Freestyle Terrain

They are not called ski areas anymore. They are called resorts.

If your resort has freestyle terrain, then hopefully you have a terrain park operations staff to plan and educate people about the freestyle terrain at your resort.

Progressive resorts around the world have taken a serious look at freestyle terrain and what it could mean for their customer. For example, Big Bear resorts in Southern California has built a name and reputation on having complete runs dedicated to freestyle terrain and parks.

Another example would be Park City Mountain Resort.
After hosting the 02 snowboarding halfpipe for the Olympics, they start sponsored snowboard team complete with their own design of rails, features, etc see photos below.

Olympic Half-pipe Park City

Snowdeck Demo Park Olympics 2002

The Smart Style section of this website has excellent examples and artwork of signage, banners, stickers, and everything you need to get consistent with what most resorts are doing. Complete with downloads, pro rider interview video about park safety, animation and tool designed to help resorts. If you have not clicked on this link yet, do it now. Check it out.

Kids and our younger population need to be educated. Take the time to have sessions and events geared to teaching our youth about respect, smart style and the skier/rider responsibility code.

Here is a cool link for kids or youth who want to color some cool snowboard or ski shots
www.colorbook.com

The National Ski Areas Association also has a lot of information geared towards resorts in the United States and Canada.

Check them out at www.nsaa.com

For International information of snowboarding schools, clubs, teaching associations, and winter sports info check out www.interski.org

For information on learning to snowboard and learn to ride resorts go to
www.learntosnowboard.com

Grooming Equipment

Grooming equipment is essential for operating freestyle terrain.
Properly groomed parks and pipes are what separate the dominating resorts for freestyle parks like Big Bear, Mammoth, Breckenridge, Okemo and Snow Summit.

Take a look at this adventure cutter from Bombardier

Adventure Cutter

Small groomer BR 180

Pipe Groomer

Product of good grooming:

For more information on grooming implements, cutters and tool go to the following links:

Consequences

Just like any other trail on the mountain, the terrain park and halfpipe need to be groomed frequently. Many resorts invest in starting freestyle, however, they do not execute properly or neglect to maintain it regularly and a resort will run into problems.

Be sure to have a freestyle terrain crew or park operations crew that can look after planning, development, training, building and maintaining freestyle terrain as well as educate your resort visitors on how to properly navigate through it.

The same applies to the way a resort approaches its business.
Take a look at this sign from a resort near South Lake Tahoe that for any reasons did not survive even though they had great terrain and snow.

Here is what resort looks like when it has to foreclose and close.

Make sure and have a plan and be prepared so you aren’t behind the times.
The progression is happening and terrain parks and halfpipes will continue to evolve for years to come and resorts and consumers will have to adapt with them

Helmet verbiage
We don’t promote mandates with helmet use, however we do recommend using a helmet when riding freestyle terrain.
Take a look at what Snow Summit say to its park users about helmets

And finally, nothing spells out consequences more than this sign from Kirkwood resort