Lazy park staff

This is soo true. I taught at my moutain last year and hated it. The park always sucked cause like 4 out of the 6 kids doing park crew didnt do shit. Thats why I want to do park crew next year so I can atleast try to change that. The only problem is that managment pretty much said they dont care about the park because they have one of the best racing programs. The guy heading up park crew though is such a hard worker. He puts in like 20 hour days and even sneaks into the lodge at night and sleeps theres so he can start mad early in the morning and now I hear that they are firing him, because he spent too much money making snow to build features. eventhough they blow piles like 3 times the whole year in the park, while they would constantly blow on the racing trails. So hard to change things when the mountain doesnt even care. Plus NY state owns the mountain and the DEC runs it, so there isn't a lack in funds.
 
I have to agree with the guy from chile, they are so flipping lazy down there, they dont open the park until like 11 and then its only like the rails. Then they dont open the jumps until at least 2 or 3 in the afternoon. w/e.

Lemme explain my hill first. It probably only has about 300ft vertical and its mainly a place for kids to learn how to ski. I work there as a ski instructor and thats the only reason i would go there. The park there is something I dont think you can call a park. The "park" has only 2-3 5ft tables, maybe a spine, and a flat box, a flat bar and a kinked box. Usually its rollers that me and couple of friends end up building lips on. Last year they didnt even put up the rails at all the entire year. Not even for the one comp we had last year which was me owning gangster rich 15yr old snowboarders who dont know how to do anything but grab. But I'm happy with what we have cause I can ski it on my off hours while still getting paid.
 
if your talking about smuggs..how long have you been there? theyve been on a steady improving rate for the last few seasons getting better each year. rick is the man and listens to what people ask for and bargains his ass off with the big heads to get the shit done there. next year they have some awesome plans that will make it even more rad as fuck.

another amazing park staff is over at appalachian ski resort...ive been there a few times and they keep that shit PRIME. all the jibs are rad as fuck and whenever a slight problem comes up i see at least 3 of the guys working on the problem fixing shit up. app's park fucking rules. they have a website, check some of that shit out! www.appterrainpark.com remember this is in boone, north carolina.
 
my moutain afton alps has a relly good park staff but their relly held back by the management. we had relly good rails last year but the biggest jump we had was 45 footer that had a jump that had the size of a 30 footer. but yea in a lot of cases u cant jsut blame it on the park crew since the managemnet is the people who picked the staff
 
At my hill (cobble hills) the staff does not clean the pipe. When I go to hit the pipe I expect it to be clean but, its not. Like how long does it take to clean a pipe.
 
nah, they dont even do it then. they might do a little something, but then they just say they will, and eventually they just get really, really pissed for being criticized. I know I commented a lot. They only read it as bashing, but I always included what I thought would make the park better. But of course they still didn't do shit.

Oh my they didnt do shit...
 
I think more mountains need to know that their park staff sucks.

If you have shitty park staff, go in and complain about them all the time.

Bad park staff need to get FIRED. Not continuously re-hired. What other job could you completely suck at, be totally lazy, and get hired back year after year?

 
not really..... management has a lot to do with how the park is..... as far as size of jumps/rails ect... i lived at a place with a shitty park for a while & it definitely wasn't the park staffs fault for it being so small... the management said that it was a "family" resort and they didn't want the jumps to be very big so gapers wouldn't get hurt.
 
yea avila was fairly well maintained, but i really didnt like the jump construction last year. not to mention the fact that the pipe NEVER opened.
 
I'm trying to get a part-time job at Avila this year... hopefully they hire me and I can shovel everything lots!

It was really too bad about the pipe... I never heard what happened with that.

 
fuck wachusett come to jiminy peak. or at least email them and tell them how muc hthey suck. are park has so much potential but no money or effort is put into the features
 
i must say, from last season (06) compared to 05, jim has made a ton of improvement. Not saying that they dont suck, because all jiminy skiiers know Jiminy's crew sucks balls. We always catch them chillen out at their new "club" house at the top of the big park (forgot the name). They just sit there and chill, and do nothing for the park. It pisses me off. I dont go to jimniny much, partly cause i have a season pass to mt.snow. But i'll go up every few fridays with some friends and it just sucks. I wrote a complaint letter for english a while back. not sure if they recieved it, but i sure hope so. Its so true that they have a ton of money for improvement. has anyone else noticed the thousands of dollars they put into their summer games and fun, how bout that new mountain coaster? Come on jiminy, can't you spend some left over cash on the park and crew for once? sorry for ranting, jsut makes me kinda mad
 
Yaaaa doug do it you for sure have the qualifications, you probably have more experience then everyone on the park staff.
 
well at my home mountain, tremblant, they have pretty good park staff. They know what they are doing, they fix jumps and rails thoughout the day. They build new features almost every week so the park doesnt get old. Last year two park staff worked on the pipe all weekend just to get it perfect. But i have skied at mountains where the park staff are the laziest people ever, usually park staff are responsible for park safty and they keep shitty jumps and rails open where you are guarenteed to hurt your self
 
