Jump to content


All Terrain Park Mountain Sections


8 replies to this topic

#1 snoloco

    Established User

  • Member
  • 444 Posts:
  • Interests:Skiing
    Ski lifts
    Ski areas

Posted 23 November 2014 - 03:57 PM

Mountain Creek which is my home mountain has one of the best terrain parks in the east. Here is how it came to be. I know that Mount Snow also has an all park section, but do any others. If so, please list them. It would also be cool to know how they came to where they are now.


Mountain Creek has two sections. They are North and South. North includes Vernon Peak and Granite Peak and contains the original Vernon Valley and Great Gorge North. South includes South Peak and Bear Peak, contains the original Great Gorge summit (South Peak) and the Kamikaze slope (Bear Peak). In the early Mountain Creek years, Bear Peak was the race lift and racing was done on the Big Bear or Kamikaze trails. There were terrain parks on both Vernon and South Peaks.

In the mid 2000's, they decided to build a hotel at Vernon Base. This was really kind of a flop and they still have a hard time filling it up. This still caused more skier traffic at Vernon Peak which was the main base area with South Base being left underutilized, so there were huge lines at the Vernon and Granite lifts and almost no one at South or Bear. The terrain parks were also split up, so people who skied or rode them would have to go all the way across the mountain to get to the other park.

In 2007, Mountain Creek solved this by segregated the mountain by removing all the terrain parks from Vernon Peak and turning those into blue square trails. They then made all of South Peak and all of Bear Peak terrain parks. South Peak had the smaller features and Bear Peak had the larger more advanced ones. Remember how I mentioned earlier that the Bear Peak Express was the race lift. They moved the race program over to Vernon Peak on Zero G when South was converted to be 100% park. This made The Cabriolet and the Vernon Triple the race lifts.

This worked great for the park kids. They now had their own section where they could hit all the features they wanted and almost everyone over there was a similar skier or rider type.

However, this did not work well for the race program at all. Racers sometimes have to carry an extra pair of skis up the mountain. On a chairlift, it is simple to carry the extra pair over their shoulder when they ride On The Cabriolet, you have to remove skis, stand for the entire ride, and hold your equipment for the entire ride. This doesn't work well if you have two pairs of skis to carry. For this reason, the racers were stuck using the Vernon Triple which runs so slowly that many racers probably missed their runs down and were disqualified, or delayed the race.

Eventually, the local high school race teams had enough of this and decided to move to other places in the area such as Hidden Valley and Mount Peter. The Mountain Creek race team also did consistently poor in races due to bad training facilities. This caused many of their customers to go to Hidden Valley and Mount Peter as well.

In 2013, Mountain Creek wanted to get the racers back, so they decided to move racing back to Bear Peak utilizing Kamikaze and Big Bear. When they did this, they removed all the park features from Bear Peak. They did this because they thought that the Bear Peak Express did not have the capacity to support their flagship which is the terrain park, and be the race lift.

Removing park features from Bear Peak proved to be a very poor decision. The entire 13-14 season, all the park kids needed to use the South Peak Express. This caused some crazy lift lines sometimes exceeding 20 minutes. Meanwhile on the other lift, there was almost never a line and many days and empty chairs because none of the park kids wanted to ride it. The only times that it occasionally had a short line is if there was a big race going on. The whole season, the lift ran empty and few people rode it. It never ran much faster than 800 fpm while the South Peak Express was consistently running at or close to full design speed.

It turned out that the Bear Peak Express could support the terrain park and be the race lift without much trouble. Before this season, Kamikaze was regraded and widened. This allowed it to be a better race trail, and be certified for all events. It should also allow the two trails that merge in and out of it to be open, even if it is closed for racing when previously they had to be closed too if there was a race on Kamikaze. Big Bear is extremely wide and in 2 sections. I am thinking that one section gets a massive jump like it did before, and the other may be used for race training. All of the trails on Bear Peak will have park features this year, except for Kamikaze which is the race trail. Hopefully this will even out the crowds much more on each lift.

#2 DonaldMReif

    Established User

  • Member
  • 1,980 Posts:

Posted 23 November 2014 - 07:12 PM

Keystone has the A51 terrain park which has its own double chairlift. Part of the Peru Express lift travels over the park as well.
YouTube channel for chairlift POV videos and other random stuff:
https://www.youtube....TimeQueenOfRome

#3 machskier

    Established User

  • Member
  • 70 Posts:
  • Interests:Skiing, mountain biking, cycling, hiking, kayaking

Posted 24 November 2014 - 04:35 AM

Sunday River is getting close now with T72 and 3D park trails side by side on North Peak with the North Peak Express. Ironically/oddly, the beginner graduate trail Dream Maker is right next door and on he same lift so I doubt the entire peak will ever be 100% park.

#4 liftmech

    lift mechanic

  • Administrator II
  • 5,916 Posts:
  • Interests:Many.

