New laws about park jumps?

bump and grind

We are taking an industry leading step in the on hill enjoyment for our guests and have purchased a mogul shaping machine.  Bring out the 80's neon clothes and come bump through our 4 mogul parks complete with a mojito bar half way down.


Just kidding.

There are no new "laws" about park features.  The NSAA has stated that there shouldn't be any certifications as far as each specific jump.  It's all in how they are built and how they are maintained.  Each resort is different, has a different insurance company.  It is up to the insurance company what each resort can have in their park.  Some insurance companies are telling their resorts that they need to do certain things in parks and the resorts are saying that it isn't cost effective to keep a park anymore.  I mentioned this last season and people just laughed at the idea.  Parks are a HUGE investment in manpower, fuel and machinery.  You guys are all really lucky in PC because of it being a big tourist destination.  It allows us to have alot more freedom with what the resort can do in other departments because of having so many tourists coming in every year.  Which is why they have the safety patrol and are very hard on the way people ride on certain runs of the mountain (i'll delve into that more in a blog post this week, so save any questions or comments for that post...).

I'm rambling off course.  If you  notice, alot of the top resorts for parks are big tourist draws.  Without those tourists the mountain makes less money, and when the head honcho's sit down and look at what it costs to make and maintain a park versus the amount of people that use a park versus how many tourists use the mountain, it's pretty easy to say the parks are the bottom of the list as far as usage goes.  Think of it this way.  Terrain Parks are a big local draw.  Most of your usage comes from locals.  Tourists use the rest of the mountain and are here only a few days to a few weeks or so, but they drop more money into the mountain.  I'm not saying locals aren't important,  because you are and that's why i'm here.  But if a mountain starts to lose tourists, the parks will go away because that funding that goes into the park starts to go away.  ok,  now i'm rambling.  back on course...

Each resort has a different insurance company and the insurance company says what goes down.  If the mountain thinks that is unreasonable and would cost too much money, it is a business decision to take that away not an "i want to stop the progression of a sport."

As far as laws go, there will be more and more manditory park passes, there will be, in the future, certification of park builders.  Whether or not they want to certify each cat driver with a course or just have each operator take comprehensive test at the beginning of the season I don't know.  If it comes down to an insurance company telling a resort that their jumps need to be 32 degrees on the lip, it would be unreasonable.  Snow is an object that can change due to anything and everything.  It may be that they say for your small park you cannot have a jump over such and such degrees, for the medium it needs to be no more than such a degree and your large park between such and such degrees as far as the lip goes.  With that they will say if your lip is this degree the landing has to be this degree.  But that is already common knowledge, there are many formulas out there that take into account the speed of the object, the trajectory, and if you want to factor in wind resistance or not.  and it will give you the height at the apex and how far and the such. 

As far as making laws for jumps,  I say no way.  It would be impossible to regulate and would make resorts give up their park programs.  No matter how against racing you guys may or may not be,  they pay for their pratice time on the hill.  Or rather,  the club they are with pays for that practice time.  We have a list in the grooming office of who has what run reserved for racing and what times they are there until.  sometimes our winch boy goes out there at 5 and winches those runs off eagle so they are ready to train on from 6 or 7 until late. 

Ok.  I'm so off course with most of this post.  In a nice way, post your questions.  lets have a discussion rather than a bashing.

Thanks.  Mike

Thanks for the update mike. We really are fortunate to have such an amazing park here. 
 
you made a comment in the other thread about the insurance companies and stuff "not looking so good" if i remember right... what was that about? or are you allowed to tell us?

Thanks for the post mike, I was kind of getting worried about it for a sec there. I think that me and everyone else around here who skis park city for the park will more than willing go for park passes if thats what it ends up coming to. I personally think they are a great idea for the bigger parks at least(jonseys/kings) because there have def been more than a few times that i've seen gaper crusin' through the park like its another run and they are just looking to get hurt.

