Park City Mountain Resort is pleased to welcome Jeremy Cooper to the team as our new Terrain Park Manager. Jeremy started as a park builder at Mammoth Mountain in 2002 and became park manager at June Mountain in 2005. Under Jeremy's direction, June's parks have risen to be ranked among the top resorts in the country by several industry publications.
Park City Mountain Resort is committed to maintaining our position as a leader in action sports and continuing to push the progression of the industry. We feel that Jeremy's experience and passion will allow us to continue to be an industry leader. Jeremy is excited for the level of support he's already seen from the resort and is looking forward to bringing some fresh new ideas to the resort. Once Jeremy gets on board we'll get him to write an official blog post giving you guys his ideas, plans and hopes for the upcoming season.
Jeremy has some big shoes to fill with the departure of Jim Mangan. Jim has done amazing things for the resort including putting together a world-class team of athletes and building terrain parks that have been named the best parks in the country by several industry publications. He was very successful in positioning PCMR as one of the most recognizedsnowboarding resorts in the world. Jim is moving on to pursue a career in film. We wish him the best in his new endeavors.
*Side note - just heard our snow makers are hoping to start making snow maybe as early as tomorrow!!!
Olympic dreams will be made and broken during the 2010 U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix as the tour makes three stops in its 14th season. A total of five Olympic qualifications will take place at Copper Mountain, Mammoth Mountain and the final stop at Park City Mountain Resort. The announcement of the 2010 Olympic halfpipe team will be made right here at PCMR!
The competition will heat up as Olympic gold medalists Kelly Clark, Hannah Teter and Shawn White, along with fellow Olympic medalists Gretchen Bleiler, JJ Thomas and Danny Kass all look for another shot at Olympic glory. Joining them in the hunt will be Grand Prix overall champions Steve Fisher and Louie Vito as well as Grand Prix podium performers Ellery Hollingsworth, Clair Bidez, Greg Bretz and Olympian Elena Hight.
NBC, the Olympic network, and Versus will broadcast the competition. Go211.com will webcast the Grand Prix live from each stop.
Park City's Historic Pipe Rides Again
The historic pipe where U.S. athletes swept the men's podium and won gold in the women's event during the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 will entertain the masses with Olympians again. The Grand Prix makes its final stop at Park City Mountain Resort for back to back night competitions, after which the winners will be crowned and the 2010 Olympic halfpipe team will be named.
Among the athletes stoked to hit the Park City pipe is White who, after having dinner wiht PCMR owner John Cumming, took to his Twitter page to spread the good news.
"Had dinner with John Cumming," White wrote. "Super nice guy, he told me Park City is having Olympic qualis mid Jan! booyeah!"
A reduced field comprised of the highest scoring athletes from previous tour stops will throw down the best tricks in their bag in an attempt to be one of the few named to the Olympic halfpipe team when the event is over.
"It's the perfect place to close the story of the Olympic team selection," said USSA Vice President of Events Calum Clark. "The pipe has the tradition of being one of the best in North America. They put a tremendous amount of pride and energy into their venue. They are very excited to have this here."
Clark is right! We are very excited to host this historic event. NBC, the Olympic network, and Versus will broadcast the competitions. Go211.com will webcast the Grand Prix live from each stop. We'll have more details in the coming months. Fortunately, January is still a few months away!
Yesterday was a big day at Park City Mountain Resort! Upper Jonesy's opened to the public with 17 jib and jump features. Our terrain parks are now completely open for the season! This season Jim and the rest of the park crew have done an awesome job getting tons of features open for all ability levels. If you haven't checked out the parks yet this season now is a great time to get jibby.
Here's JP from our park crew making sure the features are working correctly! Thanks for your hard work JP.
Now that the crew has opened all the parks it's time to kick off our event scheudule. This Friday and Saturday (1/23 and 1/24) we'll be hosting the King of the Wasatch with the Park City Snowboard Team and the Intermountain Snowboard Series. The King of the Wasatch is a pipe and slopestyle competition open to USASA members. Check out our events calendar (www.pcride.com) for details on the competition and how to sign up! There is a cash prize for winners of the open divisions!
Immediately following the King of the Wasatch we kick into Visa Freestyle International World Cup gear. Skier halfpipe World Cup that is! We are hosting this event in partnership with Deer Valley Resort and the Visa Freestyle International World Cup that also includes Moguls, Dual Moguls and Aerials. This is the first skier halfpipe World Cup in the states! The confirmed (subject to change) athlete list that we've received at this point includes some of the top name skiers out there including Simon Dumont, Colby West, JP Solberg, Jen Hudak, etc! The halfpipe competition takes place on Saturday, 1/31 beginning at 9:30 a.m. More details are available at pcride.com including info on the Free Michael Franti and Spearhead concert on Lower Main Street Thursday evening.
