Park City Mountain Resort Blog

PARK CITY MOUNTAIN RESORT ANNOUNCES $4.5 MILLION IN CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS FOR THE 2010-2011 WINTER SEASON

Park City, Utah (August 10, 2010) – Park City Mountain Resort furthers its commitment to delivering exceptional guest experiences by investing over $4.5 million in capital improvements for the 2010-2011 winter season. The improvements include expanded night skiing and riding operations and increased snowmaking to enhance the early season conditions.

“Our focus remains on providing our guests with an exceptional downhill experience,” said Jenni Smith, president and general manager of Park City Mountain Resort. “The additional snowmaking will allow us to provide an enhanced early season product and the expanded night operations will drastically improve the night skiing and riding.”

Park City Mountain Resort will expand night operations to include the Three Kings Mountainzone, which houses the Pick ‘N Shovel Terrain Park. The Pick ‘N Shovel Terrain Park will double in size and be reintroduced as the Three Kings Terrain Park. The 1500 watt quartz lights on PayDay run, which has offered night skiing and riding for 43 years, will be replaced with 150 watt metal halide bulbs. The upgraded bulbs will provide enhanced visibility across the run and decrease the energy expended, saving 139,000 kWh per year. Night operations will be extended until 9 p.m. seven days a week beginning Christmas Day.

The Resort will add snowmaking to Assessment Run, a local’s favorite intermediate run, increasing the amount of terrain available off the Silverlode chairlift during the early season. Snowmaking will also be added to Three Kings and Quicksilver runs with seven fully automated fan guns and six low energy tower guns.

For the 2010-2011 season the Resort will also add three new “Adventure Alley” runs, which provide intermediates the thrill of skiing or riding in the trees. In addition, expanded glading off the Crescent Ridge will continue to enhance the advanced tree skiing terrain. The Resort has also purchased three new snowcats, including a winch cat, which will help the Resort groom up to 50 runs daily, including two to four Signature Runs.

On-mountain restroom facilities will also receive enhancements for the upcoming season. The restrooms in both the Summit House and Snow Hut restaurants will be renovated, in addition to Eco Toilets being placed at the bottom of Jupiter and King Con chairlifts.

Park City Mountain Resort’s owned and operated Gorgoza Park will also see some improvements this coming season. A 390 foot conveyor lift will replace the current tow rope accessing the lower tubing lanes. The new conveyor lift will increase the uphill capacity at Gorgoza by 25 percent. Gorgoza will also add a 60 foot conveyor lift designed to improve accessibility to the Fort Frosty play area.

Park City Mountain Resort is scheduled to open for the 2010-2011 winter season on Saturday, November 20, 2010. Season Passes will go on sale Tuesday, August 24, 2010.

PCMR to Expand Night Riding and Snowmaking Operations

Raising new lights on PayDay

It's been tough keeping the big news to ourselves but we have finally been given the green light to announce a few thrilling improvements for the 2010/2011 season at Park City Mountain Resort. We are significantly expanding our snowmaking and increasing both the night skiing/riding terrain and hours. You will now be able to ski or ride until 9pm with PayDay, Three Kings and First Time lifts in operation.

Night skiing/riding began at Park City Mountain Resort on PayDay in the 67/68 season, a fact I find quite impressive. In the 10/11 season night skiing is going to be incredible! We are replacing the old 1500 watt quartz lights on PayDay with 150 watt metal halide lights. This will give us a more even light across the run while expending less energy. You will also be able to ride under the lights in the Pick ‘N Shovel terrain park as well as Three Kings Run and Quicksilver! Overall the added lights will increase our night skiing/riding terrain by 23%.

In addition to having night skiing/riding for the first time, we will also add snowmaking to both Three Kings Run and Quicksilver Run. Seven fully automated fan guns and six low energy tower guns will be installed on these runs.

New snowguns

Our park rats can look forward to a new park in place of Pick N’ Shovel that will be OVER DOUBLE the size. You can expect new jib lines in the expanded areas and brand new features to launch progression.

So what do our improvements mean for you? More terrain open earlier in the season and longer hours to do what you love the most!

Stay tuned for more announcements on the 2010/2011 season improvements!

Park City All Stars Put on a Show in Kings Crown

Some of Park City's finest getting ready for a sunny day in King's Crown.

Our own Park City All Stars were on hand to shoot next year's ad campaign. Talk about some hot laps. When this group gathers in one spot, you know a heavy session is about to go down. Stevie Bell and Sage Kotsenburg were going hit for hit in King's Crown.

Click here to read the full story. 

Shaun White Wins the First Ever Intelligent Design at Park City Mountain Resort!

