Aaaand i'm back. Welcome to the 07-08 season here at Park City Mountain Resort. We bribed the web guy and ended up with our own blog this season, dedicated to yours truly, the Terrain Park. As the season approaches myself and Chucky have been up on the hill making the usual rounds repairing, building and cleaning. There is always something to do to keep busy this time of year. You can go through every foot of rope to make sure it's on the up and up, adding new pieces of banner tape where they should be and replacing the faded worn out ones. You can clean out the park shack and build shelving and racks to hold the rakes and shovels. There is always the fun task of going through the remaining sticks of bamboo and pulling the two for me, one for the dumpster deal with the broken sticks of boo. There was the walking of the Parks picking up garbage which mostly happened at the beginning of the summer after the snow melt. It's amazing how many truckloads of garbage I hauled out of there this summer. Please throw your stuff in the garbage cans at the bottom and top of the lifts, don't throw them on the snow. It's not a forgotten red bull can just tossed off to the side of the run when the snow melts and there are over a hundred of them.
We took the two built in features at the bottom of the Crown out this summer so there was the task of sorting through the garbage, the items we could keep and getting everything to the storage building or the dumpster.
There is so much to ramble about, but I told myself I would keep it short and sweet.
So here are some photos of randomness around the resort this summer and fall, I will try to keep with the weekly posts but sometimes I may get too busy and sidetracked and you may get a delayed post. It is now thursday, I will put together a post by friday of next week so keep checking back next week and for the rest of the season. :)
Chucky working on the long list of little things to fix in the boneyard.
It's always nice to have company on a long day up in the hills. She even has her own seat in the truck.
And the wildlife along the way, the moose eating lunch on the side of the road, this morning we saw a herd of elk probably 20 strong meandering down dynamite run.
Stopping for a drink of water... (this was taken with a zoom lens, never get close to the wildlife. They like to be left alone, and you might not like their response if you bug them...)
The hiking this summer was great, make sure you get up to explore around the mountain. This is DB with marley and kaya in chase on the top of Jupiter during the sunset. It's very peaceful on the mountain, away from the city and the daily grind.
That's all for today, keep checking back for more and welcome to another season!
whats your park crew up 2?
this is my first season here and have great expectations of the parks but have already found myself frustrated with the take offs. i have seen features on more than 1 accusation go fall days with out beening raked once. i know its only early in the season but theres plenty of die hards out there riding hard. big ups for having what you have in with what you got to work with but mantain.
Mike Replies:
I'll be brutally honest here. You just ride through and see takeoffs that have been used and abused. What you don't see, maybe because it's been you on the lift with the park guys on the features, is the guys raking every run. On the weekends the lips were trashed even though myself and one of my guys were in the park raking the lips every run through. We didn't get any free runs. Before you jump and say we didn't rake all day (which I take personally because we are out there all day...) just step back and realize there are only two guys on right now. You might not see them at all throughout the day because of how the runs were timed but we are out there. If you are referring to the weekend, there were thousands of kids riding that park. Not one feature went more than 30 seconds without being hit. The only time they didn't get hit is when they got raked.
Another thing to consider is the type of snow that you are on. up until this last storm, it was 100% manmade snow, which when built into a lip like that doesn't hold together as well as natural snow. The flakes of manmade snow are very small granules compared to the actual flakes of natural (which bonds together better) and breaks up alot easier in a park scene. With it being in the 20's and teens with low moisture content we can't fill in a rut and put salt on it. It wont work as the salt needs moisture. Same with landings that get dished out as the day progresses with thousands of kids hitting it. The snow just blows out, it doesn't bond quick enough. We would have to close down the park for the day to let the snow set up for many hours. So to answer your question, my park crew is working their butts off, we have two small parks open that see traffic of so many kids it's unbelievable. What you are seeing is features that get raked very often but get ridden by thousands of people with no break between them.
Example, the first feature last weekend was the triple box step down. We would rake it, move to the next feature and by the time we got done with the second feature the first feature was worse than it was before we raked. Traffic through the park is huge and there is nothing possible to stop a lip from digging itself away. We could rake between every person and by the end of the day we would have alot of angry kids and a lip that was still dug out.
Now that i'm rambling, sorry to contradict what you are saying, but being as i've been out there every day, and don't even get to take a free run most days, I take the accusation personal...
Posted by: ash | December 03, 2007 at 02:34 PM
hey, i've heard a rumour that you guys have had a mini-pipe up by the entrance to Kings Crown in the past. any chance of that happening this year??
Mike Replies:
It's true, there was a 16 foot pipe on payday just below the entrance to Kings Crown before we got the 22 foot Zaugg cutter for the Eagle Superpipe. For this year it wasn't included in the budget but it's a requested item every year so it's a work in progress. Maybe next year:)
Posted by: Eric | November 08, 2007 at 03:49 PM