Pro terrain parks are.. magnificent. Definitely in my opinion, but I guess most park builders would agree.
Perisher has become a training ground for most of the world’s top riders, thanks to their Front Valley Park, where you can find some large jumps as well as a full size superpipe.
These are parks, where you find the biggest, nicest and most beautifully cut features designed for pro athletes. They’re built for photo and video shoots (ads, catalogues, video parts) as well as to hold contests and events. In some cases resorts allocate the whole park to contain pro features, and sometimes its just XL size lines in advanced parks. Pro parks consist of big jumps, hips, quarter pipes or jib combos. They are definitely too big for beginners and most of them are not even suitable for most intermediate riders and freeskiers.
Pro parks require plenty of snow, lots of terrain and most of them take dozens of snowcat and handwork hours to get build and maintained. There are only a handful of resorts that decided on maintaining such features throughout the whole season. Because of that most resorts decide to build those later in the season - around the springtime. First of all, March is when the season slows down significantly, so sacrificing slopes for building such features isn’t a problem. Second of all - snow cover is usually the biggest at this time of the year, so there is snow for building big stuff. The other thing is that everything else is pretty much already built, so the park crews are not as busy. Snow is pretty wet and gets slushy every day, so you can easily cut it by hand in those hard to get places.
Solden is a resort in Austrian Alps, where I am spending my 2015/16 season. Every year they build large jump for photo and videoshoots. Last year, Sven (QParks designer) designed the infamous X. This year is no different and hopefully I will get involved with project.
Few exemptions of that rule are Breckenridge (they build their proline in December for Dew Tour and then keep it through the season), Stubai (Schneestern builds setup for Prime Sessions in Fall), Keystone (for some reason they decided to be the perfect training ground for all the pros early in the season) and some other resorts, depending on snow conditions.
Some of the nicest, huge jumps I had pleasure to ride are only miles away from Breckenridge, where Dew Tour is held in the beginning of December. Thanks to that the XL jumpline in Keystone is literally invaded by pros early in the season.
As I mentioned before, the price tag on those features is pretty much ridiculous - tens of thousands cubic meters of snow, hundreds of snowcat hours are not cheap. Those features require skillful maintenance in order to keep them safe and usable. On top of that they may influence higher insurance rates for the resort or other kind of protection in terms of liability. I have been to the parks, where users had to sign a liability form in order to use the largest features. Also, I wouldn’t even think about building those features without at least one park specific snowcat. These are huge piles of snow with some steep parts and high walls - winch cat can be pretty handy too. However, a well built pro feature can get your resort TONS of publicity. You can always get a magazine photoshoot on it, have a film crew there or just take photos for your resort ads. These are the parks and features that create great marketing value and show that your resort cares about freestyle infrastructure. It’s also way easier to gain sponsorship for your terrain park program if you build such features at your resort. On top of that, as I mentioned in the beginning, most park builders find those features magnificent and love to build those. Thanks to that, you can keep morale of your park building crew at the highest level, as everyone wants to be a part of something spectacular and meaningful while working. From rider’s point of view, I also have to say that those parks are inspiring.
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
Why every resort should have a good beginner snowpark.
Small terrain parks are the way to go.
In my opinion every resort that even considers having a terrain park, should start with a beginner snowpark.
Why?
The reason is pretty simple.
Most of people, who go skiing or snowboarding are weekend warriors. They go to the mountains once or twice a year for holidays and their skills are.. let’s say - pretty basic.
They want to spend quality family time on the mountain, hang out with friends and stay active. They don’t need adrenaline rush, so providing a safe environment would be the perfect choice to keep them satisfied.
The video above shows a run through an easy beginner terrain park. The features are set nicely, with good flow. They don’t require anything extreme neither on resort nor user end but provide safe and fun environment for everyone.
Such environment is provided by beginner snowparks. Features are small and consist of small jumps, rollers, ride-on boxes and rails, maybe some banked turns and mini halfpipes. That’s why a small snowpark will serve the biggest group of resort customers.
