I’ve spent a whole lot of time riding terrain parks (snowparks) allover the world. In my 20 years of snowboarding I have had a chance to ride some of world’s best terrain parks. During that time I’ve ridden top european parks such as: SPC park Hintertux, Better Park Hintertux, Vans Penken Park, Ischgl Snowpark, Gap 1328 at Zugspitze, Mottolino Park in Livigno, Gentlemans Park in Val Senales, Saas Fe and many other smaller parks allover Europe. I was also lucky enough to ride parks in other parts of the world, in resorts such as: Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows, Sierra-at-Tahoe, Heavenly, Breckenridge, Keystone, Boreal, Canyons, Timberline Lodge at Mt Hood, Kingvale and Perisher in Australia.
I am not going to lie - there is a pattern. What pattern? It seems like it’s Europe vs. The Rest of the World. What do I mean by that?
Parks in Europe are different. To start with - they’re called differently. In Europe we have “snowparks”, while everywhere else it’s “terrain parks”. The naming isn’t all. There are also differences in how parks are being build and maintained in Europe and elsewhere.
After taking a closer look at park photos and videos from New Zealand and Canada, I can easily tell - there is an american influence on how those parks are built and maintained. So that’s why I’m going to divide it into “american” and “european” parks. What is funny is that most Scandinavian parks remind me more of those “american” ones rather than “european”.
European terrain parks (snowparks).
First thing that comes to mind is that european parks are better designed and better maintained. Dry alpine snow allows park builders to cut beautiful wedges and have everything nice and square - features look exactly like they do in 3D models. Parks in Europe look pristine. Awesome, right?
Well.. not really.. For those aesthetics, like for everything in the world, you pay a price. And the price tag is: CONSISTENCY. Yes, those beautiful, square wedges and perfectly aligned jumps look awesome, but only for a while. First thaw/snowstorm/rain makes it all go away. And guess what - that beauty is mainly achievable by hours and hours of hard hand work. I know that, not only as a first hand experience, but also from talking to my friends, who build and maintain some of biggest european parks.. mainly with rakes. No resort has budget big enough to keep shapers motivated to rebuild and maintain parks by hand through months of winter season. That’s why all the european riders and skiers share information, where the best parks are AT THE MOMENT in Europe. It changes throughout the season. To get the best park riding - you would probably want to start your season on one of the glaciers - Stubai, Hintertux or maybe Dachstein (depending which park is the “freshest”), after 2,3 maybe 4 weeks, you would want to go elsewhere - parks are going bad. You probably would go to parks at a higher than average elevation, such as Mayrhofen, Ischgl, Laax or Gerlos. When winter is in full swing, you might want to move over to lower elevations, where parks just got built: Kaltenbach, Planai, Flachau or Hochkar. Then, when spring arrives - you again have to reconsider, where to go. It’s really hard to stay in the loop as every year it’s different resorts that offer good park riding. My guess is that it depends on where the resort got enough snow to have everything rebuilt recently.
American terrain parks (snowparks).
It’s a completely different story with parks in US, Canada and in southern hemisphere (probably because all the park groomers from US and Canada go there in the summer). The parks are not as beautiful, because the main goal is providing safe and fun environment for the riders from the day one till closing the park in spring. What is more, I was in a situation where the resort would close with park at their finest (Keystone or Breck in the winter of 2014 are perfect example) not to drop the bar. From riders point of view - I honestly don’t care how precisely the edges of the kicker are cut and how they look in a photo on the website. I want to get hang time, I want jibs to be standing straight, I want it to be pleasan and I want it to be safe and fun EVERY DAY I’m riding that resort. Period.
How is that achievable? It’s very simple - “the american park building school” relies mostly on skilled groomers (cat machine drivers), who dedicate most of their lives to building perfect parks with their snowcats. They know exactly how much snow is needed, where its needed, how to push it and how to farm it. That’s why southern hemisphere gets parks as good as US and Canada - all the park groomers go there in the summer to build even more features. Some of them got so good at it, that their machine-made parks look no worse than those handmade (Charles Beckinsale from Whistler/Perisher is a perfect example) but with the advantage of being consistent. That’s why most parks in Europe are closed several days after snowstorms, while american parks open within 24-48hrs after it stops snowing. In Europe, you frequently can’t even rely on those parks weeks after the snowstorm. The outcome is that on the contrary to Europe, you can pretty much rent a cabin anywhere in the US early in the season and ride the best park that is achievable with given snow and weather conditions. You can easily log over 100 days in perfectly built and maintained parks that provide consistent experience for the user.
The main reason why parks in Europe and elsewhere are so different.
Coming from Europe, I’ve spent way too much time in the cat’s passengers seat, trying to explain slope groomer on how to build features. You can only imagine how hard it is to precisely tell someone, how to operate 12-position blade and tiller with complicated joystick while the cat is in motion. It’s impossible. The result of that are mounts of snow in all wrong places that need to be pushed with rakes - hours and hours of hard manual labour in harsh winter conditions. I can only assume that’s the reason, why I see the same crew raking american parks season after season, while all european park builders are complaining about keeping their staff (with the average shaper’s salary at 800euros - no one wants to do that hard manual labor for more than one winter).
Above you can see, how complicated the joysticks for operating cats are. It takes plenty of time to learn them - you can’t really tell someone what to do “on the job”. Operator must know those machines and have the knowledge of what he wants to achieve. From left: Prinoth Bison X, PistenBully Park Pro Series, Pistenbully 600. Source: www.prinoth.com www.pistenbully.com
I am not saying there are no good groomers in Europe, because there are. Just look how the Alps look like - those huge mountains require a lot of knowledge, experience and skills to move around and groom them. All I’m saying is that it takes someone who rides or at least rode parks at some point of their live to know, how to build those features efficiently and in a way that is maintainable. If you build the park with cat - it’s maintainable with cat. If you build it by hand - in most cases it’s only maintainable by hand. Only parks built and maintained with cats are consistent.
And why is consistency so important? That, I am going to explain in my next post.
