is looking.”

Their style is a combination of skateboarding and surfing. It is both aggressive and soulful. The rail and obstacle features hint at skateboarding’s urban sensibilities, while the flowing turns and slashes are more reminiscent of surfing.

The Yawgoons 15 video from 2014 highlights the group members various riding styles and cinematography.

Rand took a break from his trick, and Gouin moved over to film Skorupski. With a few leaps through the trees, they got a shot they might use. It is a collaborative effort, with Gouin acting like a director advocating the final aesthetics of the video. He wants interesting tricks to film, but he also wants the shots to look good.

“It is an art form to get the, for lack of a better word, stoke out of people,” said Pierre Wikberg, a snowboard filmmaker. “When I watch a Yawgoons video, I kind of just want to go snowboarding.”