Anyone who skis Crested Butte please read

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=FLO=

Active member
This is an e-mail i sent to Ethan Muller, VP of operations for Crested Butte Mountain Resort, please let me know what you think.

Ethan,

Let me start by saying that i truly appreciate everything that you and your family have done for our mountain and town, we would not be where we are today without you guys.

My name is Steve Florentine, and this will be my 8th winter in Crested Butte. We have the most amazing terrain on the planet, and i love it here. When there is not new snow i like to spend alot of time in the Cannon terrain park. I have also lived in Breckenridge, and have competed in freestyle skiing for 10 or so years. I love it, it is my passion, but the older i get ( i am now 28) i am more and more concerned about safety and getting hurt. This is what i am writing you about. Following is an article from the Seattle times concerning a skier injured in a terrain park:

Jury gives $14 million to skier paralyzed at Snoqualmie

By Sara Jean Green

Seattle Times staff reporter

After a five-week trial, a King County jury on Friday awarded $14 million to a 27-year-old skier who was paralyzed after dropping 37 feet from a ski jump at the Summit at Snoqualmie.

Kenny Salvini, of Lake Tapps, was 23 years old when he went off the jump at the Central Terrain Park at Snoqualmie Central and landed on compact snow and ice in February 2004, said his attorney, Jack Connelly.

During the trial at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, "information came out ... that the man who built [the jump] eyeballed it with a Sno-Cat" rather than engineering a design, Connelly said.

Engineers and an aeronautics professor from the University of California, Davis, testified that the jump was improperly designed and featured a short landing area, Connelly said, adding that ski jumps are supposed to be sloped so that energy from a vertical jump is transferred into a skier's forward motion on landing.

"Going off this jump was the equivalent of jumping off a three-story building," Connelly said. "If you're going to be throwing kids 37 feet in the air, these jumps need to be engineered, designed and constructed properly."

Officials from the Summit at Snoqualmie on Friday afternoon wouldn't answer questions about the incident but released a statement. It said risk is inherent in snow sports, but, "that said, any time there is an incident, our genuine thoughts and prayers are with our guests and their families."

The statement said Summit officials "are disappointed but respectful of the [trial] process."

According to Connelly, other people were injured on the same jump in the weeks before Salvini's accident, including a snowboarder who broke his back. A week after Salvini was injured, 19-year-old Peter Melrose of Bellevue died going off a different jump at the same terrain park, he said.

"There were 10 accidents with eight people taken off the slope in a toboggan" in the weeks before Salvini was hurt, landing on what Connelly said was a flat surface. In all, he said, evidence of 15 earlier accidents was admitted into evidence but "nothing was done" by ski operators to fix or close the faulty jumps.

The full jury award was for about $31 million, Connelly said, explaining that the amount was decreased to $14 million after calculating "the comparative fault" of his client and "the inherent risk of the sport."

Before he was injured, Salvini, now a quadriplegic, was captain of the wrestling team at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where he graduated in engineering technology, Connelly said. His mother is now his full-time caregiver.

Over the course of his life, Salvini's medical needs are estimated to cost between $23 million and $26 million, Connelly said.

end article

Now i love that you have been putting more efforts and funds into our terrain parks, but i need to express my problem. I feel that if change is not made, CBMR will begin to run into these type of lawsuits because our jumps are not designed correctly. Frankly i feel that CBMR is lucky you have not already, considering the amount of broken backs, legs, arms, and internal injuries people have suffered from overshooting jumps #2 and #3 (known as cheese and money) .If you have ever been to Breckenridge you can see what i am talking about. You can not overshoot a jump there. Their jumps are also much bigger, but you must realize they are safer if designed correctly. Cannon does not have the natural rollers that are needed to make landings longer. Everyday i ski the Cannon park i overshoot a jump, and it really hurts. Cannon is simply too flat of a run to just blow massive piles of snow for giant jumps with short landings. There are so many runs on our mountain that could potentially host world class terrain parks, and be much safer. There is Upper Park, Gold Link, East River, all of which have amazing natural rollers which could host longer safer landings and reduce the insane amount of injuries we have each year. There was some talk with the addition of DC as a sponser that the park would be moved to frontside, Westwall, which would also be perfect. I recently learned that this is not true and our park will again be on Cannon. So i beg you, please consider moving our park, and re-engineering our design. We don not need anymore injuries or potential deaths from poor engineering, design, and construction.

