Stop making progression parks inconvinient 2019

I don't know what a progression park is I ski in Europe, is it like a beginner park or like intermediate?

Yeah what’s a progression park guy? For those who shred euroland.
Guessing it’s a beginner park.

Segsxipark crews stop putting progression parks on beginner ski lifts and area that have heavy beginner traffic, most beginners in the park can at the least navigate the mountain.

Progression parks should have rope tow and giant signs so that total jerries know not to side hit, Or Worse.. because When they do that the park crew will never go back to the progression park to maintain the lips. It’s like progression parks are looked down upon even though they are essential for everyone who wants to ski/ snowboard in the park.

**This thread was edited on Oct 12th 2018 at 11:48:58pm

To be honest, I had to read the whole thing at least 5 times before getting the gist of what you are trying to say.

Beginner Parks (progression parks?) are in the beginner zones for a good reason; it keeps them out of the advanced snow parks, the park equals the riders skill ability and the risk level of hitting these snow wedges is quite low. Most beginners make their first turns, then want to hit the park. The progression parks distracts them from the real deal due to their obviousness.

Signage: 99% of people have a 10 word, 3point attention span...at best. You can try to put up a "ethics rules" sign, but not a single person will ever read it. Half of the beginners "accidentally" end up in the park after skiing past 3 danger signs and a huge banner written "SNOW PARK" in 3 different languages. There is no need to put up signs to explain everything, they have to figure out the ethics rules there. Plus, the advanced riders have to develop their sense of situational awareness in those parks. Noobs will be flying in every direction. I got hit so many times by out of control 5-6 year olds while their parents encourage that behavior. progression parks teach you to keep track of the people around you.

Quality: Not a single beginner cares about the shape of a lip or how a rail is installed... they just want to get "air". They are machined groomed at night, so you wanna be there first thing in the morning to avoid getting tracked out, bumpy messes of snow. There is no real risks on these things, nothing has to be perfect. Volunteers prefer taking care of the big gnarly hits anyway. If progression park quality really annoys you; talk to management or learn to use your skis as a shovel.

Freestyle pretty much said it.

Also are you talking about beginner oriented terrain parks like Small size features? A lot of places have them on the mountain but the progression and extra small features are on the bunny hill. There's been a huge push for terrain based learning. All kinds of berms, rollers, halfpipes, etc to help beginners learn to ski/ with less effort. Imo it absolutely makes sense to have beginner features in these areas. People absolutely want to try to hit the grinder box or a rampjump as they get the hang of skiing. You see them trying to catch air off rollers with a massive smile and some horrifically uncoordinated looking legs.

Generally the beginner stuff does take a backseat on maintenance places. It depends. I've always tried to put effort into it especially smaller mtns. I think sometimes it comes down to all the other parks being located near each other and it sometimes being a mission to hit beginner stuff. Also that stuff is getting absolute NUKED by side rollers/jumpers/wedgers/duckwalkers/rocktofakie and anything else you can imagine. There's no point in perfectly squaring them sometimes, and can be almost better to leave them more beefy to survive the onslaught better. I've def worked places where people straight hate beginner terrain and won't maintain it because it isn't "cool" enough.

Idk. I think the beginner shit is pretty dope. The same way the awesome changes in park building have me stoked, I dig the TBL stuff. It's cool to make skiing as well as park skiing more accessible and easy to learn for people. It used to be, go up some green or blue trail and try not to die. I think these things are good for the sport.

I love building the cool photoshoot type stuff but I groomed our beginner area last year with all the tbl, carpets, and mini park features, and it never really bothered me. Plus it's cool to stop by in the day and see it all in use.

I just hate when I want to learn something and go to the plain old flatbar which has a huge crater in the landing, making anything other than a perfect landing assured death. If I want a clean landing I have to go to the 20ft off the ground mega flatbar of the dfdfdfdfdfdfdf super kink that nobody's touched all day.

