Where there is pride, there is sometimes ego, but there can also be greatness. The terrain park is a unique area of the mountain, a place where guests can truly see the talent of specially trained staff and the results of an investment in expensive equipment. It's an area to be proud of, so why would it ever be anything less than great?

Of course, there are many answers to that question. Money, staff, expertise, management, equipment-they can all be reasons why a terrain park is a little less than its best. But talk to any of the top park managers in the country about what makes them proud of the parks in their charge, and it's not always the budgets they're given. It's careful thought and unique ideas that make a park proudly stand out from its competition.

In our annual breakdown of terrain park issues and trends, SAM spoke with some of the countrys' most experienced terrain park managers and found out what's new in their park programs and what's stoking them out for this season. . .their answers might surprise you.

Love Your Park

To the average terrain park user, the condition of a park speaks volumes about a resort's commitment to its freestyle clientele. Nothing's more disappointing than going to a resort that has beautiful runs and an unkempt, poorly thought-out terrain park. More people are taking their first steps into freestyle riding and skiing, and every experience should be a great one.

The biggest trend we found this year? Forget about trends. There are plenty of tried-and-true feature concepts around. Every designer in this story eschewed speaking about trends in favor of ideas such as quality, consistency, education and keeping parks fresh for both the guests and the staff who take care of them. A carefully maintained park with a range of skill-oriented features can be the best thing that happens to a skier or rider's day, and it will keep them coming back for more.

Here's how different designers aim to achieve that goal.

Progress Marches On

With Chris "Gunny" Gunnarson, founder, Snow Park Technologies

Progress has been a hot theme in terrain park design for a few years now. Resorts have been separating their parks according to skill level and developing beginner-oriented features in ever-increasing numbers. Chris Gunnarson helped take it one step further last year when he worked with Burton Snowboards to create the Burton Progression Park at Northstar-at-Tahoe, Calif., and Loon Mountain, N.H. The parks are made to help break down the learning process, create instruction-friendly environments, and reduce the intimidation of learning freestyle features and maneuvers. The key, Gunnarson says, was slowing it all down.

"Typically when I design a terrain park, or even a concept course, one of the main aspects is creating really good flow. And with the Progression Parks you almost want no flow-you want it to be based feature-to-feature with designated places to stop, observe, think, rest, contemplate your next move and include some signage with some trick tips. That's pretty much what we've done with our Progression Parks. We want the park to be conducive to a class or group and be attractive to people who might be intimidated in a main park where people are whizzing by and where there are much better riders and skiers."

The progression parks are defined by blocked-off areas where a rider can see the feature and discuss with an instructor how to best navigate it. With the flow of riders through the area hampered, the idea is for beginners to feel comfortable, take their time and learn at a laid-back pace. The Progression Park idea, says Gunnarson, is an example of the trend he sees in terrain parks appealing to an ever-widening audience.

Sign Language

With Jeff Boliba, Global Resort Director, Burton Snowboards

As Smart Style has become the common language of American terrain parks, its orange oval has become synonymous with freestyle terrain. Boliba says the orange oval can be maximized by using it outside of the park as well as inside.

"What I recommend for any resort is that freestyle terrain should be designated just like the rest of the mountain. Just like a blue run or a black diamond run, freestyle terrain should be designated using the orange oval. Timberline, for example, does a great job with it: you know how the signs marking the runs have a blue sign or a blue symbol for a blue-level run? The ones that have freestyle terrain will say the name of the run but it will have the orange oval or it will be an orange sign. So automatically, you should know that when you see the orange oval, there's going to be some type of freestyle terrain. . .What I always tell resorts is to have legal signage in line with your local codes and then use Smart Style to complement that."

Using orange, as a color or in a shape, to indicate the presence of freestyle terrain can have impact by giving your park features more exposure to guests and by indicating the presence of freestyle terrain more clearly. Smart Style gets a makeover this year with a new video, PSAs, and educational materials. Check out www.freestyleterrain.org for more details.

