PARK PLAY
Terrain Park Jumps, Rails and Half-Pipes Draw Teens to Midwest Areas

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Sundown Mountain in Iowa and other ski areas across the Midwest cater to teenage snowboarders and skiers by building creative, innovative terrain parks and actually listening to the teens. "The kids will ask, "Can you build this type of jump?'" says Sundown terrain park manager Chris Rolling. "I'll say, 'Sure,' and we build it that night." The terrain parks, which resemble skateboard parks on snow with jumps, hand-rails, boxes and other "features," have allowed Midwest ski areas to compete with much larger Western resorts.

 "We don't have the mountain and the size, so we make up for it with our terrain parks," says Rolling. "We have to be creative and come up with things that are new and exciting, and keep the kids coming back again and again." That sentiment is echoed by Ken Speltz, who oversees five terrain parks at Afton Alps in Minnesota. "We built our first terrain park in 2001 and our first features were just two wooden light poles partially buried in the snow," he says. "After that, we started building more features and parks, and we've never stopped."

In addition to the large jumps and features in their main terrain parks, many Midwest ski areas also have terrain parks with smaller features for entry-level snowboarders and skiers. Among its five terrain parks, Afton Alps has beginning, intermediate and advanced parks. The beginner park has low, wide rails barely a foot off the ground and some small jumps and rollers. The intermediate parks have rails that are higher off the snow and larger jumps. The advanced parks have the biggest features, including 30-foot-long kinked rails, large boxes, a "rainbow rail" that is eight feet tall and the largest jumps.

"We wanted to broaden our appeal and reach more snowboarders and freeride skiers on twin-tip skis," says Dave Madsen, the terrain park manager at Wisconsin's Cascade Mountain. "We don't have a 'Super Park' anymore with huge jumps and hits, but now we have four parks with different level features."

At Sundown in Iowa, a smaller terrain park "allows kids to stay within their own ability level and then progress to the bigger park," says Rolling. "They get an understanding of how to ride the features and they're also learning the proper etiquette of how to behave in a terrain park. We have a 'Park Crew' of employees who are in the terrain park every day, answering questions, showing the kids how to do tricks properly and talking with them about how to behave. We try to be positive and show them how to do things right."

At Tyrol Basin in Wisconsin, the terrain park spans the area's entire 300 vertical feet and includes more than 20 features. Fixed, man-made features include hand-rails and boxes that snowboarders and skiers on twin-tip skis can jump on to and slide down. Snow-made features include a variety of jumps and a half-pipe. A half-pipe looks like a large trench in the snow (or the horizontal cross-section of half a pipe) with high, banked walls that snowboarders and skiers soar off of and perform tricks. "Terrain parks don't take up much room, but they keep kids interested in a small area," says Don McKay from Tryol Basin.

The snowboarders and skiers themselves have direct input into how the terrain parks are built. At Cascade, they call themselves the "Cascade Posse," and they are constantly peppering Madsen with ideas. "We change features every couple of weeks," says Madsen. "We have to keep our terrain parks new and fresh."

Afton Alps also continually updates its parks with new features based on input from park users who e-mail, call or send in their ideas. The dozen members of the park maintenance crew are also snowboarders and skiers themselves, says Speltz. "We use special equipment to build takeoffs and landings, but there's also a lot of hard work and sweat with shovels and rakes. They use the parks themselves, so there's a vested interest in what they're creating." At Sundown, Rolling says he started working there "because I wanted a good park to ride in."

Speltz has previously attended a five-day "Cutter's Camp" at Mount Hood, Oregon, where more than 50 terrain park managers from across the country learn how to build jumps and other features. Terrain park managers from other Midwest areas have attended, including from Perfect North Slopes in Indiana, Boyne Highlands in Michigan, Hyland in Minnesota, Granite Peak in Wisconsin, and Tyrol Basin.

There is both a science and an art to building jumps and other features. Rolling, from Sundown, says, "You have to use science and feel. The incline of the takeoff and the landing should be about the same. You have to visualize. We build it and we put a tape measure down of how it should be built. Then we keep shaping it and testing it until it's right. We're riding it and skiing it and hitting it until it's right. We keep working on it by hand until it feels like a perfect jump."

Most Midwest areas use special grooming equipment to create the snow features in their terrain parks and build half-pipes. One type of special device that attaches to a grooming snow cat is known as a Pipe Dragon and helps shape and build the high walls of a half-pipe. Many Midwest ski areas also build their own rails, doing the welding and fabrication in their machines shops.

Boyne Mountain in Michigan has a 700-foot-long super pipe. A new Zaugg elliptical transition cutter creates the super-pipe with its 18-foot-high walls.

Midwest areas have seen a dramatic increase in the number of freeride skiers using twin-tip skis in their terrain parks. At Cascade in Wisconsin, there are as many skiers as snowboarders in the terrain parks. "They all hang out with their friends and everyone gets excited when their buddy does a nice trick," says Madsen.

For more information on Midwest ski areas and to find a ski area near you, visit snowplaces.com.

For more information on terrain parks, visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrain_parks
http://www.nsaa.org/nsaa/safety/smart-style/
http://www.snowparkbuilder.com/
http://www.saminfo.com/events/cutters.php
http://www.pipedragon.com/
http://www.zauggamerica.com/pipegroomers/pipegroomers.htm