Is Vail Resorts mandating changes in their parks or something?

14208203:ohhbecker said:
If you can’t see what’s happening at Mount Snow via Vail, you haven’t been there long enough or haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been riding there for 20 years, I’m fucking old now.

Mount Snow has built its modern reputation on having the best park in the NE starting in 2001 when they hosted the X Games. While they’ve had up and downs they’ve constantly competed for that title, and since Carintha had the whole peak it had been undeniable, the old lodge was also an insane park kids dream. PS4s and Xbox’s with couches in the lodge, a mini ramp on the deck.

the new Carinthia base lodge was the nail in the coffin... vibe immediately changed.
 
14208945:first_rodeo said:
the new Carinthia base lodge was the nail in the coffin... vibe immediately changed.

I was sad. Never really wentin there ever but good vibes. Mini ramp on the deck, skate 3, fat burritos

Man i miss my mount snow days.

Really worried about big boulder. Thinking they'll keep a good ish park but its gonna change hard. Rip
 
14208973:theabortionator said:
I was sad. Never really wentin there ever but good vibes. Mini ramp on the deck, skate 3, fat burritos

Man i miss my mount snow days.

Really worried about big boulder. Thinking they'll keep a good ish park but its gonna change hard. Rip

That mini ramp was so fun. And peace pipe.
 
14208990:katrina said:
That mini ramp was so fun. And peace pipe.

I did the forat few peace pipea always a blast. Also were setting up rails till mid June or July most seasons. Then stocking up on taquitos at 7vy
 
14208261:b0ss said:
I can confirm vail is building knuckles where the park usualy is. Dont get your hopes up until january.

Beaver creek small jump line has 2 jumps shaped and at least 1 more being built. Ur hopes keep them low.
 
14208619:dant02 said:
Darkside snowboards has exactly that. A hike park behind the shop and they host annual rail jams. Would be pretty cool if a ski shop did that though

If only behind our shop wasn't a dang parking lot...
 
22’ super pipe is better part of $1mil all said and done.

14208269:eheath said:
I'd say that's conservative, the snow alone (snowmaking, water, power, etc) costs 100k, another 150k in labor costs at least, a superpipe is minimum 250k, the xgames pipe costs 2-3 times that (labor not snow, SPT ain't cheap).
 
Pretty rough weather isn’t helping. I’d assume Vail wants that place to compete with Cammelback. Parks will get cut back I’d assume to 1-2 trails. Get more family/learning crowd in there. That’s where the money is. Their main park guy left as well

14209472:MaimHelp said:
Anyone know the deal with big boulder, vail is completely ignoring anything about it
 
14209501:SkiBum. said:
Pretty rough weather isn’t helping. I’d assume Vail wants that place to compete with Cammelback. Parks will get cut back I’d assume to 1-2 trails. Get more family/learning crowd in there. That’s where the money is. Their main park guy left as well

He was forced to leave, that’s a bummer tho, they were all park trails and won’t be fun to ski without one. Fuck I finally moved to a fun place to ski and they pull this shit
 
14209576:MaimHelp said:
He was forced to leave, that’s a bummer tho, they were all park trails and won’t be fun to ski without one. Fuck I finally moved to a fun place to ski and they pull this shit

Pat morgan had a pretty sick vision for that place. Pretty lame.

Fuck Bobby katz
 
First season ever (as long as I can remember) Whistler will only be having a park on Blackcomb and not Whistler as well. Super bummed, was always a good park to go and spin some chill laps at.

Heard it was potentially due to short staff but wouldn't be surprised if Vail had a hand in it as well. Have heard rumors of no XL jump line this season too, after one season of it they might see it as good and stop it forever. Might be the end of blackpark edits... would be tough to see no more iconic edits as well as never getting to hit those jumps again. Hope it is not true.
 
14208203:ohhbecker said:
If you can’t see what’s happening at Mount Snow via Vail, you haven’t been there long enough or haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been riding there for 20 years, I’m fucking old now.