Change it up

With Ryan Neptune, terrain park builder at Echo Mountain, Colo.

Change is good, says Ryan Neptune, founder of Planet Snow Tools, and mastermind behind the terrain at Echo Mountain-a new all-park resort in Colorado. While not so much a trend or innovation, Neptune says that riders want to see their park keep changing all season, giving them variety and new challenges all winter.

"The main thing is that mountain managers need to realize that the park needs to evolve," he says. "If you don't, people get bored and that's when people get hurt. A lot of terrain park accidents are because a kid has been hitting a feature 100 times in a row [and stops paying attention]. If you can find a core group of riders at that mountain, go in and figure out what they want and what they need. There's such a loss in communication between builders and actual riders."

An Arsenal of Rails

With Elliot Cone, assistant terrain park manager, Keystone, Colo.

Elliot Cone emphasizes season-long change and evolution among his most-anticipated plans for this season's terrain park program at Keystone. His team has built 50 new features-rails, boxes, wallrides-for this season and created a "rail guy" position to continuously change up the rails and "keep everything fresh and moving in the beginner areas." The new rails were built with simplicity and fun in mind-two things riders rarely have a problem with.

"We're just going to stick to the stuff that we know is fun," he says. "We built three c-boxes, we'll have four wall rides and we built an arsenal of new fun boxes. We don't have any big creative stuff this year; we're just looking to really improve all the basics. Our biggest focus is to improve our beginner areas. We're going to build wall rides in our beginner areas. . .laid back at about a 45-degree angle so that they can ride right over it and get the feel for what it feels like to be on one. It should be really cool."

As far as rail and fun box materials go, many of our experts said that they prefer to use high-density polyethylene (HDPE) for top sheets and plywood for skirting because of its affordability, accessibility and ease of repair during the season.

Terrain Park Smarts

With Mark Petrozzi, risk manager, Booth Creek Resorts

As terrain parks continue to settle into their role as intrinsic elements of a ski resort experience, so too does the ongoing quest to manage the unique risks associated with them. Petrozzi, a widely respected expert on terrain park risk management, says that one of the ongoing developments in the field is the recognition that the way in which a person uses a feature contributes to their experience on that feature and that the feature on its own does not always dictate the quality of that experience.

In the world of risk management, it means that the burden of responsibility in a terrain park is split between the participant and the operator. Making sure the park is built to commonly-held (there are no formal guidelines) quality standards is one half of the equation and, Petrozzi says, educating participants to use features more appropriately is how Booth Creek is tackling the other half. (This process of using a terrain park feature is broken down for teaching purposes in the PSIA/AASI Park and Pipe Instructor's Guide into the acronym ATML: approach, takeoff, maneuver, and landing.)

"Education is really a key focus," he says. "We try and educate in two ways: passive and active, or interactive. The signs are from the passive perspective, which include Smart Style signs and the bigger broader signs that we have. (Visit the NSAA Website www.nsaa.org for examples of this signage). That's passive because the person has to actually look at it and read it in order to actually get some benefit from that source. The other way that we get interactive with our guests is with the people that work in the park. They're not there to coach-we need to be clear about that-but they are there to help educate, and in some instances, enforce the rules. For instance, if they see someone stop or sit below a feature that can't be seen from above, they'll ski or ride over and say, 'Hey, I don't know if you know this, but you can't be seen from above and it's dangerous for you and other users.' They'll take that opportunity to interact with the guest and maybe even hand that person a [Smart Style information] card."

The Recipe for a Successful Halfpipe

With Elia Hamilton, snow surfaces manager, Mount Snow, Vermont

Halfpipe riding was one of the most-watched events at the Olympics this year, and public awareness of halfpipe riding is at a high. Elia Hamilton says his recipe for a great halfpipe has been honed with lots of elbow grease and trial and error. Read up and save yourself the hassle!