Benefits of small snowparks.
Those parks have many benefits for the resort. First of all - they require little snow. We don’t need tons of snow to build small features. Tiny boxes and rails are good just placed on a mellow slope, so the only extra snow you will need will be to build ride-on ramps - those are literally couple shovels of snow. Small jumps take just few blades full of snow, so the whole thing can be quickly built, rebuilt and adapted to what we need.
We probably won’t even need a terrain park dedicated cat. Regular slope grooming cat will do just fine.
The whole thing can be pretty short - couple jumps and jibs that you can session in one run will do great, even if customers will have to ride for quite a bit on the slope to get there from the lift. We will see whole families taking detours to that park in order to take photos and film themselves with GoPro cameras. And that’s definitely the other benefit of such park - they can be fun for every age group. So expect to see not only kids, but also adults having fun in them. With population getting older in our culture - that makes it a pretty important factor. There are more and more snowboarders over 30 years old (myself included), who still want to do a bit more than just ride slopes and small terrain parks are perfect for that. If we get creative with them, they might even be entertaining for intermediate/expert riders and freeskiers, who will find their own lines.
I think the video above proves my point. First of all - it’s super hard to find online quality video from a small terrain park, because that infrastructure is often overlooked. The other thing is just listen to this guy - he’s definitely not the youngest park user, but he is super stoked on small features knowing that they’re within his ability level.
Beginner snowparks are perfect for organizing events for kids, who come to the mountain with the whole family, which means for each kid you will sell at least an extra adult ticket. Besides I can’t imagine a better word-of-mouth advertisement than parents talking about how much fun their kid had at your resort last weekend.
Burton Riglet™ is a snowboard learning program on very easy features for the youngest kids.
They work different than “regular” snowparks.
The downside of that solution is that this park will take up beginner slope, because you don’t want this park to be intimidating. Small features don’t require much speed and beginners usually have problems with controlling it, so mellow run will do that for them. But if you include Terrain Based Learning™ to your park then taking up space is not even a downside - you will expand your ski school program and attract more crowd to your resort with this cutting edge teaching technique.
Terrain Based Learning™ is a program that I have learned about at Cutters Camp last year and it made a huge impression on me. It’s basically teaching snowboarding and skiing in a miniature snowpark giving first time winter sports participants roller coaster sensation from day one.
Terrain Based Learning™ explained by its creators - Snow Operating.
The other thing is that a park like that will have a hard time to create valuable media content by itself. It’s more of a playground that is great to be able to show off on your website, however it’s not going to create traction in freeski or snowboard media. That’s why it’s our job to communicate and market it to customers, at least in the early stage of such program, however if managed well it will create tons of word-to-mouth advertisement.
Small snowparks are a perfect solution for your resort.
In my opinion, even if you want to have medium or large features, you should also include small ones. First of all - sometimes the weather goes bad and those intermediate and expert parks are useless, as no one will ride big features when it’s super-icy or the visibility is limited. Small parks still have something to offer in those conditions. I, on the other hand, like to go to a small park early in the day just to warm up before going to a bigger park just to stay safe.
Summary.
To sum up - small parks are great addition to your resort, no matter what kind of customers your mountain attracts and they’re the cheapest to start a terrain park program at your resort. So just as Smart Style states: your resort also can “Start small and go big”.
The best thing about small snowpark is that even though there is way more pros then cons to have them, they are often the most overlooked by park and mountain managers. Thanks to that - they’re a great way for your resort to stand out among others at a low cost.
Pros:
require little snow
many features can be build just with snow
no need for snowpark dedicated cat machine
take little space on the slope
attracts the most customers
everyone can ski/ride them
the cheapest option to start a terrain park program at your resort
In recent posts I’ve written about how important it is to provide consistent terrain park throughout the season, year after year and how important it is to manage those projects. I have also written about, how mainly parks that are build by skilled cat operators can achieve that. You could read that in my opinion that’s how American park building school works. That way of building parks is also visible in Southern Hemisphere as well as in Canada and Scandinavia.
