advanced park : a waste of time?

[Timeless]

I've been thinking this one over a lot recently having spent quite some time at CB and reading the slating the rhodo park has generally got from people that don't work at CB.

 

To me it looks like they have done a reasonable job of creating some quite challenging features and they do seem to have been slowly adding and improving as they've gone. Now I'm ot a park rider so my view on how good / bad it is is irrelevant.

 

However, it strikes me that the effort required to build a maintain the park as it is now is completely wasted. There seem to be very few people that use it at all (presumably something to do with the park passes but more on that in a minute) and of those that do, only a tiny fraction (less than 5%) are hitting the jumps with enough speed to reach the landing and even fewer are attempting the rails.

 

Back to the park passes, they need people to watch those in the park and take away the passes if required. I watched from the raceway lift today as a young kid (maybe 12) rode up the side of the big flat-down rail and sat no more than 6 inches from the end of the rail (by the side of it) watching his friend have a go at the wall ride. While he sat there he was running his hand along the top of the rail. Presumably he had watched the video and gotten his pass

 

3 options for next year:

 

1) hire a big name park crew so that the label-concious park rats think it's a cool place to be.

2) down-grade it to be an extension of the laurel park, don't try to be something it's not

3) scrap it all together and use the trail for something more interesting to a wider variety of riders like a boardercross run, or plant it full if christmas trees for a man-made glade.

 

surely something has to change, no one seems to benefit from the current arrangement.

 

Feels free to tell me to keep out of this as I don't ride park, but I just wanted to share my thoughts.

[snorovr]

I think you have an extremely valid point, but don't wish to elaborate at this minute. Maybe a little later.

[Papasteeze]

Good post timeless...

[toast21602]

i personally didnt like the park at all. i have explained why in other posts, if you need to you can go back and look. one main reason why i feel that the park is not good is the trail that it is on. HOLY FLAT!

[Glenn]

Great post timeless. The park at CB is a failure, either they should cut there loses and pull out, or make some major moves.

[method9455]

I agree with Timeless.

 

I think based on the comments to the effect of "there isn't any progression from Laurel Glade" and the comments to the effect of "no serious park rat will ever waste their money there when JFBB is 20 minutes down the road" the answer should be a smaller features on the same trail.

 

Keep Laurel Glade as is in terms of difficulty (and improve setups would be nice).

 

Make Rhodo a step up from Laurel but not as high as it is right now. Keep the wall ride as is. Make the flat down have a 1 foot gap. Make the jumps have his/her take offs or smaller ones. Put in some 20 foot flat bars with a 6" gap type deal. Keep the pass to keep it safe and clean, work on the setups.

 

Instead you have a small park and a big park with no middle ground, and no one would want to go to the big park because it is not great - and there is great just down the road. Know your market. Your market is families - maybe one kid wants to throw it down a little in the park but isn't quite ready for a big jump, but is looking for more than the Laurel Glade park for an hour a day. Or maybe it is an afterschool ski club and some of the kids are past Laurel Glade but don't want to hit big things. Thats who you want. Park rats who want to clear a 6 foot gap onto a rail are more likely to take their money elsewhere.

 

I think the pipe sizes are good for the crowd. We know superpipes are actually easier - but they are too intimidating for the market. Don't rush building it next year and it will be great.

 

The good part about this is smaller features = less snow (makes free riders happy because it takes less away from them). Smaller features = safer (better for Camelback), park pass will still have all its advantages, and I think it fits the market much better than what they have, making customers happier.

[Papasteeze]

I would like them to hire a new qualified experienced park manager. I don't know who is in charge there, Tony somebody or another. But somebody is responsible for what is there.. I wish Tony would post. You around??? I worry though... Does anyone who know anything think that Rhodo is too flat to have an expert park? What if CB's expert park was a copy of Freedom Park - wouldn't that work?

[method9455]

Freedom Park @ BB, Sugar Park at MC, Khyber Pass @ MC, even Flying Fox & Exhibition at MC are super flat and they have great parks built on them of the size range we are talking about. A 20 foot table top can be built with a drop in ramp and you will have plenty of speed, and you probably don't need anything bigger than that at Camelback (and I don't think they have anything much bigger than that now)

[Papasteeze]

Now that is off season, it's a lot easier to get insightful information. I was really rooting for CB to notch things waaaaay up for last season. I got stoked on the hype over a "competition ready pipe" park passes. so forth and so on. I had a good conversation on the last day with the owner. CB moves slow and methodical..

 

What was hugely baffling to me was the amount of money that CB spent to put in the new pipe. I saw it a half dozen times and it sucked comparitively to a dozen or so other pipes at other resorts. I called out the park manager and groomer as being the reason for the ineptness.

 

I go this really good piece of info to think about for next year.