Why don't they put those mats they sometimes have in lift lines under the snow? As long as you keep the mat snow covered it won't turn into a giant rut.

there should just be mini parks all over the mountain

for real though, more places need to build parks like the candyland park at brighton. It has a lot of features that are small but challenging and some that are perfect for learning new tricks. You have to go across a big flat to get to it so there are never any beginners. I think what we really need are better intermediate parks like that.

mattm7I don't know what a progression park is I ski in Europe, is it like a beginner park or like intermediate?

basically this, just simple rails and easy jumps

DrZoidbergI just hate when I want to learn something and go to the plain old flatbar which has a huge crater in the landing, making anything other than a perfect landing assured death. If I want a clean landing I have to go to the 20ft off the ground mega flatbar of the dfdfdfdfdfdfdf super kink that nobody's touched all day.

Why don't they put those mats they sometimes have in lift lines under the snow? As long as you keep the mat snow covered it won't turn into a giant rut.

Unfortunately the biggest problem is usage generally. When the features is fixed end of day/overnight the snow has time to set ideally before the mtn opens. If the snow is good anow and the temps cold, this leaves a nice firm but edgeable product for the morning. Once that snow gets toen up, even if the park crew throws more snow in there, it really never has the time or temps to bond like it does overnight. It will make a difference but depending on how many people hit it, its not going to last for too long. Its worth keeping up with, but when you have 100+ features in and 6-8 people on day staff, its tough to keep up. Pair that with the fact that some intermediate parks get fucking nuked. The volume of people landing in the same spot, many times in a wedge or sideways. The snow you try and rake or shovel in never really has a chance.

Unfortunately the bigger features sometimes stay in better shape because less people hit them, and the people that do hit them clean and and land in different spots. Its not that the park crews generally just maintain the gnar shit, but less traffic = more life.

It's amazing how fucked just the trail gets in the busy parks on a crowded day. Ive seen head height berms at the entrance fence and all kinds of halfpipe action between features from those speed checks.

At the end. Of the day its snow not concrete. Not really much you can do. In the spring some salt goes along way though.

DrZoidbergI just hate when I want to learn something and go to the plain old flatbar which has a huge crater in the landing, making anything other than a perfect landing assured death. If I want a clean landing I have to go to the 20ft off the ground mega flatbar of the dfdfdfdfdfdfdf super kink that nobody's touched all day.

Why don't they put those mats they sometimes have in lift lines under the snow? As long as you keep the mat snow covered it won't turn into a giant rut.

To me, this very telling about the thoughtfulness that went into the design and the layout of a park. It's absolutely essential that popular types of features have multiple options next to each other. If the average rider is demolishing a flat bar give the people more flat bars. If no one touches the massive DFDFDFDFDFDFD all day and it remains there, that's indicative of park manager that's not paying attention.

T.L.To me, this very telling about the thoughtfulness that went into the design and the layout of a park. It's absolutely essential that popular types of features have multiple options next to each other. If the average rider is demolishing a flat bar give the people more flat bars. If no one touches the massive DFDFDFDFDFDFD all day and it remains there, that's indicative of park manager that's not paying attention.

I think sometimes they just build things for the ZOMG LOOK WHAT WE BUILT!!!! factor. I mean at a place like breck or keystone, sure, throw up those huge features. But at some little hill on the east coast, they should go more intermediate. On any given day there's very few people who even hit the bigger stuff anyway. GIve me a nice long flatbar of resonable height off the ground, not one so low I drag tips doing switchups or spinning out, or that I have to spin as hard as I can to even 270 out.

Jumps especially need intermediate options. They can never seem to get it between launch you to the moon levels of kick with ultra steep landings that require perfect speed versus barely enough to do a 180. I just want to get comfortable with 5s and 7s, not learn dubs or hit my first jump ever.

Your complaint should be directed for the most part at ski area upper management/corperate.... most terrain park staffs would love to build a fun/dope park for actual park riders to progress tricks. The fact is though, "progression parks" are just upper managements excuse to turn parks into a playground for gapers that have not even learned how to ski/ride properly yet.

.....and those of you throwing out ideas on how to fix/prevent bomb holes, haha just stop. Bomb holes always have been, and always will be...

its been said, beginner features in beginner zones, get better, move up to the harder zone with less traffic. Maintaining busy traffic zones is hard because features dont set up after being repaired and get thrashed right after getting fixed. Its not rewarding work.

oh my god the prog park at my home hill is such a joke it's not even funny

DrZoidbergI think sometimes they just build things for the ZOMG LOOK WHAT WE BUILT!!!! factor. I mean at a place like breck or keystone, sure, throw up those huge features. But at some little hill on the east coast, they should go more intermediate. On any given day there's very few people who even hit the bigger stuff anyway. GIve me a nice long flatbar of resonable height off the ground, not one so low I drag tips doing switchups or spinning out, or that I have to spin as hard as I can to even 270 out.

