What About The Parks?
Hi Folks.
Mt. Hood Meadows was one of the first ski resorts to build a terrain park – Park Place was constructed way back during the 1996-97 season. The year prior we built the venues for the inaugural Vegetate event – a boarder cross, half pipe and big air – and knew we needed to have a park for – at that time – mainly snowboarders to freestyle on. We are proud of the tradition and the reputation we have when it comes to building the best terrain features in the west.
So, why with a 104 inch base in the first week of January don’t we have these parks? Incredibly, we have received too much snow too fast to be able to effectively construct quality terrain features quickly. Our incredible crew continues to make good progress, despite the 170 inches of snow we received since December 15. Before that date our crew’s expertise was showcased by building a hugely popular rail park on just 3 feet of base, most of which was harvested from the parking lots. And as I look at the forecast – we’re going to get up to another foot-and-a-half of snow in the next 48 hours. Not exactly your primo park building stretch of weather.
OK. Enough venting. We have an awesome plan and we are working through it. We have begun building the superpipe – pushing huge amounts of snow up out of the gut so that we can tier off the walls. The pipe acts as a natural snow fence during storms so it is likely to fill right back up again after this storm, but we will continue to push the snow out and further sculpt what will be a truly magnificent spectacle of righteous verticality.
It is very important to build the super pipe walls to the correct grade of between 16 and 18 degrees. We build the skier’s left wall, the sunny wall, a little thicker than skiers right wall, the shady wall, to compensate for the melt factor. After we build the walls, we then take a cat through the gut to begin rough shaping the walls. Then we run the almighty Zaugg down the walls so they ride just smooth and rhythmically. Depending on the amount of new snow we receive while building the superpipe, we are aiming to open it by January 10th.
Park Place currently has one butter box, three table tops, and one hip, although we face the same problems constantly battling large amounts of new snow. During these heavy snow cycles, our hardworking crew spends many hours hand digging and re-setting rails. Jumps need to be rebuilt when the landings and take off’s fill in. The Parks crew pretty much starts over during and after every storm -- this is what makes the features not only ride well but makes them easier to properly maintain.
I was looking at the snow conditions at some other resorts across the country. I think I’ll quit whining about the snow, set some dates and work like hell to hit them. So here goes:
The Zoo and Shipyard – Open and continue to maintain and expand features daily.
Rose City – Open and continue to maintain and expand features, perhaps increasing the size of the jumps a bit.
Park Place – Built to completion January 10.
BoarderCross (on Wallflower) – January 10.
Superpipe – January 12.
Forest Park (now on Tamarack) – January 19.
Our Grooming and Parks departments are committed to do their best to meet or beat these deadlines. As always this is dependent on how much snow we receive. I figure we can’t lose. If it keeps snowing we’ll continue to have the best snow in the country. And if it stops we’ll have the best parks in the country. Hopefully, with just a little break in the weather and an enormous effort by our talented and dedicated parks and grooming crews, we’ll have both. So let us know how fun you find the parks and superpipe.
Onward!
--Matt