Sincerely,

Steve Florentine

 
the family that bought CB has a reputation for good parks, ie okemo and sunapee. they'll make it ship shape within a few years. just maybe not this season.
 
I totally agree, cannon is way too flat to have a decent park, and i know how many times i've overshot the cheese wedge and the money. The letter was a great idea and i hope that ethan will take it into consideration

 
So this is definitely sparking some discussion at CBMR, i spoke with the head cat driver last night, and the whole crew is pushing to move the park to the Prospect lift! Which would be soooooooo sick, super open, rolly and perfect with a fast ass lift, but more people need to e-mail Ethan Muller.

Please do so- emuller@cbmr.com

Tell him your thoughts on our dangerous ass park, and why it should be moved!! This could happen if we get enough people to write him!
 
as a former skier of snocrummy that had hit that jump, i can say that the guy was a complete idiot in way over his head, it was a 30ft table, and he straight lined from the top of the park on an icy night. this is one of the worst frivolous lawsuits in US history, right up there with hot coffee at McDonald's. and i hope this ruling doesn't change resorts opinions on keeping their parks. though i think it should be a good way to push for parks that are better maintained and more safely built. as for the short landing, it was short, but almost every jump at winter park last year had shorter ones.
 
His Reply:

Hi Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to email. I’ve been out of town the past week, which is why you haven’t heard back from me. Parks and Pipes is something close to my heart. I used to design, build, and oversee a few different parks across the country. I also agree that it’s an area where we have to be careful to provide a good product, but as safe a product as we can too. There in lies the grey area…what is reasonably safe? Is it a 50 foot step-down with a 100 foot landing, or is it a 50 foot step-down with a 85 foot landing? Those are obviously hypothetical, but in any case I want you to know that it is an area we are always looking at, and always trying to get better at.

On that note, we’ve entered a deal this year with DC Company in which they’re giving us some resources to create an even better park and pipe program. One way they’re doing that is in helping to get an individual by the name of Gunnerson or “Gunny” here. Gunny is one of the top 2 park and pipe designers and consultants in the world. Pick a major competition or large park mountain, and chances are he’s had his hand in it. Anyway, we have a contract with him for at least the next year, and maybe more to consult with us on design and build in all our parks and pipes. Not only should this make for a more exciting design, but inevitably a safer one as well.

At this point we don’t have concrete plans to move our park and pipe, but you never know down the road. For now we’re focusing on the areas we do have, and making them the best they can be. With hopeful expansion of the ski area and Forest Service approvals we will gain some more terrain giving us the ability to move things around a bit more. Until then we’re very limited in locations.

Thanks again for taking the time to email me, and voicing your concerns. I hope this helps a bit, and that you’re excited for this upcoming winter, and the new P&P design.

Best,

Ethan Mueller

Director of Operations

CBMR

 
So i found out it is pretty Ironic that Gunnerson is his answer, he was the one who designed the park at Snoqualmine

Terrain-park safety becomes top priority after key lawsuit

By Jason Blevins

Denver Post Staff Writer

Article Last Updated: 04/16/2007 11:33:30 PM MDT

A rider launches off a rail at Breckenridge's Freeway terrain park. Many ski areas will take a closer look at how their terrain parks are built. (Post / Andy Cross)

Kenny Salvini was 23 when he flew off a jump in the terrain park at Washington state's Summit at Snoqualmie ski area and broke his back on the hard-packed snow, leaving him paralyzed. This month, a jury in Kent, Wash., awarded Salvini, now 27, $14 million, marking the largest jury award levied against a U.S. ski resort.

Booth Creek Ski Holdings in Avon, which operates Snoqualmie, is promising an appeal. Booth Creek recently sold Snoqualmie to Florida real-estate investment trust CNL Income Properties in a four-resort deal, but the Avon company operates the ski area under a long-term lease with CNL. The impact of the jury's award on the nation's increasingly bigger and burlier terrain parks could change how those parks are designed and maintained.

"The repercussions will probably be that terrain parks will be constructed more carefully, and that's a good thing," said Jim Chalat, a Denver attorney specializing in ski law who characterizes Colorado's Ski Safety Act as providing "immunity" for resorts. "I would hope that more attention is paid to the proportionate elements so that a jump isn't by design launching riders over the landing area. Liability breeds responsibility. Immunity breeds impunity to safety considerations."