With spectacular blue skies overhead, Shaun White rode a dominating 2nd run to clinch the first ever Intelligent Design at Park City Mountain Resort. Shaun started off with a Frontside 10 off the first 60 foot hit,  followed by a Backside 7 on the hip, a Frontside 270 onto the rail leading into the Eagle Superpipe, in the pipe he spun a Backside 9, a Frontside 3 and Cab 10 in the pipe and ended, to raucous applause, with a slow Alleyoop backside rodeo on the huge quarter pipe at the bottom of the pipe.

Shaun wound up the top overall rider, but there were lots of great runs down the Intelligent Design course yesterday, here are the top results:

Top 5:
Shaun White            95.75    $20,000
Charles Reid            90.00    $10,000
Luke Mitrani             82.25    $6,000
Gjermund Braaten   74.00    $5,000
Wyatt Caldwell         71.25    $3,000

Full Results (in PDF format)

I was busy helping out with the event, so I didn't get to watch a lot of, it but I was able to snap the pix in the gallery below, it you want to add some pix to our IDPC group on Flickr, visit http://www.flickr.com/groups/idpc/:

Since this was our first year ever for this event, we'd love to hear any suggestions you might have for next year as well as what you liked or didn't like about this year. Please leave your feedback and ideas as a comment!

What's New? How about some terrain park features...

You've been asking, more than any other question, even more than when the snow will finally fall. So here it is...terrain features! There are now four terrain park features on lower homerun just above the alpine coaster – a triple step-down box, a 32' long fun box, a rainbow box, and two mini 4' high quarter-pipes that are combined as one feature.  Two more features will be added tonight, with more to come in the next week or so. You won't find me anywhere near the park features (I'm a bit of a chicken!), but I love to watch. See you on the slopes!

Where Has The Terrain Park Blog Gone?

For those of you wondering where our park updates have wandered off to, look no further than
http://parkcity.typepad.com/ride_park_city

We bribed our web guy well enough this summer that he created us our own little home on the net off of our main website.
http://www.pcride.com

So when you surf over here and can't find any park updates, remember, we are just a link away from our homepage.  Or you could bookmark us.  Either way works wonderfully:)

Kings Crown Update

Just a quick update while i'm in the office this morning for the Crown.  We built a new feature in there last week and it has worked out very well, it's a fun feature to dink around with.  Pictures below.  We took out the up down ledge, rainbow box and the flat up flat ledge to farm that snow onto areas of the run with lower snowpacks.  We re-installed the two ledges that made up the flat up down as the last feature.  You now have the option of hitting the two side by side, a cats width apart.  Right side is more urban for the on, the left side is level with the ledge with a foot or two gap to the ledge.  Another blog to come later this week,  I hate throwing out days but either thursday night or friday mid day  postponed until the weather gets better, as Joneseys is getting a facelift and everyone is asking questions.  Have a good week!

Quick Turnaround

Well,  it's time for an update already on major changes to the parks.  The guys in the cats went to town this last week and made changes to payday and jonesys.  The third jump in Jonesys was worked over and given a little less vert.  Jonesys welcomes the addition of 3 features to the family, a wall ride, c-wall, and down flat down ledge.  For those of you that ride here, the mound of snow before the c-wall will have a feature installed later this week, a flat down ledge. Lower Jonesys will keep the 3 smaller jumps, but has sprouted 3 new features at the bottom, with a 4th to go in soon.  After the jump line, there is a 30' up box, into an A-frame double tube rail, into an up-down box and soon will be into a flat down single tube.  There have been ideas thrown around to put some rail features up in the top of lower Jonesys, but the lack of snow around those jumps is hindering our ability to farm more snow for them.   All of payday has been removed to place those features in other parks, but we have a pile of features waiting to go back in place.  Nothing new to report in Kings Crown, both of the picnic tables were resurfaced and are open, nothing new as well in Pick 'n' Shovel for the time being.

If you have comments for us about the parks,  let us know.  When I say let us know, that doesn't mean flying by us out on the hill yelling that something isn't set up how you like it.  Stop, talk with us, tell us what you like, why you like it, what you don't like and why you don't like it.  We love feedback and comments and people just hanging out having a good time, but just yelling something negative from a distance just makes us laugh at you.  Well we have to have entertainment on the hill right?  Plus it isn't personal, doesn't do anyone any good and it's better to just come over and talk :)

I am working on a photo gallery and maybe some short video edits, but I just haven't had time since my last blog, today is my day off and I just got back from buying tires for my truck.  The wonderful fall back into reality days off. bills, laundry, cleaning the house.  Good stuff.

