Terrain Parks Takeover
By Peter Kray
Terrain parks have revolutionized winter resorts, creating more fun in more places.
Balance and control are essential skills.
Just 25 years ago, North America’s ski resorts wouldn’t even let snowboarders ride the chair. Surfing’s cold weather cousin was viewed as too reckless and risky for the slopes, better suited to public parks and the short, steep runs that were the domain of sledders and inner-tubers.
Turns out they were right, at least where terrain parks are concerned. While high alpine adventurers like John Griber have proved snowboarders can ride the wildest ranges from Alaska to Nepal, the biggest in-bound buzz for boarders and skiers is found in the dandelion-like spread of terrain parks, with man-made rails and halfpipes that make playgrounds out of lesser hills.
“Terrain parks make it easy for more people to have more fun wherever they are,” says ski star Sage Cattabriga-Alosa, who gives credit to winter’s man-made playpens for helping him develop his signature big mountain style. “Even if you don’t have awesome terrain, or the mountain is skied out and there are bumps everywhere, you can go to the terrain park and find lots of challenges and fun things to do.”
Cattabriga-Alosa says the repetition of maneuvers on groomed surfaces helps him focus his skills for the backcountry, where the terrain isn’t nearly as controlled.
“Especially if you’re learning new tricks, you can dial it in at the terrain park,” he says. “And in comparison to big mountain riding, it’s something a lot more people have access to.”
Among mountains, terrain parks have helped level the field.
S-rail at the bottom of the terrain park at the Timberline Lodge ski area.
“Terrain parks are the great equalizer,” says John McColly, Director of Marketing Of California's Mountain High Resort. “They’ve made it so you don’t need super steeps or bottomless powder to put your mountain on the map.”
Located barely 90 minutes from Los Angeles, terrain parks put Mountain High back on the map 10 years ago. After serving north of 400,000 skiers in its heyday, Mountain High was down to fewer than 200,000 skiers annually when new ownership brought McColly on board.
“We saw a real hole in the market where nobody was marketing directly to the youth,” says McColly. “So we started building the kind of hits and features that we thought would appeal to teenagers.”
Instead of trying to compete with the massive vertical and deep snowfall of other California areas such as Squaw Valley and Mammoth Mountain, McColly’s urban inroads began with “just about anything new we could think to try.”
They struck a nerve.
Mountain High now averages more than 450,000 visitors a season. And McColly’s success has set the template for other areas as well. Mountain Creek in New Jersey, Bear Mountain in California, Echo Mountain in Colorado, and almost every ski area in the Midwest are looking to lure city kids up to the slopes with a shiny set of silver rails.
“I think we’re a complement to all the bigger mountains up the road,” Echo Mountain General Manager Doug Donovan says of the new area’s prime location outside Idaho Springs, the first ski stop out of Denver on the I-70 corridor. “Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got 13-year-olds who come ride rails all day. But we’re also a great place to come practice your tricks if you wake up at 10:30 on a Saturday and don’t want to drive as far.”
National Ski Areas Association Communications Director Troy Hawks says the association didn’t even track terrain parks 10 years ago.
And now? “Ninety-two percent of the resorts that responded last year report that they have some sort of terrain features now.”
Whether it’s video games or the massive amount of TV coverage annual extreme fests like the X Games generate for snowboarding and New School skiing, city kids have become remarkably knowledgeable about winter’s upslope sports. But it wasn’t until last season, when Winter Park opened the Ruby Hill Rail Yard right in the heart of Denver, that anyone brought the slope so close to City Hall.
The X Games showcase the talents of some of the world's best extreme skiers and snowboarders.
From January 20 to late February, Winter Park Ski Resort and Denver Parks and Recreation Department set up snowmaking equipment in an urban park just southwest of downtown Denver. They pumped out 750,000 gallons of water to create a 3-foot base of snow, then opened a 1-acre terrain park that was free to all.
“The result was incredible,” says Bob Holme, youth marketing director for Winter Park Resort. “You had kids in tennis shoes with snowboards from Wal-Mart waiting to drop in next to kids from the suburbs with $1,000 gear.”
The project was such a success the ski resort plans to do it again for at least four weeks this year. And, Holme says, there is a program that will bring 1,200 kids from the city to the mountain as well.
“My dream is that someday some kid wins the X Games and says that they started snowboarding or skiing at Ruby Hill,” says Holme. “It sounds crazy, but if we don’t ever introduce them to the sport, then we’ll never know.”
Pete Kray writes about epic outdoor adventures from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Posted on January 29, 2007