This time I would like to prove my point.
Slopestyle results as a reflection of freestyle infrastructure accessibility.
Some of you are probably familiar with slopestyle. That’s both snowboard and freeski discipline. An Olympic one since last year. The whole thing is pretty much about riding in large terrain park that’s built specifically for the competition.
In slopestyle, just like in any other discipline, to become highest level pro athlete you will need not only a lot of determination but also a consistent training ground, where you can hone your skills. In my opinion - slopestyle is a perfect reflection of how a well built and maintained freestyle infrastructure is accessible.
2014 Sochi Winter Olympics slopestyle results.
Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics finalists in slopestyle skiing and snowboarding by country. | Create infographics
As we look at the results of the biggest slopestyle event of last winter - 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi - it’s clear that the best skiers/riders come from USA, Canada, Scandinavia, few from Switzerland and surprisingly some from Great Britain and Australia.
| Create infographics
Why surprisingly? Because Australia is much more associated with sandy beaches and hot sunny weather, because there is only 23.8 millions people living there (comparing to Europe’s staggering 742.5 millions), the winter season is most of the times only 2-3 months long (comparing to 365 days long season on european glaciers) and there are only 12 ski resorts there (comparing to hundreds in Europe).
Population (x 1000) per ski resort. | Create infographics
Slopestyle finalists at 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics compared to population (x1000) per ski resort. | Create infographics
The only thing that is surprising is: where are the alpine countries in those ranks such as Austria, France, Germany, Italy? Should I really believe that the Alps are not big enough to provide good infrastructure? Or are the resorts are not wealthy enough to build and maintain snowparks? Maybe europeans are to lazy to practice those disciplines?
I don’t think any of above statements are true.
What abut the Alps then?
The Alps are huge mountains with plenty of snow. The resorts are one of the biggest and wealthiest in the World and coming from Europe, I know that Europeans are as hard working as Americans and Canadians. As you can see on the graphic below - the Alps are good enough to train Alpine Skiing: downhill and giant slalom. The most Sochi finalists in those disciplines are from alpine countries.
So why the map with Sochi finalists in freestyle disciplines seems to be almost exactly opposite to the one above?
2014 Sochi Winter Olympics finalists in slopestyle disciplines: Freeski and Snowboard. | Create infographics
The only answer that comes to my mind is that Europe is lacking in good freestyle infrastructure. The slopes are perfectly maintained and well taken care of so they “produce” plenty of alpine skiing champions and not so many freestyle skiers or snowboarders. I believe that with proper snowpark programs in the Alps and well maintained terrain parks those statistics can greatly improve.
After building a successful park in Czech Republic in the winter of 2011, I was lucky enough to get invitation to PistenBully Professionals Camp that was held in Corvatsch in Switzerland after the season was over - in May.
Practical workshops.
This two day training consisted of practical workshops with the best european park builders in brand new, top-of the line snowcats made by PistenBully. I got to drive multiple cats, such as: PB 300 with Pipe Magician halfpipe cutter, PB 400 Park, PB 600 equipped with SnowSat, PB 600 Park, PB 600 with 4.5 tonne Active Winch, PB 400 equipped with 4.0 tonne Active Winch, Formatic F350, and the tiny but fun to drive PB 100.
Camp overlook. Photo courtesy of PistenBully.
10 stations.
The workshops were divided in between 10 stations. At each you would learn how to practically approach every aspect of building park. Thanks to that, I had a chance to cut the wall of my own halfpipe, winch the landing, build a take off and move some handrails using the Parkblade.
Active Winch.
What made the biggest impression on me would be definitely the 4.5 tonnes Active Winch that basically allowed you to push huge blade of sloppy and wet snow perpendicular to where the cable was going. The Active Winch would just push the snowcat wherever you wanted to go. Definitely useful!
SNOWsat.