I do think a lot of these park crews are lazy, but i also think that mountains need to provide the snow making, groomers, and tools to help these crews out. I'm sure that park crews have very little influence on where management wants to concentrate there snow making strategies. If your mountains management does not make a commitment to having a good park with the snow they need to build and enhance features then your going to have a shitty park regardless of how good your park crew is. Some of these mountains need to learn from places like Whistler, Mammoth, and even Mount Snow that if you provide a good park you will make more money, and that's all those old fucks care about anyway.
 
i ski at blue and the park is usually not maintained in one way or another, i dont think its because theyre lazy but because the features get worn down faster than the can buil them
 
make sure everything is ready in the morning.......ride the park. if anything needs to be fixed, fix it.

its not that hard

but for the guys at my mountain (stevens pass, wa) they think that once everything is ready for opening that they can go smoke weed the rest of the day.
 
Ok, I can only speak from my experience. This is from when I used to work at Blue Mountain:

7:30am wake up eat breakfast, ski to work (I lived in a great place)

8:00am Start work. Get on sled, ride around and inspect previous night's grooming.

8:05am Shuttle park staff up to top with equipment, and decide downhill fix pattern.

9:00am Small features finished, put up fencing and open park.

9:00-10:00 finish any "extra pimp" projects that need to be done.

10:00-12:00 Ride! Its important to ride a feature and know how it is hitting. Swap with park staff checking gate, and do occasional slip or rake of features getting beat up.

12:00-1:00 lunches. 30 minute lunch, trade between three park staff.

1:00-1:30 - fix everything by shovelling more snow, not just raking.

1:30 - 4:00 - ride with periodical fixes

4:30 - 5:30 - day shift ends at 4:30, so begin fix for night session, and evening crew finishes.

Then pretty much same schedule as the morning.

The big key is when the park closes at 10:00pm, park staff go up to the top and FIX everything before the cat comes in there. The better condition a feature is in when the cat hits it, the better it will be after.

Any time we wanted to build, cats start at 10, and building starts at 11pm. Thats the most tiring part of the job.

Now granted that was what it takes to be the most perfect park staff of all time.

"Typical" park staff day goes more like this (from many mountains I've seen):

8:15 show up for work.

8:15 - 10:00 open up park slowly and sort of make it look ok.

10:00 - 4:30 - sit around (maybe ride) and when someone asks you to fix features say "Oh the cats will get it tonight"

If you're not fixing at least 15 minutes out of the hour, you're doing a bad job.

 
Thanks Mr Bishop.. Seems like your afternoon is more relaxed, that is typically when the most traffic is tearing things up???????
 
so i ride at breck and i think we have one of the best park staffs around, the guys are almost always out doing something to one of the 5 parks. genraly on a normal day freeway is open by 930, and closes at 330, sometimes they leave it open a little longer, periodicly tho=roughout the day they go through and rake, i would say everything gets touched about 3 times during the riding day, then after the park closes they also go back through and rake and fix anything that needs to be done before the cats come in. keystone is another story though.....
 
Not so much that its more relaxed... just the afternoon isn't as much fixing at one time, its more regular maintenance as the features need it.

The three times of the day the park needs a bunch of work is usually in the morning, before night riding, and after night riding. The rest is mostly small, regular mainenance as needed.

 
not to mention that simply building stuff properly in the first place should result in less daily maintnence
 
I ski at the same place...one time they made snow for a whole night and the next day the ENTIRE park was buried and extremely slow...I had to dig ouot a few rails myself and then afterwards ski patrol came by and yelled at me?
 
park crew at northstar is probably one of the best. they shovel at least 3 times a day when the ruts get real bad. and the park is new/different at least once a week. they also have NO skiers. ha. and toooo many boxes
 
i'm not sure how it is in the states (they seam more dedicated to having a big/good park down there then most of canada) but from a lot of the places I have been do and experienced it's not necessarily the park staff's fault that the park kinda sucks.

We'll take Red Mountain for example. It's only had a park for like two years now, but their park has a lot of work ahead if it wants any recognition of being a good park. You could easily point fingers at the park staff and say they are lazy, if they did more work then it would be better, but it's not that simple. Red Mountain got bought a few years ago by this american developer dude, he is the one who made the decision for having a terrain park at Red. The only thing is, almost every other department at Red doesn't want a park. The ski patrolers hate it, they would be much, much happier if it didn't exist. Not only do they just not like it - the other departments pinch money from the terrain parks budget. So what might have been planned (within budget) can't be done because their money is disapearing.

Another major problem that is above the park staff is the amount of snow. If the park needs more snow (or more snowguns pointed at it - or snowguns period) to do what the park staff what, but the resort management just thinks they're greedy and making rediculous requests for them and their friends when run #83 has a dirt patch that needs covering up.