Geraldine Link, public policy director at the National Ski Areas Association, said Washington is not one of the six states to recently update its skier safety legislation to include freestyle terrain. Colorado legislators in 2004 amended the state's much-copied ski legislation to include terrain parks as part of the sport's inherent dangers.

"The features change at different points in a day, when the sun comes or the wind blows harder," Link said, noting there are no industry-wide guidelines for building terrain-park features. "The way the features are used changes. It's a function of the rider and their speed and the angle of takeoff and all these things. There are a lot of variables in there which makes it the beautiful sport that it is."

Summit at Snoqualmie has twice won the National Ski Area Association's National Award of Excellence for Skier Safety.

"Our terrain-park staff adheres to all of the best demonstrated practices of the ski industry in the design, construction, maintenance, inspection, testing and operation of our terrain parks. We don't agree with some of the statements made to the media. However, this does not diminish in any way our heartfelt concern for Kenny Salvini," read a statement Booth Creek spokeswoman Pat Peeples provided to The Denver Post. "Our terrain-park staff always considers safety as their first and most important goal. This concern for safety drives all of our operations."

Ironically, Booth Creek owns and operates Snow Park Technologies, an internationally renowned terrain-park design firm run by Chris Gunnarson, who is considered one of the world's leaders in development, design and construction of terrain parks. Gunnarson and SPT designed several Winter X Games courses and are in charge of designing parks at all six Booth Creek resorts, including Snoqualmie. While Gunnarson and his team designed the park and the park guidelines at Snoqualmie, local crews are in charge of maintaining the park.

"It should be noted that the April 6, 2007, verdict in this case will be appealed," read the statement by Booth Creek, which is insured by global insurance conglomerate AIG.

Colorado limits damages

Washington state's ski law is not as sweeping as Colorado's 1979 Ski Safety Act. Colorado's law defines resort requirements for reasonable care and safety like signage but essentially places the responsibility for safety on the skier, noting the sport's "inherent dangers and risks." The Colorado act also imposes limitations on damages that can be collected from a ski-area operator. While those limitations can be lifted in the case of resort negligence, several Colorado resorts increased their protection from lawsuits by requiring skiers to sign waivers promising never to sue, even in the case of negligence.

Like Colorado, Washington's ski safety law puts the onus for safety on skiers. But the law does not limit damages that can be collected. The jury in the Washington case originally awarded Salvini $31 million, but the judge whittled the award down to $14 million, citing the "comparative fault" of Salvini and the "inherent risk of the sport," said Salvini's attorney, Jack Connelly.

Connelly said there were 15 accidents on that jump this season. In the 17 days before Salvini fell 37 feet and landed on flat, hard snow beyond the jump's landing, 10 people were injured from similar landings off the same jump, including eight riders who had to be carried down the mountain by ski patrol, he said.

"There was a man a week before who broke his back on the jump. There was an accident 2 1/2 hours before this accident. The jump was never changed," Connelly said. "The failure to even look at the landing area when you have 15 prior injuries I think certainly qualifies as gross negligence."

Connelly presented the jury with engineers who studied the angles of the jump's takeoff and landing. They found the jump's landing to be too short and its takeoff sent skiers onto a flat landing.

"Terrain parks are fun and a good thing to have, but the resorts have gotten ahead of themselves and they need to make sure they are following some safety guidelines. These things are not that hard to build," Connelly said. "As these jumps get bigger and bigger, you need to make sure somebody is looking at those jumps from a civil-engineering or structural-engineering standpoint, just as they do in competitions.

"These jumps are not that hard to build. It should not take a bunch of people getting paralyzed for resorts to take a close look at safety in their terrain parks."

Injuries are unavoidable

Freestyle skiers like Hayden Howard and Brian Stuhr fear a big settlement could lead to changes in their beloved terrain parks. Howard, 23, has a special pass to Winter Park's expert-only "Dark Territory" terrain park. To get the pass, the freestyle coach at the ski area signed a waiver promising to never sue the resort and watched a 20-minute video on terrain-park safety and etiquette.

"If you go out there and get hurt, that's on you. If it goes on to the resort, we start losing terrain parks," said Howard, who has endured many injuries on his road to being an expert freestyle skier. "If you do this stuff long enough, you are going to get hurt. It's your responsibility."

Stuhr, 23, also has the pass to Winter Park's Dark Territory. This year he suffered a concussion after slamming a landing off a jump in a terrain park.