The other thing I really liked was the SNOWsat. Based on three different satellite systems: GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO the computer would show you not only where on the mountain are you, but also where the hydrants, rocks, trees and other obstacles are. On op of that you would see how thick is the snow layer below the cat, as well as where have you groomed already. That’s definitely some advanced technology!
Park Flex Tiller.
The other thing that I would love to play with a bit more was the Park Flex Tiller. This one would adjust the pressure on the tiller so that it wouldn’t drag snow as you were going over the knuckles of jumps.
image
Obstacle course.
The whole training ended with a test. You were supposed to go through an obstacle course in a Formatic F350 snowcat - slalom around poles driving forwards, then backwards, go through some banked turns while pushing an empty keg, or push the right button with the wing on your blade.
I wish my high school had tests like that:)
Toys ready for action.
After the second day was done, campers were awarded with certificates and everyone left for home.
Honestly, I would love to do that thing once again!
Why it is important to have a terrain park program, not just a park.
Terrain parks require strategic planning.
If we are really considering adding a terrain park to our resort operations or think about expanding the park that we already have, we should really think about it as of a long term project.
Terrain park at Canyons, UT.
Spending money on purchasing boxes and rails and then putting them on the randomly built pads all over the slope isn’t really going to do the job. I can pretty much guarantee you that it won’t work out.
Terrain parks, just like any other investment, require strategic planning. First of all, we need to answer simple questions such as: who are my customers? what I want to achieve with building/expanding my snowpark? how many resources am I willing to use in order to achieve those goals? how long am I willing to have that program going?
Terrain park at Perisher, Australia.
We can’t really expect the park to create huge traffic to our resort within a short period of time. Just like any other investment - it requires time to start working, but the thing is the better we manage it, the faster it will start benefiting our mountain resort and bringing customers.
I have allowed myself to divide parks according to the size of features in them, so based on that we would have Small, Medium and Large terrain parks. Having one of them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on developing others. On the contrary. I believe that in order to create a successful a medium terrain park, you will have to run small parks and in order to even think about having large snowpark you will need to take really good care of your small and medium terrain parks.
Keystone, CO is one of those resorts, that knows how to run a successful park program. Not only do you see top athletes riding large features, but smaller parks also have something to offer to everyone else. Photo was taken early in the morning - it’s a challenge to see this park empty.
This is just a short overview and I am going to develop on each of those programs in the next posts to my blog.
Small terrain parks.
If you are a family oriented resort, you will probably have a lot of beginners and intermediate skiers/riders, who come to the resort every now and then. In this case, you will probably want to focus on having plenty of safe beginner features like ride-on boxes, mini-rails, small jumps and hips. Those kind of parks are great in terms of offering extra services to your existing customers and allow you to stand out among other resorts. They don’t create much traction in the media, however they are a great venue for organizing amateur events, especially around holidays, where kids can compete and get excited about your park.
Medium terrain parks.
If your resort is located nearby a major city, has or want to have a big “scene” of intermediate/expert riders and skiers, you might want to step it up a bit. Being close to a city means you might want to attract urban youth, who is familiar with skateparks, MTB parks, BMX courses etc. If your mountain is not far away - they will definitely be coming to your resort on a regular basis just to get better at freestyle skiing and snowboarding. What they are seeking are intermediate/expert snowpark features, which require a bit more snow and resources. However, they pay off with creating media traction basically for free, as those parks are most likely to create community which will share photos and videos taken in those parks online as well as provide excellent word-of-mouth advertising.
Woodward Tahoe park at Boreal Mtn Resort, CA is a resort with huge community of local riders, who appreciate the creativity of features that are maintained perfectly every day no matter the weather. Thanks to successful terrain park program - the mountain makes most of its business because of its snowparks.
Large terrain parks.
