BC-Mark

Thanks everyone. I appreciate the birthday wishes.

The Terrain Park cam doesn't have power right now due to construction. It should be back up in a few weeks. We should be launching the new website in the next 7 days with the winter and new interactive terrain park pages coming shortly thereafter.

The Subaru is a 1990 Legacy Sedan. I tried to get a Brat complete with the death seats in the bed but we couldn't round one up.

The tree bonk is a poplar that is in the 60' to 80' range and the trunk is 3' to 4' in diameter. I think Andy is planning on building a vertical spine up to the trunk. As for the Subaru, we are planning on putting a rail on top. The shape of the rain hasn't been determined yet but we will post pictures as soon as it is comlete. Thanks for the positive feedback. We love what we do and we hope it shows. As for increasing the vert, we are requesting all guests bring a bag of soil each visit and deposit it at the top of the mountain. In 50 or 60 years we should be set!

The cliff drop will be located where the second entrance to Cascade used to be. There is a nice drop that we enhanced with the help of an excavator and a some big boulders. It will be the drop in for the urban line that will be located on skiers left of the new Cascade Park. AJ will be here for Nastar pacesetting trials and will be on hand for at least one evening of Nastar. We will also be auctioning off a 3 hour private lesson with AJ and new race skis and bindings to help benefit Dan Brocious, our snowmaker that was injured in a car accident on July 2nd.

Ok, now that we are in August and projects are well underway, I feel safe in announcing the changes for this coming season. Lifts: 1) We have removed the triple chair and are installing a new fixed grip quad in its place. 2) We have removed the beginner double chair and are refurbishing and reinstalling the old triple in place of the beginner double. Trails: 1) Timberline is being doubled in width to accomodate a dual race course. 2) We expanded the area to skiers left of the beginners carpet and created a new trail there to expand the beginner terrain. 3) We are closing the two mid-point entrances into Cascade and relocating the top entrance to provide a long steep roll in. The new entrance is just to skiers right of the top yurt under A-Lift. Cascade has been widened to an average width of 200'. We are moving the expert park to Cascade and it will include a new urban line complete with a 6' to 12' cliff drop and a huge tree bonk on an 80' Poplar. 4) We are closing all but the top entrance to the Black Bear Park and making it into an intermediate park. The jib garden to skiers left of the pipe will be expanded. Terrain Park Features: Andy is busy in the BC Iron Works creating a huge urban stair feature, a mobile adjustable pitch wall ride, a looonnnggg flat down box and a lot more new features to help showcase the new park set-up. We even have a Subaru donated by Becker Subaru that we are turning into a feature. The new website should be launched late next week and the terrain park section should be online shortly thereafter. We will be highlighting the new features on the site as Andy completes them. Snowmaking: Cascade, Upper Black Bear and Lower Black Bear, the new beginner trail (Teddy Bear) and Timberline will all receive new state of the art automated fan guns from SMI. We are also converting 12 existing wheel guns to tower mounted guns. All this will help us be more efficient and allow us to maximize every window of snowmaking temperatures we receive. Racing: We have hired former Olympian/US Ski Team Member AJ Kitt as the director of the race team. More information will be coming out in the next few weeks regarding the structure of the program and associated fees. See everyone soon!

Thanks for posting this. Dan does have health insurance but he is still hospitalized and at the very least his out of pocket for this year will be approximately $2500. He just started to speak again and was able to walk with the assistance of 2 people. He has a long road to recovery but his mom thinks he should be able to make a full recovery. I hope you all can make it out.

The focus of the forum is to provide an overview of what we are planning and get input from the skiers and riders on their wants and needs. Right now we would like to develop a J4/5 program, have a dedicated trail to run dual Nastar and also rent it for gate training or provide a fee based training night for the public that would be seperate from Nastar.

Thanks freeridintre. We are already planning for next year. So far it looks like the Cascade and Timberline expansions are a go. Looks like the tubing relocation will have to wait one more year since permitting isn't moving as quickly as we hoped. We are also keeping Andy Lenhart on year-round as a dedicated terrain park manager. He will spend his summer working on new features for next year and planning the layout.

We had every intention of staying open weeknights and full weekend hours as long as the conditions allowed, ideally into mid-april. The hot weather lately destroyed those hopes. Once the ground thaws and the snow starts to melt rapidly you end up with lots of water flowing under the snow so it is melting from both sides. We spent 2 hours yesterday discussing the upcoming snowmaking opportunities and, best case scenario, we would be able to make just under 15 acre feet of snow. That translates into less than 8" over the terrain we hoped to keep open. With the snow acting as an insulator for the thawed ground/flowing water it wouldn't last long enough to pay for the snowmaking expense. Let's hope that we have a colder winter next year so we can stockpile more snow on the parks and we can make it into April.

We had every intention of staying open weeknights and full weekend hours as long as the conditions allowed, ideally into mid-april. The hot weather lately destroyed those hopes. Once the ground thaws and the snow starts to melt rapidly you end up with lots of water flowing under the snow so it is melting from both sides. We spent 2 hours yesterday discussing the upcoming snowmaking opportunities and, best case scenario, we would be able to make just under 15 acre feet of snow. That translates into less than 8" over the terrain we hoped to keep open. With the snow acting as an insulator for the thawed ground/flowing water it wouldn't last long enough to pay for the snowmaking expense. Let's hope that we have a colder winter next year so we can stockpile more snow on the parks and we can make it into April.