"I should have checked out the jump first but I didn't. I don't blame the resort for that," Stuhr said. "You should always check out the jumps first. That was just me being ignorant and stupid.

"If people keep suing resorts when they get hurt, all we are going to have is green runs."

Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.

 
Im not sure anything is wrong with the CB park, yeah...you can over shoot, but you can overshoot anything, look at the dumont crash...Coming from the midwest (wisconsin) i skied the cb park last year and i can tell ya that is 100% safer then most of the stuff we have back home. I like that CB cares, or pretends to care about what you have to say. All I can say is i've heard management talk like that before back home and nothing was done. Im stoked to ride a park where the features are shaped the way they're supposed to be, and taken care of.
 
Double post to add:

I dont think CB's park is dangerous at all. If you think thats dangerous try skiing the midwest... When i ski the park at CB i can do it with confidence that the lips are shaped right, they carry me to the landing when i have the right amout of speed. In short, I dont fear for my life when I ride there. Ski Alpine Valley Wisconsin, Wilmot, Grand Geneva, Little Switz, Tyrol....anything in that state and then complain about unsafe parks.
 
Exactly - if a jump is made right, like at Breck, you cant overshoot. This also has alot to do with the natural terrain, Cannon is a flat ass run which sucks for a park. Natural rollers are needed. Our park would be perfect in Prospect, east river, or upper park.
 
The park works where it is. Would those other runs be nicer? yeah, the rollers would be nice for building, takes less snow. Safer? i don't really think so.
 
You can definetly still over shoot at Breck.  Don't be pumped about "Gunny" making your park, the park at Northstar has been his brain child and it sucks dick.  
 
I know many people who have overshot the big booters at Breck and broken their backs, femurs and all sorts of other goodness. Breck's jumps are huge, and definitely dangerous no matter how well they are designed. I'm pretty sure I have heard many times that somebody dies in the Freeway Park practically every year.
 
no one dies in freeway. i dont know where you heard that bullshit. as for gunny making your park, its overrated. his best work is saved for comps and film shoots.
 
well having worked in CB park last season, I think I might have some words. But before that....

Any jump can be overshot. No park is truly idiot-proof, and that is why so many smaller resorts have a problem with them. Even though I know what it takes to intentionally overshoot any of Breck's jumps, I obviously would not try to do that. However, someone without a general understanding of physics, might get the same idea trying to "go big". or whatever........you know what I'm getting at. The primary reason the rate of idiocy at Breck is low is because theres so many experienced park riders there on any given day that most joe plumbers either a. get the idea of how stuff should be hit or b. are so intimidated that they just stay away. Unfortunately other mountains do not have this.

As for CB, we we're getting off to a good start and the jumps were tolerable, maybe a bit better than tolerable. But the same old story resurfaces where the terrain park is not a "priority" and gets stuck on a run that really sucks for a terrain park. Without making obscene amounts of snow, there really is no way to 100% correct for poor natural terrain. There was a considerable effort made to try and see if the park could be moved to Gold Link, but I have no idea if that has made any progress, or was just a swing and a miss.

Having had two serious i(and I mean serious) injuries in CB park within 2 days of each other brought up some serious concern among crew members, but when an issue was made of it, things were not treated that seriously. The response was "well why didnt you express these concerns when we first made it?" Well quite obviously the opinion and knowledge of park crew & park riders will be a lot different than that of those who dont regularly ride park, who dont have a general idea for what speed for what jump, etc. Needless to say, our serious concerns were not addressed seriously.

CB park staff has good intentions and they certainly do make a good effort, but every now and then there are ideas that get too easily put into reality, and end up being wastes of snow & time. Fact of the matter is, CB isn't a park mountain.....later on in the season, 9/10 I found myself playing on the extremes instead of in the park. Honestly, from my own experience, I can say be happy with what you have, it should be the same or get better. I highly doubt it will get any worse. No idea who this "gunny" guy is, but dont hope for too much. CB is really trying, so at least give them a chance.

 
gunny is the lead designer for snowpark technologies. he is incredibly overrated at jump building (notice how breck dew tour last year was smaller and not as good as freeway normally is) but probably the best pipe builder.
 
Ya man this thread was from 2007, I don't know if we have Gunni anymore. I am just happy that they are looking at moving the park to Gold Link now, natural rollers will make for better landings with less snow. Canon was such a stupid run for the park.

But I have mad respect for CB park crew, you guys always do the best with what you have, and I hear you get treated like shit for the most part.
 
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