If you are really interested in presenting your resort to the public as a “hot spot” for freestyle snowboarding and skiing, you might want to think about building the biggest features there are. I’m talking here about 20+ meters long jumps, huge rails, combo features with multiple takeoffs and rails included that create multiple possibilities of hitting them. This kind of park usually requires a lot of snow, hundreds of snowcat hours and skilled cat drivers. They take up a lot of space and resources to maintain, however they are great to skyrocket your mountain into the scene of world’s most renown ski resorts. You can easily organize photo- and video-shoots, you can attract sponsors and create events that will attract top athletes. Even though the number of people, who can use those parks is very limited, large parks are capable of making extra money through sponsorship deals and creating huge recognition of your resort.
No matter, where you are located and who your customers are, you really need to get that strategy right. You need to know, what you want to achieve with your terrain park program, who you want to attract, how many resources you are willing to spend, how much of a marketing tool is it supposed to be and how you want it to be perceived by a wide audience of winter sports participants.
Why is consistency important while maintaining a terrain park?
Terrain park is an investment. Definitely not a small one. To build and maintain a good terrain park, we need to use a lot of resources.
First of all - we need terrain. Not any terrain. Preferably a wide slope that is not to steep. If you want our park to be safe, we will want only or mostly terrain park users in it. We don’t want random skiers or snowboarders, who don’t observe or comply with Smart Style™. So this slope will only be making money of terrain park users.
The second thing that comes to mind is snow. Not just snow, but a lot of it. More than a plain slope would take. I am not going to state the obvious, which is how much snowmaking costs. Electricity, water, depreciation of snowmaking equipment. There is only a handful of resorts that can build terrain parks made of natural snow (it seems that less and less each year, as even the West Coast of US struggles with poor winters).
But no matter whether you make all the snow for the terrain park or farm it from allover the place, it’s going to take snowcat hours. Whole lot of them - both for master build as well as daily maintenance. That’s the other factor that adds up to the bill for having a terrain park.
Other costs, such as terrain park crew payroll, building or purchasing rails, boxes and repairing old features are relatively smaller comparing to dedicating terrain, snowmaking and cat hours.
So as we all know now- terrain park is an investment. And it should be treated as such. It’s not there to increase insurance stakes, to scare people away or look cool in the photos. It should attract new customers and keep others coming to our resort. Just like perfectly maintained slopes.
Daily maintenance is important.
Have you ever wondered whether daily slope maintenance is important?
It’s pretty obvious that you want to have that perfect corduroy top-to-bottom on every single slope. You wouldn’t want to come to a resort, where that perfect cord covers only half of the slope, or the bottom part is covered with moguls and track marks, right? As a customer, you expect consistency. Not only you expect that cord to cover every single slope, but you expect it to be like that every day the resort is open for public. You wouldn’t want to gamble with your or your family’s health coming to a resort that is simply dangerous to ride at.
So that’s why we invest a lot of resources into providing consistent service.
The same applies to any other investment we make within customer service or production. If we are manufacturer of any kind, we deliver same quality product in every package we sell. If we don’t, we fail as enterpreneurs.
What about customer service?
Let’s say we go to a restaurant. We order our food and a polite waiter, who conducts himself professionally brings us our food. The dishes are big, delicious and served on nice plates. We follow up with a dessert - it’s as good as the main course, so we are delighted. We go on Yelp, rate the restaurant 5 stars and recommend that place to all our friends. Next time we want to grab some food with friends and family - the choice is pretty obvious, we choose the same restaurant that we liked so much the other time. We show up, but the place is different - windows are dirty, the waiter isn’t as nice and when he finally brings our food - it’s nothing what it was before. The dishes are small, food is horrible, the plates are a bit dirty and our whole experience is on the other end of scale to what it was before. Do we order dessert? We definitely don’t. We are embarrassed that we recommended that place to anyone and we feel like we were cheated on. We don't show up at that restaurant ever again and we feel compelled to advise everyone to avoid it. Do excuses from the waiter help? Do we really care that they only have master chef once a week? Do we really care that they clean their windows once a month and their manager is at the other location right now? We definitely don’t! No one does, so the place goes bankrupt within couple weeks. What’s the only reason? Lack of consistency. We expect it as customers in every repetitive situation when we spend money.