In past years Mount Snow would open 1 park in Carinthia and not open the summit lift on the main face initially, then they would work on connecting the two. This year they opened the Northface peak and summit lift, the main face trails and summit lift, but no Carinthia. Vail is operating all of these resorts they bought as if they’re out west and they’re not, Vail does not understand the East Coast skier mentality.

It’s absolutely Vail and corporate. They absolutely fired a lot of core employees, and now can’t hire anyone. If you need proof go look at their job listings, every single position is open.

dude.. it's been super warm and with Covid-19 they need to provide top to bottom skiing for everyone not just park rats. do you really want every tom dick and jane skiing down your beloved park? It's the right move THIS YEAR to focus on main mountain first to get people up to the mountain, using those passes (so Epic wont have to refund) and then move into park on carinthia when temps cooperate. They are building Gulch today! Relax.. Yes Vail will change things like inferno going away minus the two showtime booters at the bottom but park kids are not a revenue stream. That lodge at that base of carinthia is the sure sign carinthia will be changing and not all trails will be park but realistically, how many features do you really need to do your 2 on 2 off with afterbang?
 
14209606:freeskibum82 said:
dude.. it's been super warm and with Covid-19 they need to provide top to bottom skiing for everyone not just park rats. do you really want every tom dick and jane skiing down your beloved park? It's the right move THIS YEAR to focus on main mountain first to get people up to the mountain, using those passes (so Epic wont have to refund) and then move into park on carinthia when temps cooperate. They are building Gulch today! Relax.. Yes Vail will change things like inferno going away minus the two showtime booters at the bottom but park kids are not a revenue stream. That lodge at that base of carinthia is the sure sign carinthia will be changing and not all trails will be park but realistically, how many features do you really need to do your 2 on 2 off with afterbang?

I mean I've had fun hitting the same flat rail in my backyard for hours but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a shame for carinthia to get nerfed.

Place had a good run. Lots of parks, exceptional dirtbaggery, quality vibes. Good times.
 
14204672:.nasty said:
I was bummed to see Freeway go away in Breck since it was so iconic in a sense, but in reality it wasn't the best use of resources especially when dew tour left Breck. Once they got rid of it last season they were able to open much more of the mountain earlier which helps spread people out better.

Exactly, iconic is the word, Breckenridge and Keystone parks are iconic, I knew about those two resorts (and Aspen) growing up in France just from watching edits, Dew Tour, (and X games).

I understand that the average vail customer cannot ride 90% of the big parks but if you look at it from a marketing perspective, investing in parks attract pro skiers, who are basically influencers in those Instagram times, so you could make the argument that the resorts logo appearing in all of those pro skiers edits and IG stories/clip is "free" advertisement made possible by investing in their parks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Also if we're talking vail parks, how the hell does vail end up in the top 10 so often. Talking vail vail. They're park was bever that great. Golden peak is fun but it's not rhat good. Its nothing special. Pretty emaverage. And makaha or whatever wouod be a waste to ride iver to because it never had anything that good and was super poorly maintained whenever i went there. Havent been to vail on the mtn in 4 or 5 ywars prolly though but they were up on the park poll those years.

Obviously it will never be a true reflection of best parks but it usually made sense. Mammoth, copper, keystone etc usually being up there.
 
I'm late to this thread, so my apologies. My little brother has a pass to Stevens here in WA (he lives closer to that resort than Snoqualmie), and granted, it is the beginning of the season, but he said that their park setup is absolute trash. Lazy, bland, no flow... I hope it isn't a Vail trend. Snoqualmie has issues, but the last few years, in my opinion, the park has not been one of them thankfully (they are not a part of Vail)
 
14209501:SkiBum. said:
Pretty rough weather isn’t helping. I’d assume Vail wants that place to compete with Cammelback. Parks will get cut back I’d assume to 1-2 trails. Get more family/learning crowd in there. That’s where the money is. Their main park guy left as well

Idk I cant see boulder really competing with Camelback. Maybe if people start doing half their day at boulder and half at frost, but Camelback has much more to offer. Cant see much in the way of expanding trails at them either because they will probably be putting all the money to updating their lifts which is overdo.
 
