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:
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!