Attracting people to our terrain park (snowpark) day after day.
Do we want the customers of our mountain resort to keep coming back weekend after weekend, season after season? Obviously we do. And that’s why we need to provide consistent quality in every aspect of business operations including terrain parks. Especially that with elevated risk of injury in the park - inconsistency is a really bad press.
Only a consistent terrain park program will be successful and will attract new customers to our resort season after season. It obviously is not going to happen overnight, just like arestaurant is not going to become highly successful within a week (the seasons in our industry make it even more complicated and extends that time, for our investment to work), but if we provide consistent high quality terrain park every day, every week, every season that goes with a consistent communication (website, social media, local media) - we will get that park crowded at some point.
It’s crucial to have well thought park program that develops over time, especially nowadays with all the social media and the ease of sharing information between our customers. In my opinion posting photos of a nice park after a rebuild by the resort is pointless if that’s not what our customers will find when they finally come for holidays. They will feel lied to and next time they will choose a different resort. Just like you would go to a different restaurant.
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.
After loosing all my savings during the winter of 2010, I got a job as shopfloor manager at sporting goods department store. I hated it. But I made it through the summer. With a money aid from my family, I designed and had some new handrails and boxes welded. Guys at Jerzy, a company that sold me my snowcat a year before got me in touch with a tiny resort in Czech - Kempaland at Bukovec. After three visits - I came to an agreement that I would build a park there. Even though I came to an agreement in December and had features delivered on Dec. 23rd, the park was up and running by the New Years Eve. That's what I call being on point;)
Photo courtesy of Wojtek Makula. http://fotomakula.blogspot.com
The resort would provide snowmaking and cat hours, I would provide features and knowledge on how to build it and maintain all. The season was pretty dry, but luckily cold. I’ve finally had snow to build something. The park turned out to be very popular. I loved working there - the crew that worked for the resort was super nice to us and helped us with everything. The park got such good reviews that it allowed me to get serious contracts the following season. Even though I didn't make any money that year - I still look at it as one of the nicest seasons I have had in Europe.
I was lucky enough to spend three seasons in Tahoe while still going to University in Poland. I taught snowboarding. I hated it. Definitely not my thing. However, back then it was the only way for me to be able to ride the nicest parks on the planet earth, that the resorts around Lake Tahoe had to offer. As a foreigner on a sponsored visa, I wasn’t able to get a job in the park. So I figured, that’s what I was going to do after I get back home.
My season 2009/2010.
In the summer of ’09 I have worked my ass of. I was working over 80hrs per week for half a year to save some money. Had literally two days off throughout all that time. After coming back to Poland I figured I want to run a terrain park oriented mountain resort. And that’s what I did. Seriously.
I’ve spent all the money I’ve made on leasing an old t-bar lift and bought an old cat. This could have not end well. It didn’t. I lacked experience in all the aspects of managing such enterprise. I got screwed over by the man, who leased me the lift, that turned out to be crap. I could blame one of the worst winters on the record, but I won’t.
They say that you learn most from your failures. Well, that was definitely the biggest one I have encountered in my life. I’ve learned a lot. But most importantly - I have adapted.
Even though I love riding and building parks, I would never say no to a good day snowboarding with friends. That's basically all you need: bunch of friends, your board and some snow. Just like in the video above. I enjoyed riding that day, hopefully you'll enjoy watching it!
most photos I publish here are taken by my beloved. I share my thoughts with you in writing, she takes photos. If you ever get bored of my bs, check out her portfolio here.
While checking out Oscyp Snowboard Contest in Bialka Tatrzanska, I had a chance to play with my new toy. Leica Disto D510 with a tripod, equipped with Bluetooth sends all the data to my iPad making everything so much easier. Don't have to run around with tape measure. Loving it!
I love driving cats, pushing snow and building parks. However I would have never started if it wasn't for snowboarding. Definitely in the park, preferably in a one that is large and well maintained. Places I visited last season make that cut. Definitely.
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