14209665:colorado_frenchy said:
Exactly, iconic is the word, Breckenridge and Keystone parks are iconic, I knew about those two resorts (and Aspen) growing up in France just from watching edits, Dew Tour, (and X games).

I understand that the average vail customer cannot ride 90% of the big parks but if you look at it from a marketing perspective, investing in parks attract pro skiers, who are basically influencers in those Instagram times, so you could make the argument that the resorts logo appearing in all of those pro skiers edits and IG stories/clip is "free" advertisement made possible by investing in their parks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You're preaching to the choir, believe me.
 
Today I have to take back 99% of my shit talking.

Mount Snow was fantastic. 15 days after opening and we got a real park with probably 10-15 features and two solid jumps. Props to the park crew for crushing it. We’ll see how the rest of the season goes. Rumor is we won’t have a big park and no jumps over 30 feet, so the park crew is apparently planning on building lippy moonbooters to compensate.
 
14210502:ohhbecker said:
Today I have to take back 99% of my shit talking.

Mount Snow was fantastic. 15 days after opening and we got a real park with probably 10-15 features and two solid jumps. Props to the park crew for crushing it. We’ll see how the rest of the season goes. Rumor is we won’t have a big park and no jumps over 30 feet, so the park crew is apparently planning on building lippy moonbooters to compensate.

I agree it was great today. Where are you hearing these rumors? I really hope they're not true
 
14210522:sqeellicbic said:
I agree it was great today. Where are you hearing these rumors? I really hope they're not true

have heard stowe has similar hard limits on what they're allowed to build like sizes of jumps length of rails etc
 
14210522:sqeellicbic said:
I agree it was great today. Where are you hearing these rumors? I really hope they're not true

I hope they're not. Sometimes a lippy jump is good, but if the only reason is some bullshit deck limit that's pretty whack. I hope this is just a rumor or exaggeration. I can't see mount snow getting limited to 30 foot jumps this season. I can totally see inferno being dead and nothing over 50 ever again. But nothing over 30 this season seems like bs. Hopefully not legit.

The park they just built looks pretty good though. Hoping it's a good season there and vail ownership doesn't fuck them too hard. Sucks that 2 of the best parks in the east mount snow and BB are now VR. Well see what happens.
 
14209606:freeskibum82 said:
dude..That lodge at that base of carinthia is the sure sign carinthia will be changing and not all trails will be park but realistically, how many features do you really need to do your 2 on 2 off with afterbang?

I need 80 rails minimum to avoid Saturday crowds.
 
I could not agree more. Vail owns a mountain I’ve been going through for a few years, and they screwed over all park skiers.

There was a small two person chair called Brooks on the far right side of the mountain. It has almost a perfect layout for a park. Features got progressively bigger towards the bottom of the mountain, and exits for all the jerry’s were easy to find.

the run had S-M features up top, L-XL in the mid section, then a S-L job garden at the very bottom.

Then vail came.

they moved the park to the most populated chair on the mountain. the line is horrible to wait in, the little kids are constantly an annoyance, and the top 200yds are about 20ft wide. Barely any room for features.

the park crew could only build jumps about 10ft big on the run, instead of the 20-30ft on brooks.

I asked the park crew about it and they all said how much they hate it.

vail. your entire company reeks of “mY dAd Is A LaWyEr”. I’m getting a pass elsewhere next season. (If only leaving had an impact on the company lol)
 
Is Transitions park at Canyons dead? Someone said something to that effect on the PC instagram and when I look at the online trail map the park isn't on it anymore, and it was definitely on the map last season.

Also to the guy above me I was so sad when I heard about what they did to Stevens pass terrain park. That was the best park in Washington state, the XL jumps were dialed, waterfall, juniors and junks where the first 50+ foot jumps I ever hit. I can't believe they got rid of top flight and moved the park to Hogs, that lift was completely unridable most days, and I've heard the crowds have gotten even worse since I moved out of the state.
 
