Intermedate snowpark, as the name suggests is appropriate for intermediate skiers and snowboarders. In it you can find more handrails than boxes, jumps will be considerably bigger 7-15m table (25-45ft) and you will find other obstacles such as hips, halfpipes or quarter pipes.
Over the past couple years, Perisher Ski Resort in Australia has developed an incredible terrain park program that started attracting World’s best snowboarders and freeskiers in the summer season. You can see top athletes practicing in their public park on a regular basis.
It’s a great idea if your resort is located in a proximity of a big city (you can attract people living in urban environment, who are familiar with freestyle snowboarding and freskiing). Another good reason to consider a medium snowpark is if we want to attract more intermediate skiers and snowboarders to our resort or offer something new to existing customers on spring days when slopes are not that great and there is no fresh snow to go off-piste.
If we decide to build a medium terrain park at our resort - we will need to step it up a bit. First of all - customers, who are interested in this kind of service treat skiing/riding in a park as a mean of getting better day after day. They will demand that park to be consistent day after day, so that they can practice in the same environment and focus on tricks, rather than surrounding conditions. You will definitely win them over if you will change that park every now and then.
It’s also very important that riding in such park is ergonomic, meaning that park users don’t want to take long laps to hit couple features in the park. A dedicated lift that operates the park top-to-bottom would be perfect. In my opinion, the park should take at least 60-70% of lift length, otherwise people will get discouraged.
This kind of park will also take a bit more of resources. It will take more space, more snow (that’s why it’s a good idea to put it, where you could easily farm snow, not only make it) and may require snowpark specific snowcat - PistenBully Park Pro Series, PB 400 Park, Prinoth Bison X or Prinoth Bison XPT. These machines are a bit more expensive, but believe me - they will get the job done.
PistenBully Park Pro is one of the cats that will definitely get the job done! Developed by PistenBully in collaboration with the best terrain park builders in the World. This snowcat stands out because of the incredible tiller and blade range of motion, climbing capability, huge blade with snowpark-specific implements. Not to mention the joystick that allows you to operate pretty much everything and amazing sound system.
Even though the price tag on intermediate parks is much higher than on beginner ones, they have many advantages. Well managed medium snowpark is like a swiss army knife for the ski resort, with what it has to offer.
Firs of all, those parks attract paying customers that normally wouldn’t come to your resort. Freestyle skiers and snowboarders constantly share information nowadays on where to find a good snowpark. As soon as they find one - they start going there. These are our new customers.
On top of that they come to your resort a lot! - snowpark users are focused on becoming better riders/skiers so they come as much as possible.
Yes, I’m talking about an increase in tickets and passes we sell on a regular basis, throughout the season.
What is more - because most of parks users are motivated skiers and riders, who can’t wait to go ski or ride again - a good snowpark drives crowds to your mountain early in the season, way before regular skiers even think about snow. The same thing happens later in spring - when snow gets too wet, heavy and slushy for skiing on slopes, it’s perfect for those long easy afternoons in the park. That’s why a good park is packed with people starting early March - right, when our resorts loses its regular skiers.
So, with the intermediate terrain park - not only do we get new, loyal customers, but also customers who increase resort’s revenue in low season.
Keystone has one of the best early season public terrain parks in the World that attracts top snowboarders and freeskiers, who come and shoot videos like the one above. With over 112 000 views on Vimeo and 186 000 on Youtube - this video shows, how beneficial it is for a resort to have a good intermediate park.
And thanks to the fact that they come as often as possible - a community builds around those snowparks. Terrain park users care about their training ground so they give constructive feedback, thanks to which it’s easier to adjust that park to their needs.
The biggest upside of those parks is that their customers do the marketing basically for free. With the ease of taking photos and videos nowadays and everyone being active user on every social media channel imaginable - photos and videos of your snowpark will be allover the web.
If our park is managed well, we will start attracting event sponsors, who do more free marketing and might even end up sponsoring the park. And this is a big one, as it allows our resort to get worldwide recognition as freestyle training grounds.
Woodward at Tahoe terrain park at Boreal Mountain Resort is a perfect example of a really well developed and managed intermediate terrain park. Thanks to that, videos like this one are shot by magazines like TransWorld SNOWboarding. Over 500 000 views on Youtube gives a good perspective on how much recognition can a good medium snowpark bring to the resort.
The only thing you will have to focus on is placing the right branding allover the place. You want your resort logo to be visible, but you can’t also overdo it. People don’t like places looking like huge billboards.
The other advantage of such parks is that overall safety in the whole resort improves. By creating a snowpark for all the freestyle loving snowboarders and skiers, you basically get rid of them everywhere else. What that means? No more kids jumping of moguls, or bumps on the side of the hill, no more people speeding in the beginner slopes to jump off the slope break over. No more people building jumps allover the mountain. We can keep all that mayhem contained in a snowpark.
To sum up, even though intermediate snowparks require more resources than beginner ones, they are definitely a thing to consider if we are interested in attracting new customers, driving traffic to the resort in slow season, providing marketing departments with marketing content or getting publicity by organizing freestyle events.
Pros:
attracts new customers to the resort
attracts customers in periods of slow season
builds a community
attracts event sponsors
attracts snowpark sponsors
creates media content
improves overall safety in the resort
Cons:
requires more resources: snow, terrain and snowcat hours