Jumps especially need intermediate options. They can never seem to get it between launch you to the moon levels of kick with ultra steep landings that require perfect speed versus barely enough to do a 180. I just want to get comfortable with 5s and 7s, not learn dubs or hit my first jump ever.

I remember even on here sometimes people would be asking for tips on what to build for some small mountain. Should we build a z rail, s rail, 3 dfds, etc. It's like nah, build several flat rails and boxes.

I love me a good z rail etc, but at the end of the day, flat and down rails/boxes are some of what I've seen hiked the most over the years. Especially the intermediate length ones set up at a reasonable height.



2nd option can be tough with jumps to line up the speed so you don't just send the fuck out of the 2nd or 3rd jump. that said, sometimes if you slide out or just don't feel you have the speed, it's nice to be able to pull out and hit the smaller option. Also I'm not a big fan of some of the absurdly steep jumps either.

This is a heavy discussion for such a basic concept.

DrZoidbergI think sometimes they just build things for the ZOMG LOOK WHAT WE BUILT!!!! factor. I mean at a place like breck or keystone, sure, throw up those huge features. But at some little hill on the east coast, they should go more intermediate. On any given day there's very few people who even hit the bigger stuff anyway. GIve me a nice long flatbar of resonable height off the ground, not one so low I drag tips doing switchups or spinning out, or that I have to spin as hard as I can to even 270 out.

Jumps especially need intermediate options. They can never seem to get it between launch you to the moon levels of kick with ultra steep landings that require perfect speed versus barely enough to do a 180. I just want to get comfortable with 5s and 7s, not learn dubs or hit my first jump ever.

That "ZOMG LOOK WHAT WE BUILT!!!! factor" reminded me of what a park nearby did to claim having a 30+ footer...

**This post was edited on Oct 14th 2018 at 1:31:35pm

Because I'm tired of fixing bomb holes.

SPK_That "ZOMG LOOK WHAT WE BUILT!!!! factor" reminded me of what a park nearby did to claim having a 30+ footer...

**This post was edited on Oct 14th 2018 at 1:31:35pm

West mountain sacrificed any safety standards or general logic to build a 100 footer with enough snow for maybe a 40 footer. Made sense because it was "for the pros" who def showed up to train on that piece of shit. I love some of the size claims at places though. Honestly I was always about the build. I'd rather hit a well built 70 than a shitty 30 and vice versa.

Idk, it's funny sometimes that size is the most important thing. Even if the size limits the amount of spins you can do, a well built jump over a shitty jump any time imo. If the jump sucks and it's even remotely big, I'll generally just avoid these days. It's 2018.

SPK_That "ZOMG LOOK WHAT WE BUILT!!!! factor" reminded me of what a park nearby did to claim having a 30+ footer...

**This post was edited on Oct 14th 2018 at 1:31:35pm

That is the most absurd thing I have ever seen. Youd need so much speed to not case the shit out of that every time.

i love that beginner park stuff is located where it is on a mountain. its usually towards the bottom in a high traffic area that funnels most to the lifts. this means i can go shred the woods or whatever trail and know i can do a hot lap through the beginner stuff just for kicks. its also super cool to see the young guns hitting that stuff. They are so amped on what they just did. its good for the sport in the future to have them start young. I wish we had this stuff when i was younger. instead i had to duck in from the side to the "snowboard" park and skiers were not allowed there. be blessed you even have a "progression park"

SPK_That "ZOMG LOOK WHAT WE BUILT!!!! factor" reminded me of what a park nearby did to claim having a 30+ footer...

**This post was edited on Oct 14th 2018 at 1:31:35pm

Perfect example of why I say that there are some resorts out there that are so ill-equipped to run a decent program, that there's a good chance they're doing more harm than good.

If someone dies on that jump the resort itself has given a lawyer everything they need to be sued into oblivion.

SPK_That "ZOMG LOOK WHAT WE BUILT!!!! factor" reminded me of what a park nearby did to claim having a 30+ footer...

**This post was edited on Oct 14th 2018 at 1:31:35pm

hoooooooly shit