For Biff Hutchison, nothing in the world compares to the sensation of pulling off a well-done Reverse Canadian.

A sideways back flip while soaring at about 6 feet in the air is quite simply "the coolest thing you can do," said the 15-year-old from Burley, Idaho, who won the Big Air Professional stunt competition during yesterday's Pogopalooza 6 -- the sixth annual competition for extreme pogo athletes-- at Schenley Plaza in Oakland.

"[The Reverse Canadian] is just something I made up one day," said the lanky blond teenager, who was one of about 50 skilled pogoers from the United States, Canada and England who wowed a crowd of about 300 with seemingly death-defying stunts in which they sometimes landed back on their sticks after soaring through the air, sometimes on the ground.

Among Biff's stunts were a couple of stick flips where he twisted his body around and over the pogo stick while soaring through the air and doing a 180-degree back flip.

"I was going huge the whole time," he said.

"Going huge," Biff explained, is when the pogoer propels himself to a high enough point to create room to stretch and contort his body as he slices through the air. And that moment when the pogoer is twisting through a series of dizzying turns and back flips is the best part of the jump, he said.

"I almost can't describe it," Biff said. "Everything else shuts out and you feel yourself falling through the air in that moment."

Mike Hughes, a 16-year-old amateur pogoer from Grand Blanc, Mich., who took second place in the Big Air Amateur competition, calls it his "moment of perfect weightlessness."

"I love it. It feels like you're on top of the world," he said.

"But it's also a little scary," added Mike, who did a number of pogo stick bar spins and grabs, a "Superman" and a high-flying back flip to round out his performance. A Superman, he explained, entails taking one's feet off the pogo stick and flashing it above the chest in mid-air before landing with both feet on the stick again.

"I think Mike is very confident when he's on the pogo stick. He knows what he's doing," said Dennis Hughes, who filmed his son's performance on a small camcorder yesterday.

All participants who used extreme pogo sticks, including the BowGo developed by Ben Brown of Carnegie Mellon University, wore helmets.

In addition to the amateur and professional Big Air competitions, other events included the high jump, best run, best trick and least jumps per minute.

"It's been a great success," said Nick Ryan, 20, a Pogopalooza 6 organizer and a junior at Carnegie Mellon University.