Park Maintenance

Haha you're taking this mess on Josh? Best of luck to ya brutha don't expect any help from management!

We'll see, if were doing it it'll be me and Van I think if he can, so it won't be just me. I'm not doing it all by myself thats for sure ahah.

are you going to be just a guy on the crew or the manager?

Haha, things aren't run like that at all here.

For the last 10 years or so the local mountain has never (to my knowledge) provided any park rails/boxes/jibs etc.. All features are donated by people in the community. Last year there was two or three main guys, unpaid, who made a bunch of new features and received a lot of donations for the park. Its all unpaid volunteer work, and we as the community have to provide the features most the time. These guys are starting to move away or get busy with work though, so its time for some new people to start running the park.

So basicely what me and tbayskier might be doing, if we choose too, would be minor maintenance, design of the park, and organizing and carrying out all the actual park builds, with some help from the grooming guys.

The hill actually bought two boxes for this season though, so the park won't be 100% donated stuff this year thank goodness.

Exactly what Josh said. We have a small hill that is pretty poor and doesn't know what a real park looks like. A combination of not caring and not knowing what a real park can do is hurting our hill. With lots of work we could have a pretty respectable rail park, though I doubt we'll ever have a good jump. Our hill does not have a competent park cat driver or snow maker, so rails are probably going to be our focus.

To get an idea of the state of our park, a local church youth group donated money to the main volunteers last year, to put towards making more rails. A CHURCH DONATION ARE YOU KIDDING ME

However there is hope, last year the community worked together and did an awesome job on the park,(as far as volunteer work could go anyway) and I think management is starting to notice what a difference a good park makes, and they bought two boxes for this season.

Good luck to you guys sounds like a lot of work.

Something you might want to consider in the future. See if any other mountains that are semi close have any old rails that they would be willing to sell you. Chances are they wont sell them to YOU but if the resort would put a little bit of money for a park budget or something they might be able to buy them. That way you should be able to get some decent rails for a cheaper price than getting all new metal and welding them.
Also if your mountain has any old snowmaking pipe laying around they make great rails. Takes a while to get all the rust off the top and they will look pretty rough when they are done, but as long as you get all the rust off the top they will slide just fine.

i remember back when steamboat made a balla park :'(

Worked a season and a half in the park at Stevens Pass in WA, a season of it as a supervisor.

For sure this times a million. Also you have to be ready to shoot down kids HORRIBLE HORRIBLE ideas.

"We could make this an up flat left right, loop, elbow kink down flat down up cannon."

And you're like nooooooooo.

I dont understand what you do to prevent rails from getting buried

someone posted a pic of heinous steamboat park uniform, so I figured I would follow up with

If it's going to snow enough to bury them, dig 'em out. If you're going to make snow, dig 'em out or trust that your snowmakers will make sure they don't get buried (not the best plan, they're already busy enough, it's better to dig them out). (And by "dig 'em out" I mean remove them from the trail).

If it's just snowing, leave something to mark them and shovel them out and it's no big deal.

If you're making snow, GET THAT SHIT OUT OF THE GROUND or you'll be wishing you did as you beat your way through ice and heavy wet snow to get to them. That's made even better when you aren't 100% sure where the rail is and when you have multiple features or very large ones.


Also gives you a reason to change shit up. You're going to dig things out a couple times a season regardless. Just use that as a time for a park rebuild.

Avoid all night park builds. And become friendly with salt.

I've only worked in parks in relatively snowy areas, so I don't have as much experience with your ice problems. As far as I know there's no way to turn ice into not-ice, so you've basically got two options: chop it up as best you can, or cover it up.

I've worked on glacier parks where all the jump mounds and rail tiers are dug out of the glacial ice, then covered with whatever snow is available. So at the end of the day there's big ice patches in the landings. The best solution for that is to have your groomer cover up that ice patch with snow, and then help him out packing it down. Always support your groomer when he's working close to rail features, and don't let him get too close to the feature with the blade or the tiller. Five minutes of extra work by hand is better than him destroying your box in a second with one wrong move.

For lips on, your best chance is probably chopping up the top layer of ice as best you can with a shovel or a pickax, and then topping it off with a layer of snow that you can (hopefully) shovel up on to the lip from beside the feature. If you consistently chop down the ice and keep softer snow on top of it, it'll be easier to work with.

A snowcat tiller or, even better, the blade can be very useful in chopping up ice. If you're trying to break up gnarly ice patches, try bringing in your snowcat operator close to the feature with hand signals, and have him drop the blade straight down multiple times on the ice. That's more effective than the tiller, which will usually just skip over the top when it's real icy.

Another helpful tip when dealing with boxes in ice: if you're trying to move a rail feature around and it's frozen in solid, your cat operator can give it a nudge with the wing of the blade from the side of the feature, or possibly even get the blade under an overlapping edge and pry it up. Just make sure that you've got an operator who is precise and cautious, otherwise don't even bother trying this because you'll have a park full of broken boxes.

? I don't get this at all.

For the night part: Building at night sucks, it's cold, and it's hard to tell whether you're putting in features crooked. (Obviously you want your jumps to line up, and your rails to not be pointing every which way.)

For the salt part: read the rest of the thread.

Not really. At night you don't have kids in your way. It's cold but it's winter, it's always cold. The cat's warm so whatever. You have pretty solid lights on the front of the cat. If you can't line it up like that you need a new hobby.

And of course. But what's the point of building jumps during the day if you don't have to. That means you have to keep that trail closed. If you build it at night you can change your park without ever leaving people without shit to hit. It's different if you have 10 parks. But if you only have one or a few, closing down the main park run for a day if you don't need to is pointless. Also everything will have set nicely by morning and you'll be golden.


And I have no problems with salt. I guess I should have quoted selection.

I`v never worked for a mountain but banging chunks of hard frozen snow on top of boxes seems to make them more slippery. (not big chunks but the fine powdery ice that falls off) Can anyone relateÉ

I always just scrape off the sticky painted or iced spots on the rail with the edge of my ski and smooth it out

Haha, I see where our dispute is. My experience is on hand crew, hence my aversion to night work. The places I've worked have no night skiing so it's easy to get most builds done after closing and before pitch blackness. The groomers definitely get lots of build work done nights including putting in features themselves, but usually the hand crew's out of there by nightfall.

And you're right, lining up features isn't usually much a problem unless you're cutting a straight-lines Europark. When you're doing that in the dark, and the next day you end up with Jump #1 pointing 25 degrees to the left, and Jump #2 pointing 25 degrees to the right in what's supposed to be a straight jump line after you spent 3 or 4 hours hand-cutting walls, that's when night work sucks. :)

Shit. True true. I didn't think of that. You def don't get much time in dec/jan to build after the mountain closes. You're up there fixing shit and all the sudden it's dark. Only place I really did work without having a cat around at night was this one mountain, but the park was on the main face at the bottom. Worked a night to set up for a rail jam once and just flipped on a couple lights and got everything put in to set up.

I can def see how that would be a bitch/ impossible to build with a headlamp and complete darkness.

this, i remember there being a ton of stuff in there