 

I had the same problem at my old hill. They bought a brand new Zaugg and only had a pipe for 2 years, and during those two years it was a very poorly built pipe. It had huge waves in it, the pitch of slope wasn't steep enough, and the constantly changing weather took a toll on the walls. Most of this was due to inexperience, from the Zaugg driver, to the "park crew", to the people riding and criticizing it. When mountain managers hear that the park is not doing well or people are getting hurt and complaining, they can do one of four things (known as the 4T's):

 

Terminate: get rid of it

 

Tolerate: allow it to stay in the condition it is

 

Transfer: give their problem to someone else (insurance companies)

 

Treat: make it better

 

It sounds like both of our mountains decided to tolerate the bad pipe, but then decided to terminate it.

 

now - in season 07/08 I believe there is a cutters camp in the budget - too little too late?

 

Discuss:

[Papasteeze]

They won't hire outside of CB. They have too many firmly entrenched employees.

[stevePSSC]

Camelback should hire the guys from Snow Grind to build their pipe and help them get their advanced park set up. They turned Blue's park into PAs most progressive and cutting edge park. Snow-Grind built a great halfpipe and they also built the swing-set box. check out their website www.snowgrind.com

 

 

haha well if snow grind is the company that produced the bus, swingset box and whatever else blue has that is just retarded then i dont want them workin on any other moutains around here.

 

 

Now if you are going to go with the Swingset idea HERE is how you build a nice swingset rail... not that stupid thing blue has

[rgrwilco]

Camelback should hire the guys from Snow Grind to build their pipe and help them get their advanced park set up. They turned Blue's park into PAs most progressive and cutting edge park. Snow-Grind built a great halfpipe and they also built the swing-set box. check out their website www.snowgrind.com

 

anyway, i think CB will get it together next year(park wise). there was so much criticism that they cannot ignore it. i think they should use the riders and skiers as consultants when building the park, public forums and such like BC had.

[Glenn]

now - in season 07/08 I believe there is a cutters camp in the budget - too little too late?

 

Discuss:

 

I don't know, we've seen a couple of mountains turn things around in one year, so it's not out of reach. CB just needs to get their focus on the right stuff. Towards the end of the season things weren't so bad, at CB. Certainly they could still be worlds better, and there could be a ton more features, but it looked like they were finally moving in the right direction.

 

I guess I haven't ridden enough pipes to know the difference, but CB's seemed pretty decent to me. There were boulder kids coming to CB to ride pipe the whole year just to practice pipe. So I guess it was better than BB's attempt at a pipe. I'm not going to say the pipe didn't have it's good and bad days, but the good days far out numbered the bad.

 

Cutters camp would make a huge difference if they follow through. Since they won't hire outside CB, then take your professional skilled groomers, and turn them into professional skilled park builders.

 

All that to say... I'm not holding my breath.

[stevePSSC]

well to give CB props the railjam they had at the end of the year was set up nicely i thought.. the 40ft downrail was a nice street style setup and the flat down was set up right so maybe CB can changes things next season and have good set usp

[skidude]

Rob, your not getting a pass to CB next year, are you?

[Boarder1x9]

is either park any good?

[jdew]

is either park any good?

 

They open this Saturday with Laurel Glade only. Won't know until then. I wouldn't expect much being that Saturday will be opening day and it will be the beginner park.

[toast21602]

... and it's camelback

[DHarrisburg]

I'll move back to PA and manage Camelback's park for 20k a season and a very generous budget to work with. I could turn CB around and make it the number one park destination in PA but the management there is so backwards that I think it'd be almost impossible to implement any of the changes I would want to make.

[Schif]

I'll move back to PA and manage Camelback's park for 20k a season and a very generous budget to work with. I could turn CB around and make it the number one park destination in PA but the management there is so backwards that I think it'd be almost impossible to implement any of the changes I would want to make.

Care to elaborate on the changes DH?

[DHarrisburg]

Care to elaborate on the changes DH?

 

I think I deleted the proposal I was working on but the biggies would be in-house rail fabrication, removal of the pipe and a reallocation of the funds (winch cat?), monthly focus groups with passholders, new park staff including a well-trained park-specific groomer, lengthen rhodo park to include part of the steep area down to the bottom of the run, sponsor support, increased budget (I don't know the actual numbers but I'd imagine part of the reasons why CB's parks suck so hard is due to being underfunded), more extensive event and contest schedule including weekly contests, and improved snowmaking capabilities in the parks.

[Shadows]

I think I deleted the proposal I was working on but the biggies would be in-house rail fabrication, removal of the pipe and a reallocation of the funds (winch cat?), monthly focus groups with passholders, new park staff including a well-trained park-specific groomer, lengthen rhodo park to include part of the steep area down to the bottom of the run, sponsor support, increased budget (I don't know the actual numbers but I'd imagine part of the reasons why CB's parks suck so hard is due to being underfunded), more extensive event and contest schedule including weekly contests, and improved snowmaking capabilities in the parks.

