Mount Snow's Park Scene to BLOW UP in 2009
In the ski and snowboard industry, summer belongs to the PR directors at most resorts who spend their days crafting press releases touting the myriad improvements their resort plans to make in the off-season.
New lifts, snowmaking improvements and groomer purchases are great, but for the park and pipe set, it's going to be tough to top Mount Snow's recent announcement. According to the Mount Snow website, the resort will dedicate the entire Carinthia mountain face to freestyle terrain parks when it opens for the 2008-09 season, transforming 95 acres of trails into a massive park system.
In creating easily the biggest terrain park east of the Mississippi, the resort will give skiers and snowboarders a choice of nearly 125 terrain features, scattered around 12 full terrain parks. Specifics include a snowskate "playground" (playground being marketing-speak for a terrain park, or the equivalent of me walking around saying "fo shizzle"), a hikeable park, a beginners park, and a skate ramp surrounding the base area.
The resort also says a tree-skiing area, a superpipe with 18-foot walls, a mini-pipe with 8-foot walls, an all-natural park absent of man-made material and a big-air site will also be featured.
When I first heard of Mount Snow's plans, I thought it smelled a lot like the old days, when the park and pipe were placed as far out of the way as possible in order to corral "those $#%! kids." After thinking about it some more, I've decided it's a great idea. I rode Mount Snow on opening day last season, and the park setup was similar, with the only trail open at Carinthia being a top-to-bottom terrain park. It worked well. Cruising around on the main mountain was worry-free, or at least as worry-free as the opening day bumper-car scene can be in New England. Once I got my legs back, I headed over to Carinthia to beat myself up in the park - without having to watch out for hundreds of other skiers and riders taking their first run of the season. All in all, I think this new idea is going to be a huge hit.
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