"Make more snow than you need, don't get too many people involved, and do it right the first time," he says. "Those would be three golden rules. When you start getting too many people involved, then the techniques start interfering with one another and the end product is inferior to what it would be if you just have one or two people working on it together for longer. Rushing to get it open might help you for a week, but then the rest of your season you'll suffer. And it can be very difficult for upper management to understand that because they want to get it open as quickly as possible, but then you get the reputation for having a horrible halfpipe for the entire season. You could put effort into it afterwards but it would be wasted. Making more snow than you need is more expensive, but it has everything to do with reputation and providing the right product. And taking short cuts? The worst thing that a resort can do is take shortcuts in the construction process, because just like with anything else, building a house, anything that requires prep work, the prep work is what creates the final product and if shortcuts are taken in the prep work to try to save time or snow, then it only affects the final product and the longevity of it."

Creating a Great Team

With Elliot Cone, Keystone, Colorado

Giving his staff the right tools for the job and creating a fun, educational environment is key to building a good terrain park team, says Cone. So how does he keep his staff motivated and happy in their jobs?

"I yell at them a lot," he jokes, before getting serious: "We have a pretty good relationship. We meet every day at the shop before they go out on the hill and we've created some custom jobs for our training program to get people ready to drive [snow] cats. They're going to do half hand crew, half night crew. We're looking to protect our equipment down the road and put together an education program where we don't hurt our equipment and we get the job done right. This can be a pretty rewarding job if everybody does the job well. We've got a great team-they're so into it."

Cone also notes that he'd like to expand the idea of the terrain park team to include Ski Patrol by having the patrollers participate in the same pre-season training sessions that he goes through with his terrain park crew. The greater the understanding between all parties in the park, he says, the more comfortable the environment for riders (who don't see the patrol as "cops" but rather as part of the scene).

And there you have it. This is a year for refinement and a focus on quality. It's not that all the possibilities have been tapped, but that the number of proven, fun features is already large. The task now is to make them more fun, more available, more accessible, and more safe.

 

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The SAMMY Guest Editor's Take

Throughout history there has always been a fine line between Art and Vandalism. Art is simply junk that starts to grow on you. And finally it becomes trendy and everyone's got to have a copy. That's the history of terrain parks.

At first they were called "snowboard parks" because the dirt-ball snowboard types (aka "young males") of the late '80s and early '90s were destroying the pristine alpine environment by building homemade jumps, grinding trees, and bonking off of everything from snowmaking hydrants to slow tourists. In their spare time, these delinquents photocopied lift tickets and sold them in the parking lot.

At least that was the perception of many resort managers of the time. Snowboard parks were finally approved for the same reason that nuclear waste dumps are located in Nevada and Utah-to concentrate lethal toxins in a sparsely populated area and away from the general public. The first rule of park location back in the day was to put them out of sight from the "good customers" (aka "skiers" and "old people") and NEVER within view of the base lodge.

Ironically, the good customers eventually made their way to the dump. The first thing that greeted them was a sign that said "NO SKIERS," which was a fine thought so long as the snowboard park was perceived as a place for idiots. The problem, of course, is that the idiots looked like they were having a fun time-a really fun time (and the girls were cute, too).

Thankfully, times change. What was once designed as a way to separate people is now a way to bring them together. "Terrain Parks" are for everyone. Works of beauty and pride. In fact, I believe that parks have replaced long lift lines and slow, fixed grip double chairlifts as the place where teenagers meet their first love but that's another story.

It's so fun to see that Gunny, Elia, Jeff, Ryan, and a hundred other "young guns" are now seen as creative, dedicated professionals who are respected throughout the industry. Who would have thought that in 1990?

Actually, it would have been people like John Rice, Dick Kun, Randy Johnston, Sky Foulkes, Rick Sramek, Jerry Blann, Mike Hinrich, Don McKay, and other managers with an open mind. They are the operators who opened up the mountains for the first parks, pipes and other vandalism that inspired today's artists. -Jack Turner