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SAM by the Numbers

The number of years we’ve been running our annual Terrain Park Contest. This year’s winner for Best Feature is Snowshoe Mountain, W. Va. We should note it was a close race for best feature. Snowshoe took 20.6 percent of the votes, and Windham Mountain, N.Y., received 19 percent. The winning design was the work of two park staff, Kevin Sprecher and Kyle Tunison, who built their technical marvel in just under four hours. Wachusett Mountain won for Best Event, for its charity event hosted by pro rider Chris Grenier. It’s a jam format that puts the pros against local riders. Terrain park manager Andrew Roy and his team built the course in two nights, and the jam raised $750 for Breast Cancer. Check out all entries at www.saminfo.com/terrain-park-contest.

This year, Cutter’s Camp will mark 15 years of gathering dedicated freestyle terrain professionals for educational seminars and hands-on workshops. Timberline, Mt. Hood, Ore., and Mount Snow, Vt., will host our west and east locations in 2017. The western camp in May will see lots of on-hill build time and the full week-long schedule of terrain park workshops. The east is moving to later in the year and will serve as our fall refresher as resorts begin to ramp up and get park teams ready for the season.

This spring, the SAMMY Leadership Awards will celebrate 20 years of honoring our next generation of leaders. Halley O’Brien (a 2016 SAMMY winner) interviews several of our SAMMY Hall of Famers, and in the process we learn about their journeys to become industry leaders...and if they wash their ski socks. We encourage you to consider worthy candidates for the Class of 2017, and urge you to nominate them in the next month or so, at www.saminfo.com/sammy-nomination-form.

We are excited to jump into 2017 and, for those located east of the Rockies, make 2016 a distant memory. The year ahead promises to be interesting politically ... but no more about that, let’s go make some turns!

Olivia Rowan,
Publisher