14213713:Cyanicenine said:
Is Transitions park at Canyons dead? Someone said something to that effect on the PC instagram and when I look at the online trail map the park isn't on it anymore, and it was definitely on the map last season.

For this season its cut due to budget stuff related to covid, will they bring it back next year? The park guys do, but it all depends on budgets.
 
14204688:Yung_Gnarley said:
this thread is making me feel really lucky to have gotten to lap keystone and breck when they had the XL parks still. Keystone's especially. They had some of the most absurd setups

True. Worked park at Key from 2011-2017, some of the funnest years of my life. Will never forget early morning Main ST. jump sessions, and the all day vibe and shred in the ALLEY. Key had so many OG shredders it was bad ass!
 
14213759:CT_CREW said:
True. Worked park at Key from 2011-2017, some of the funnest years of my life. Will never forget early morning Main ST. jump sessions, and the all day vibe and shred in the ALLEY. Key had so many OG shredders it was bad ass!

really were the glory years. Style and confidence everywhere.
 
so this is spreading, cutting parks in my country now, the ski sports college near by one of the larger resort will only have blue run park now with tiny rails/jumps :|
 
Really sad reading these comments about mt snow. Dew tour back in the day was iconic, the halfpipe was legendary, the xbox in the lodge went crazy, do they still have the grommit park? I haven't skied mt snow for about 4 years now, my most recent memory is taking bong rips in the parking lot before work at 5am, fuck vail man.

As far as Breck and Key go, you can't expect to meet a solid crew at Key every time the same way you could even like 2 or 3 years ago. Breck's got some solid crews if you know the right people but I'm sure it's not like it was even 5 years ago.

Copper's got it going for sure, kind of a shitload of people because Key and Breck are beat in Summit now. Ikon is obviously branding themselves as the fun and exciting resort line while Vail is taking the higher end route, I just wonder what timeline they have and how far away from park that transition will go.

How are the resorts in the midwest that Ikon owns operating as far as park goes?
 
my local vail mountain in pa opens tomorrow and all they’re opening is the j bar park with a few features. i thought they’d be able to open up the main park with a few features with this weeks storm plus snowmaking temps all week but idk. last year we had a pretty solid setup under peak ownership, i just hope they kept some of the same guys on park crew and they’re given freedom to build shit
 
14214756:ski_salmon69 said:
my local vail mountain in pa opens tomorrow and all they’re opening is the j bar park with a few features. i thought they’d be able to open up the main park with a few features with this weeks storm plus snowmaking temps all week but idk. last year we had a pretty solid setup under peak ownership, i just hope they kept some of the same guys on park crew and they’re given freedom to build shit

No features tomorrow, sorry. Apparently the marketing dept didn't get that memo. Not sure why but as of now no park until monday. Mostly same crew ad last year minus the manager.
 
14213918:SkiBum. said:
Rumor is Big Boulder opening day tomorrow with no park features. First time in like 15 years for that.

Apparently they did put end up putting out a few features but supposedly all the rails were rusty and the boxes were delaminating so kids were eating shit on them all day
 
14214849:MMairose said:
Apparently they did put end up putting out a few features but supposedly all the rails were rusty and the boxes were delaminating so kids were eating shit on them all day

Any update on this. Don’t feel like ruining my skis tomorrow
 
14214859:MaimHelp said:
Any update on this. Don’t feel like ruining my skis tomorrow

Not sure, I saw this from a bunch of comments on the JFBB instagram page since they barely post on big boulders page now. It’s basically the only way to get any info on what’s going on boulder since vail sucks at communicating
 
14204688:Yung_Gnarley said:
this thread is making me feel really lucky to have gotten to lap keystone and breck when they had the XL parks still. Keystone's especially. They had some of the most absurd setups

Same man I got to lap and film at those parks right before they started to decline. Memories that ill cherish forever as they put so much time and effort into those parks.