Oh totally,  It gets really annoying and it's a crappy part of the job to have to constantly tell tourists to please leave a park, that they are putting their kid in danger and everyone else in danger only to get yelled at and told to bugger off,  but in different words.  Which in turn, and i'm sure people have seen me towards the ends of weekends, makes the park staff very irritable and not in a good mood.  But, it's part of the job.  and until we close off the run and include a pass system for that run, we can't really do too much about it other than telling them a hundred times.  But it's just as frustrating to have people cutting ropes to closed parks.  We had a bunch of people duck into joneseys last season, closed, with patrol standing at the top.  I'm going to make a blog about this subject too,  it's completely different here than it was at meadows.  the atmosphere there was complete non anger, no one bagged on anyone else everyone was stoked to see everyone else (skier, snowboarder and yes, snowblader too....) ride.  Here it's the opposite where there is alot of hostility and anger and people not playing the team game.  So I would like that to end this year but that's going to go over as well as vodka at a church dance.

Lets see.  what else.  oh ya.  There are a few things to remember about the runs we have for the parks.  Joneseys is the only non black way other than muckers and the cat track to get to the bottom of bonanza.  and it was a good powder run for people.  So by us taking it away, people are bitter about that or still like to ski that run.  the same goes for Kings Crown, it used to be a good cruiser because of it's pitch the entire run.  So there are still people that come down there to cruise.  Until we park pass those runs we can't do a whole lot about it because by entering that park you consent to have read the sign and everything that comes with it.  which I doubt anyone does.

ummm,  your welcome,  I enjoy this side of the job.  My whole goal is to inform people.  they seem to be alot less hostile if they know what is going on on-hill.  So that's why i'm on here.  If I didn't enjoy it, I would have left newschoolers a while ago because the bickering on here is ridiculous these days:)  There are also a few new ways of getting mountain information we are working on.  I am going to sit down with the web dude Eric this week and try to get those things up and running soon.  I'll let you know more about those later.

About the insurance.  I get discouraged easily,  a bad trait to have.  The talks we've had with the insurance cover alot of our internal workings that I can't go into.  We are pretty much saying bye to the normal way everyone is used to running a park and it's flipped 180 degrees on us.  But saying that, it's still fun to be on the hill every day and it's just more paperwork and meetings.  As far as on hill things go,  we haven't had that meeting yet and it's looking like sometime in december when it will happen.  Whether or not it's a good news bad news meeting I don't know but when i'm not freaking out about the industry being ruined by people that have no right to be in that park anyway, I think things won't change a whole lot.  We'll see and when we do have that meeting i'll give a summary of what I can.  It's hard trying to blog and such, because of the fine line of things that can be said that I may or may not be allowed to say, or may or may not get fired for.  So if i seem like i'm not answering something fully, it's not because i'm trying to be an ass, it's because i'm trying not to cross that boundary.

Aaaaand I think that did it for questions this round...

I'll have a new blog up tonight, or because it's already 9 and I still have 10 loads of laundry left, it might be tomorrow night.  either way, check it out sometime this week.  It will have alot of information about the freestyle initiative we use, the NSAA smart style program as well as some information about safety patrol and those runs that are designated slow zones.  There will also be some videos, if I can find them, that the NSAA puts out.  If you guys can watch them and make it through the corny safety videos that would just educate everyone on what the industry uses for their safety programs.

Also,  the new pcride site has an area that you can post your own pictures, as well the main site has an area that you can submit to have it as the photo of the day.  no more waiting around for me to take your photo or me calling frantically at 330 saying i need to get a photo of the day.  Which actually worked out well most of the time last year.  Also,  if you sign up on the I Ride Park City page, it will show you the teaser to the new movie coming out next year.  And before any of the questions, yes there will be a ski movie too along with the snowboard and Jim is pushing for the ski teaser hopefully early on this season.

thanks mike for keepin us up to date. i think it will help hostility this year.

THANKS MIKE!  And I agree about getting to the bottom of the hate.  This cult is definately a good start to ending it.  ALOTTA Cool kids in this cult.  YAY!

A park pass is definitely a good idea. I would be all for it.