We had every intention of staying open weeknights and full weekend hours as long as the conditions allowed, ideally into mid-april. The hot weather lately destroyed those hopes. Once the ground thaws and the snow starts to melt rapidly you end up with lots of water flowing under the snow so it is melting from both sides. We spent 2 hours yesterday discussing the upcoming snowmaking opportunities and, best case scenario, we would be able to make just under 15 acre feet of snow. That translates into less than 8" over the terrain we hoped to keep open. With the snow acting as an insulator for the thawed ground/flowing water it wouldn't last long enough to pay for the snowmaking expense. Let's hope that we have a colder winter next year so we can stockpile more snow on the parks and we can make it into April. On the plus size, we did have some piles of snow that we were able to push out last night and conditions are much better today. Hope to see everyone at the pond skimming on Sunday.

We are holding an organizational meeting at Bear Creek of Thursday March 16th at 7pm. We are attempting to spread the word to interested parents so that we can can their input for the 2006-2007 season. Bear Creek is going to be expanding the "Timberline" trail and turning it into a designated racing trail and arena. The idea is to expand the program to offer race training, clinics, etc. in addition to our NASTAR. Event will be held in the Mountainside Room in the Banquet Hall.

I am happy to report no broken bones but I do have a serious bruise that covers the majority of my butt and some heavily shaken internal organs. Lessons learned: A) I am too old and fragile I should be a bubble boy

Whoops, we were expanding the wireless system in the hotel and duplicated the cam IP when we added a switch so sometimes you were connecting to a switch that did nothing and sometimes you would connect to the camera. We fixed the problem last week and hope to have a second robo cam up and working by today or tomorrow.

I will talk to the operators and make sure they are giving correct info. The scoop is we plan on running Nastar as long as the conditions hold.

Sorry guys, I forgot that the groomers were getting the park ready for the comp and that delayed the boarder-x on timberline. The plan for next year is to widen timberline and add a dedicated snowmaking line for the trail. Given the response to eliminating the boarder-x we are formulating a plan to keep the boardercross and still use the trail for nastar. The also allows us to have timing on the trail so we can run boarder-x comps next year. We are toying with the idea of adding a march boarder/skier-x to the event list for this year and run it through the black bear park and finish through the pipe. Any interest in that?

Give us your feedback on the President's Day Weekend...good, bad and ugly. Your comments will help us plan for the future and continue to improve. Thanks for participating.

Good suggestions but we have a couple issues. A is already running very close to it's design max speed. B is running within 5% of the maximum rope speed. This weekend is the first time we have consistently had lift lines longer than 15 minutes so we have to reevaluate our lift capacity and adjust our long range planning. We may have to address lift capacity sooner than we anticipated. I am glad people recognized me in my new career! I had fun running lifts this past week and it makes me appreciate lift attendants a whole lot more!

Timberline was closed the other day because we pounded it with snow and weren't able to get it groomed out. We should have a good boarder/skier x course by Wednesday. The plan is to widen timberline and beef up snowmaking on it so we can have it open early in the season. We will keep the banks and jumps but also be using it for Nastar so we will have to get a bit creative. The positive side is that it will be wide enough to safely run a 4-up comp over there without fear of sending people over the turn and into the trees.

Let's see how the weather develops on Monday 1/23/06. If we can still run Nastar Tuesday night, I will offer a Club Day discount on Tuesday night this week. If we get hit hard with rain and are unable to put together a course for Tuesday, we will schedule the special Tuesday Club Night for 1/30/06.

Chuck is working on some new signage for the park and we hope to have it up soon. We have also started playing the smart style video on a loop in the cafeteria every 5 minutes. We will be gating the parks and have better signage that will hopefully make people aware of the dangers of the park and the proper park etiquette if they do proceed.

April riding in the park is a possibility as long as the weather turns around. If that happens, we will pound Black Bear and Cascade to try and extend things into April.

We have a sketch of the proposed layout for the new park and changes to the existing park. The plan allows for one point of access for the super park and one point of access for the intermediate park and the creation of a beginner park. We will be implementing the beginner park in a few weeks to test out the concept. It will be located on riders left of the bottom of Kodiak and will consist of a few rollers, a few low rails and boxes and maybe a small tabletop. The new intermediate park will have one line that flows top to bottom and session areas on the left side of the park for riders that want to hike a feature. We plan on implementing designated hiking paths so people aren't walking up under a blind feature. I have spoken briefly about this with Andy and we may test a few of these areas this season if we get more snow. We will have copies of the sketch to show at the next terrain park forum. What day of the week and time works best for everyone?

Typically we see a dramatic decrease in skier visits after the first full weekend in March even it the conditions are perfect. We notice that park users in particular are the first to come in the early season and the last to stay in the late season. The idea would be to shut down ski school, daycare and rentals, go to a minimal menu in the cafeteria and run a couple ticket windows. We are trying to determine whether the operating costs can be offset by an increase in visitors. We have readjusted our power buying schedule and can make snow relatively affordably through March if conditions allow.