 

i like riding pipe, and cb's isnt that bad. plus they already have a winch cat.

and the steep part of rhodo is kind of useless for anything other than a landing to a jump. even then though there is no straight in-run to it. rhodo and raceway intersect at the bottom of a Y.

 

everything else is good though.

[DHarrisburg]

i like riding pipe, and cb's isnt that bad. plus they already have a winch cat.

and the steep part of rhodo is kind of useless for anything other than a landing to a jump. even then though there is no straight in-run to it. rhodo and raceway intersect at the bottom of a Y.

 

everything else is good though.

 

The pipe seems to be a huge money pit for CB and honestly the funds that are wasted on pipes that a handful of people ride would be better allocated for new rails and cat driver training. I love riding pipe but I'd much rather go to a mountain that has excellent rails and jumps with no pipe than a mountain with a half-assed pipe, poorly designed and constructed rails, and 20 foot jumps with mediocre lips and landings. I'm not suggesting a complete removal of tranny, you could take the pipe cutter that CB already owns and still build quarterpipes with it.

 

The steep part of rhodo would be used for a jump line. You could fit three decent sized jumps with dual-lips for different skilll levels and rope it off from the rest of the trail similar to what every major resort does when the park run is connected to a regular run (Mammoth's South Park is a perfect example of this).

[Shadows]

the only steep part of rhodo is the very end. and thats barely big enough for one decent sized jump. so im a little confused.

[method9455]

He is very right, the cost per hit on a pipe is huge compared to regular park features. I don't have numbers but lets say its 10,000 dollars for every 50 feet of pipe (about the amount of distance between hits) to build for snowmaking cost and initial construction. That makes a 300 foot pipe $50,000 in snow making and construction costs annually. I have no idea how accurate that is, but it doens' t matter. What we are talking about is a 13 foot/4 yard high pile of snow, about 18 feet/6 yard wide, and 50 feet/17 yard long, on both sides of the trail, or 13,000 cubic feet/400 cubic yards of snow. per 50 feet. Or 78000 cubic feet/1200 cubic yards of snow per half pipe. Plus the normal amount of snow under it. I'm assuming that there is no dirt under it, yes I know there is. But some snowmaking gets lots in the woods, some extra is needed to push around for the shape and the drop in, in the end lets call it 1200 cubic yards of snow. I don't know what it costs to make snow, but if it is $25 a cubic yard, you spend $30,000 on snow. It will take at least 40 hour week to construct it, between snowmaking time and pushing snow around and cutting it. That is $500 an hour, to pay for gas in a cat or two, salaries for a handful of guys, electricity for lights. The numbers sound right but the big assumption is that it is $25 a cubic yard, anyone have a better clue?

 

Ok lets eliminate that entire thing but keep the assumption of $25 a cubic yard for snow and $500 an hour for the park crew to build stuff.

 

A rail takes about 5-10 cubic yards for the ramp, build up the whole area under the rail with 20-40, and the landing with 20-40. We'll high ball it at 50 yards. I know you can do a crappy setup with only 3 yards for the ramp, but lets say we're building a nice plateau. So the snow is $1250, the rail is about the same price, and setup is about an hour. We are at $3000 for the feature. This is assuming 1) they build new rails for every single feature every single year. This is not the case. 2) that it takes THAT MUCH snow to put up a rail, obviously it doesn't, you can do it with very little, but lets say the terrain is really unsuitable for a rail so you have to level it out.

 

A small/medium jump is about 30 feet/10 yards long, 15 feet/5 yards wide, and 9 feet/3 yards high. That is 150 cubic yards of snow. Lets say it takes 300 yards, then we have $7200, A bit of setup, probably the whole day, so maybe 8 hours? That is 4,000 so $11,200 for a jump.

 

For the cost of the pipe you can put in 3 jumps and 10 rails on that trail. That gives you 13 features for 6 hits in the pipe. The actual numbers don't matter, just the ratios. If snow is $100 a cubic yard, then a pipe just that much more expensive, and if it is $1 a yard than the labor is the main factor, and again jumps/rails are a lot faster to setup than a pipe.

 

And with rails - once you build it, you keep it for years. With a pipe it melts away in the spring.

 

While pipes are nice, 90% of the park riders just aren't good enough to ride them. Whether it is their board being too de-tuned to keep an edge or their skill at high speed, most guys are jibbers first then jumps. The older you are the more likely you do jumps and pipe but in my high school there where two dozen guys who did jibs, 4 who did jumps, and 2 of us who did pipe. Is it worth sinking all that money in for 5% of the people? Pipe is my favorite thing, but I just don't think on the whole it is. Unless you are putting in a superpipe for a comp or you have a long season with a huge snowmaking budget and a great park already, it might not be worth it. It pains me to say it, but the jibs make more sense.