Park Updates and Events

Right off the bat here,  I will apologize for how long this post may get.  If I get on a roll,  I can type a fair amount.  We have taken the picnic tables out to replace the topsheets which have started to show the use and abuse, and they will end up in kings crown.  The butter box and c-box which were in the top of the crown have been taken out and will end up most likely on payday. The mail box in the top of the crown was removed and rebuilt higher towards the start of the park as a hip, stall feature.  The last feature in the crown was changed with a double tube rail that was longer and higher off the ground than the previous rail.  The only changes to Pick 'N' Shovel lately have been the addition of a 20' flat box towards the bottom of the park, a table/double hip jump and a mini wall ride at the bottom of the park.  Race netting has been added above the start mound to the Eagle Superpipe, please don't take sections of it out to get a higher running start for the pipe,  the netting is there for everyones safety.  Which reminds me to remind everyone to please not duck the ropelines into the pipe.  On occasion it may be closed for a photo shoot, filming or to get a day cut in while the snow is somewhat soft.  We were all suprised a couple weeks ago to see people ducking the ropes after we had closed the pipe, then dropping into the pipe just to find out that the cat was in the pipe also.  Please don't duck.  Makes my life easier, makes your life easier, it just works better that way. :) 

Payday will get it's monthly (just about every month so far this season) revamp.  The top 4 features were taken out yesterday because of racing scheduled for payday.  So while we have the advantage of the features not being used as consistantly as they usually are used, we can take them out and pile more snow onto the areas the rails will be set back up on.  One night soon we will get a winch cat out on the upper face of payday and bring all the snow that gets pushed off the fall line of the run back up onto the run and into the parks.  Lower Payday will get a few features removed and new ones set in also, but I haven't heard exactly when that will take place. 

Jonesys.  Most likely why everyone opened this blog in the first place...  Upper Jonesys is open with 4 jumps in place.  The wall rides and rails are starting to make their way up and are being staged.  As far as a timeframe for them being placed, pushed and ready to go,  I'm not 100% sure yet,  the cat drivers haven't relayed that information to me at this point and I don't want to just throw out dates that I'm not 100% sure of.  Lower Jonesys has 3 smaller jumps with a single tube rail in place at the moment.

King of the Wasatch was held last weekend in Kings Crown on saturday and the Eagle Superpipe on sunday, held with Park City Snowboard Team.  For info you can visit http://www.pcsbt.org

Queens Cup will be held this weekend in Kings Crown on saturday and the Eagle Superpipe on sunday.  Visit http://www.queenscupopen.com

The World Superpipe Championships will be held March 10 and 11 in the Eagle Superpipe.  Check in on http://www.worldsuperpipe.com for all the details.

The Roxy Chicken Jam will be March 22 through the 25, you can surf over to http://www.roxy.com/chickenjam for info but when I checked today they had not updated it for the upcoming event.

If you have any questions or comments leave them here and I'll make sure to answer or find the answer to your question somewhat promptly (because if there is powder, powder rules take effect and the be back in 15 minutes sign goes up, especially on my days off.  I also heard through the grapevine this last storm was 2% or 3% moisture content.  Why wouldn't you go enjoy this stuff!!?)

Its coming... Joneseys

The pictures at the bottom were taken the day before yesterday while the cat drivers were pushing snow around.  The landings are now built up and finished, and the pushing of snow for the jumps is now in progress.  The opening date for Joneseys is later in the day saturday sunday, with the official opening sunday monday.  Why later in the day saturday sunday?  The park needs ropelines, fencing and signage that we won't be able to put in until saturday, and the final winch and groom will likely take place saturday morning.  After all that is accomplished, we will pull the gate on the park and it will be open for riding. 

I won't speculate on the size of the jumps yet, as the snow hasn't been pushed 100% on each one.  The park was designed for jumps between the 30 foot to 60 foot range.  The park will also include the two wall rides, S-box, single tube up flat down, single tube down, and other various features we find along the way.

Your Responsibility Code

While I have your attention, it's time to have a chat about park manners and rules.

Take a look at the previous link.  It will send you to our mountain safety website.  Take a look at the Terrain Park section and watch the videos at the bottom.  Become familiar with the rules before you even get to the slopes.  Here are a few items to remember, as they are becoming issues dealt with on a daily basis in every park.  Do not sit on the knuckles and landings of jumps.  These are very dangerous areas.  You put yourself and others at risk by sitting on the landing of a jump.  Do not duck any ropes.  Areas roped off inside a park are closed for your safety.  If the entrance to a park is closed, it does not mean you can take one more run inside that park or go sightseeing through there.  Summit County Ordinance 110 states that violating a closure put in place is against the law and a prosecutable offence.  We will take your pass if we find someone in a closed park. Please make yourself aware of the rules so we can all have a great time on the hill!