Luckily it seems that Altera/Ikon is into the park seen, Mammoth and Big Bear are still firing and Copper and Killington are getting better thanks to Woodward. Hopefully all park kids will switch from Epic to Ikon and Vail will start to lose money. If there kids switch passes the families and siblings will.
 
14214890:MMairose said:
Not sure, I saw this from a bunch of comments on the JFBB instagram page since they barely post on big boulders page now. It’s basically the only way to get any info on what’s going on boulder since vail sucks at communicating

I saw an insta video of a non employee taking a grinder to the rails to get rust off
 
I worked parks at Beaver Creek for 5 years and left this past fall. Rodeo park was killed after no one complained that it was gone after a shit snow year. Lumberyard was killed even after it was built and set up 2 years in a row. Zoom Room got the axe this year because covid and the budget was cut twice by the time I left that totaled over 50% gone.

Talked to a few of the guys still there and I guess they built a small park in the base area with a 4 pack of small jumps. They were told to doze them out after they were already built. I guess they want everyone to play dead and not exceed the customers pre existing low expectations due to covid.

VR parks are not in a good spot right now. They're bleeding talent, they lack vision, innovation, and homogenization when it comes to best practices across all their resorts. There is some MAJOR fucked up shit I've seen on social media that's going to land them hot water if the wrong thing happens at the right time. The worst part.... They know all that and no one seems to care.
 
I've skied jfbb for awhile and was appaled by vails management this year. Last year boulder opened the weekend before Thanksgiving with a insanely good park. And then jack frost would open 1-2 weeks later with most of the mountain open. This year, jack frost didn't open to last weekend with only 3 trails open, with one park being the hardest. The park was utterly depressing, with only 6 rails on top and nothing after that. This weekend all they had were the same rails and 2 sketch hips. I didn't even care about boulder being open, after finding out there were barley any features. Plus I went with a family friend and they had to wait in line to pick up their PAID ticket in person. After all the years of going here all I got to say is F@$% vail.
 
Heres a revolutionary idea... (eheath don't shit on me for bringing random numbers or money into this) all of ns tosses in some cash, we buy out some shit and boom we got an all park resort.

It would NEVER happen but even the thought is so sexy just imagine. Seeing the big man himself Eheath in a cat pushing around shit loads of snow like the moderate Jesus he is... and im putting [tag=256866]@BigPurpleSkiSuit[/tag] in charge of hospitality.

One fucked up reality I live in huh...

**This post was edited on Dec 19th 2020 at 7:46:04pm
 
14214990:T.L. said:
I worked parks at Beaver Creek for 5 years and left this past fall. Rodeo park was killed after no one complained that it was gone after a shit snow year. Lumberyard was killed even after it was built and set up 2 years in a row. Zoom Room got the axe this year because covid and the budget was cut twice by the time I left that totaled over 50% gone.

Talked to a few of the guys still there and I guess they built a small park in the base area with a 4 pack of small jumps. They were told to doze them out after they were already built. I guess they want everyone to play dead and not exceed the customers pre existing low expectations due to covid.

VR parks are not in a good spot right now. They're bleeding talent, they lack vision, innovation, and homogenization when it comes to best practices across all their resorts. There is some MAJOR fucked up shit I've seen on social media that's going to land them hot water if the wrong thing happens at the right time. The worst part.... They know all that and no one seems to care.

Man Vail really aucks the life out if places. Glad you got out if BC. That place was fucking the parks harder every year.
 
It says a lot that whenever Vail takes over a resort with a strong park scene the leadership responsible for said park gets the boot
 
Pat Morgan is probably happy he got laid off by vail honestly. Mountain Creek is about to be popping off this year.
 
Just have to say the breck park crew is still killing it and I really appreciate what they've been able to get some so far this year, even though it is a weird year. I wish I could like Copper, I really do, but their park run is sooooo flat.
 
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