The weekend following the World Cup weekend we will be hosting the Burton Super Demo Tour and Am Series. I'll get more details on that in the coming weeks. Seeing as how I'm the events manager here, I think I need a nap....and this hasn't even started!
The season is almost here, we are chomping at the bit for temps that are low enough to make snow. While we are all waiting I want to address our safety initiative for you all. We use the NSAA ( http://www.nsaa.org ) Smart Style freestyle terrain safety initiative. On top of Your Responsibility Code ( http://www.nsaa.org/nsaa/safety/heads_up/know_the_code.asp ), the Smart Style is "a cooperative effort to continue the proper use and progression of freestyle terrain at mountain resorts, while also delivering a unified message that is clear, concise, and effective." I wanted to make this post so that everyone would take a couple minutes out of their day to read and watch the video, so that everyone is on the same page as we are coming into the early season.
We want you to enjoy yourself here at the resort and we want to be able to enjoy our workday here at the resort, but we also hold the safety of our guests to the highest regard. If you are creating an unsafe situation for yourself or for our other guests in one of our parks, one of my Park Crew guys will ask you to stop and take you aside to explain why you were stopped. If what you are doing is posing a threat to guests and/or employees, we may give you a warning and or take your pass. The length of us pulling a pass is not set in stone and varies on each individual instance. We only pulled a few passes last year, we aren't here to be the police, but please think about what you are doing before you do it so we don't have to stop you and chat :)
TERRAIN PARK SAFETY
Freestyle Terrain is becoming more popular at resorts and proper use is important . The National Ski Areas Association and Burton Snowboards have developed the "Smart Style" Freestyle Terrain Safety initiative, a cooperative effort to continue the proper use and progression of freestyle terrain at mountain resorts, while also delivering a unified message that is clear, concise, and effective.
The 3 main points of Smart Style include:
Look Before You Leap
Before getting into freestyle terrain observe all signage and warnings
Scope around the jumps first not over them
Use your first run as a warm up run and to familiarize yourself with the terrain
Be aware that the features change constantly due to weather, usage, grooming and time of day.
Do not jump blindly and use a spotter when necessary
Easy Style It
Know your limits and ski/ride within your ability level
Look for small progression parks or features to begin with and work your way up.
Freestyle skills require maintaining control on the ground and in the air
Do not attempt any features unless you have sufficient ability and experience to do so safely
Inverted aerials increase your risk of injury and are not recommended.
Respect Gets Respect
Respect the terrain and others (Freestyle terrain is for everyone regardless of equipment or ability)
One person on a feature at a time
Wait your turn and call your start
Always clear the landing area quickly
Respect all signs and stay off closed terrain and feature
Remember that ducking a rope into a closed area of the mountain is against Summit County Ordinance 110, which states that violating a closure put in place is against the law and is a prosecutable offense. We close the parks for good reasons, not just to keep you guys from having fun. A few various examples could be that we have snowcats in there building or maintaining the park. If you were to come across a winch cat fully extended, you would not hear the cat or see the winch line. That winch line can do alot of damage to a person if you ride into a closed park. Or riding into the closed park when we have cats in there building the park or maintaining the park, you wouldn't be able to hear them or see them, and when you ride over the knuckle of the jump and the cat is right there grooming a landing, it isn't a good thing.
If the skies open up and dump upon us, we may shut down a park for a few hours in the morning. It gives my guys time to dig out features without the public on the run. There were many instances last year where we were almost taken out by people not paying attention, or paying attention and tried to hit the feature on purpose while we were working on it. That isn't acceptable.
Also, if we close a park due to a good amount of snow, like we did a few times for jonesys last year, beyond reason number two, it is because we deem that the conditions have made the park features impossible to ride.
When we close down the parks at night, we generally go this route. Upper Jonesys is closed by 3:45pm, Lower Jonesys by 4pm. Kings Crown is closed by 3:45pm and Pick N Shovel is closed at 4pm. We may or may not close down payday some days anytime between 3pm and 4pm for up to 45 minutes if it is deemed necessary.
When we close the parks, my guys go through and rake all the non jump features, things the snowcats can't generally groom. At night when we do our final rake, we rake snow up onto said feature. This snow needs time to set up and become hard. If you were to duck the rope and ride those features you would create ruts because the snow hasn't had enough time to set up and is still very soft. That ruins the feature for the next day because when the snow does set up overnight it sets up with ruts in it and those will take time to rake out in the morning. That may mean closing the feature down for an unspecified amount of time to fix the feature.
Now that I have been rambling on for quite some time, I'll end this by saying we enjoy having you guys on the hill riding our features and giving us feedback. (riding by at high speed yelling "you guys suck" is not acceptable feedback though) Stop and chat with us or ride with us. We want you to have a good time up here, so think a little about what you are doing so we can all have a good day. And BE SAFE!
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!