Posted 24 November 2014 - 07:06 AM

Terrain park location can be a touchy subject. No matter where you place them, there always seems to be a section of your skiing public who will be unhappy about it. Copper's has been in many locations over the years, as has the halfpipe. The park was on Bouncer once, a fairly steep blue run, but patrol found that there were more injuries there than they expected so it was moved to Loverly, a wide beginner run. I personally liked the run as a cruiser and place to teach people so I wasn't too pleased with that decision. The 'kids' park' was at the top of L for a couple of seasons but it was too out of the way so it was moved to the small pitch at the top of the Flyer below Timberline Patrol. That was better but once H-quad went in it moved to its current location directly at the top of the big park. It's nice to have all the park sections in one part of the hill, for sure. A couple of years ago the crew added some 'pocket parks' to the route back to the bottom of the lift, for more consistency. The pipe has gone from Carefree to Loverly to its current location on lower Main Vein. I think we've settled on the locations for all of them because we've invested in infrastructure-- snowmaking, exit routes, power, and the like.
Member, Department of Ancient Technology, Colorado chapter.

#5 DonaldMReif

    Established User

  • Member
  • 1,980 Posts:

Posted 24 November 2014 - 09:13 AM

I think that as a Breck skier, the parks on Peak 9 have always changed. The Peak 8 parks have always been at their current location. But the locations of the auxiliary terrain parks have always changed. Peak 9 used to have two terrain parks: Eldorado, and Lower Gold King below Lower American. There was a break in the Eldorado Terrain Park about halfway down to allow people coming from Quicksilver Super6 and Ten Mile Station to access the Mercury SuperChair. Eventually, I think Eldorado was shortened to only be the section of that trail between the Mercury SuperChair and the bottom of Lift A, and now has been removed completely.

The Gold King park moved from year to year. In 2007, it was moved to Sundown below Lower American. In 2008, it vanished. In 2009, it reappeared with a pipe off of Country Boy. In 2010, a small park appeared on Gold King near the junction with Volunteer, and a new park appeared on the lower section of Bonanza below Lower American, tucked into the trees between the Mercury and Beaver Run SuperChairs (one uses the Beaver Run SuperChair to lap the park since you can't return to the Mercury SuperChair from the park). As of 2013, the only park now on Peak 9 is the Bonanza park, and it only uses the lower section that doesn't get much traffic (I'm sure most Bonanza traffic that intends to ski the run only goes back to the Mercury SuperChair).
YouTube channel for chairlift POV videos and other random stuff:
https://www.youtube....TimeQueenOfRome

#6 NHskier13

    Established User

  • Member
  • 567 Posts:
  • Interests:Yes

Posted 24 November 2014 - 03:26 PM

Sunapee has their "Spruce" area where 3 of the 4 (5 if you count the beginner park) parks are. (See Lower Left part of Mountain)
Posted Image

Crotched also has the "Valley" Quad lift which services a couple green mini-parks and one top to bottom big park.
Posted Image

Those are the 2 places that I ski that people usually actually do the parks and stuff there that I can think of anyway. Every place near me has a park, but Crotched and Sunapee are the most significant.

#7 snoloco

    Established User

  • Member
  • 444 Posts:
  • Interests:Skiing
    Ski lifts
    Ski areas

Posted 24 November 2014 - 03:49 PM

I know that Mount Snow has Carinthia as their all park section. I think that only Mountain Creek's park is bigger than that. Mountain Creek is about 170 acres and South and Bear Peaks are like 40% of that. IDK what the acreage on Carinthia is, but there is only one main lift vs 2. Mount Snow and Mountain Creek always seem to compete neck and neck for the #1 spot for the best park in the east. This year it was Mount Snow, last year it was Mountain Creek, before that it was Mount Snow, next year it will be Mountain Creek again and so on.

#8 SkiDaBird

    Established User

  • Member
  • 509 Posts:
  • Interests:Skiing

Posted 24 November 2014 - 07:49 PM

I personally like the Alta approach. Treat the entire mountain as a park. If you build ridiculous kickers, patrol will ignore them. Although the don't actually have a man made park anywhere.
This is partly due to the fact that I don't like the steep angles found on man made jumps, my favorites being the causal rollers that launch you extremely far downhill if you hit them fast or just the straight cliff drop. Also, parks aren't very prevalent in Utah, with only Brighton and PCMR being known for excellent parks.

#9 DonaldMReif

    Established User

  • Member
  • 1,980 Posts:

Posted 27 November 2014 - 08:52 PM

I think the Riva Bahn Express midway unload station could be this for Vail, since it's primarily used to access the Golden Peak terrain park (plus a few minor blue trails, and a catwalk that leads to the Highline Express lift).
YouTube channel for chairlift POV videos and other random stuff:
https://www.youtube....TimeQueenOfRome





1 User(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users