I don't know, all I'm really saying is that sometimes the park gets pushed around by the higher ups. If it's an issue of a rutted out take off/landing then yea, it's the park staff's fault. But if it's an issue of the park not changing enough, not enough features, or jumps that look rushed in building maybe it's not the park staff's fault, and getting mad at them for problems that arn't necessarly their fault won't get anything accomplished.

Did I go on too long? sorry.
 
really not going to bother getting into this in depth, cause I would be typing pages apon pages. Usually theres an entire tree of people responsible, not just "park crew" being lazy....cause that means someone is letting them get away with being lazy, and that person/manager doesnt care about the park either. Whys that? Well maybe because his boss doesnt. All I'm saying is, dont just cast all the blame on the crew. Other than that...

"ou need to hire based on how well they handle a shovel and rake not on how well they ski the park"

To a point, that works, but then again, it doesnt. You can tell them to keep so and so feature looking like this, and thats it. But, Imagine trying to tell them how someone isnt right, or how it throws you off to the side....they wouldnt know what the hell you are talking about because they infact don't ride it. Liability plays into that as well, because new features should be more or less "tested and inspected" for safety. I still think the American civil legal system is a pos, but its not like its gonna change overnight. Its best to do everything to cover your ass.

I can say for myself, part of a motivation to keep everything in good shape is not only to have it look good and ride smooth for everyone else (and its my job, haha), but also because I ride it, and I don't want to ride something that is junk. If something is off, I won't hesitate to pick up a rake and fix it even if its my day off, so you can bet I will if I am there on the job.

Then theres the nonstop questions of "hey when is our park moving, when is it gonna be a real parK?" Well thats a decision of super conservative upper management, so talk to them. OR, have your mountain bought out by someone other than ASC.....that actually gives a crap about what people think besides their upper management. :D
 
word man. i ski there too. what a shitty place. 2 mailboxes, flatbar, and a c. and this one box thats a mix between a rainbow and a battleship. its like a battleship but the vertices are curved. wtf. anyways yea the pipe is balls. its like a rectangle. plus theres a giant overhang cuz all the noobs just carvin up the sides and wearin it down. god i hope boler is good this year. oh and last year we didnt even have a jump. hows that for shitty park staff?
 
i agree with what the last few people have said about the size and location not being the park crew's fault, resorts are only alowed to make so much snow a year, and the park usualy doesent get much of that after everything is said and done unless the mountain's higher up mangement have made a large comitment to the park in the form of promoteing it and spending money on it, the last time i checked breck was running their parks off a budget of about 10 million dollars for everything, to put it in perspective yesterday in the summit daily news they said that the new gondola was only costing 6.8 million if i remember correctly. that represents a big commitment by the resort, but in the end ends up paying off, there are several other mountians that make the same sort of commitment to their parks as well, most notably mamouth. consequently, you will notice, breck has freeway up and running by the second or 3rd week in december when most places are just starting to blow snow for their park. along with this comes the park staff, it is one of the hardest jobs in summit county to get because if you dont bust your ass and do what they want and then some, they dont hesitate to fire you right there. i have seen it happen to guys, it does every winter. but it produces huge dividends. in january you can go and see almost any big name pro you want riding there at some point, and they are there volintaraly, that says something about how the park is maintained big time. people talk about how good all the other parks in colorado are and thats the question i always ask, what pros are riding there? there going to go where they like the best. which also confuses me as far as the moving of the u.s. open goes, why they went to copper is beyond me, no offense to anyone, but copper in my oppinion is not all it is craxked up to be, and yes, i have riden there multiple days.
 
dude you're a genius, If there was a park staff with all mexicans and a couple of white guys to just sit back and tell em what to do, hella work would get done
 
But Honestly if I was a park manager and one of my crew was being a lazy bitch I'd fire his ass because you know I'd have a shit ton of applications from kids that would kill for the job sitting in my office.

Problem is most park managers are just as lazy as their crew, which makes them way to lazy to hire and fire people.
 
and that raises the question of who the fuck is hiring these retarded ass park managers?

I'd kill for that kind of job! and I guarantee you my staff would not be lazy because if they were I'd break my foot of up in their asses.
 
Shit, I gots one more thing to say.

Major props to the timberline park crew this summer, most of them kept it real as fuck. And the park was usually pretty dope as a result.

And it's way easier to maintain a good park in the winter than it is in the summer.

So the rest of you park crew fucks need to get your shit together.
 
haha that made me laugh out loud...the park staff at bristol mountain in upstate new york, i think is pretty dope they sometimes close a jump for 20 minutes or so on a crowded day to fix it up so it doesn't get to messed up for ppl later in the day.. also there pretty much all chill guys, i find myself on the lifts with them alot
 
The park at my mountain is so bad. our park director doesnt even hit the park hes a hard boarder. its so reatarded. the only reason he got hired is cz he can drive a groom (one of the very few in my area) the rails there are horrible??? the set the f/d up next to a building all summer and now its like a dragon rail. they seriously had no idea what they were doing. but this year it should be better we got a new director.
 
Horrible at my hill. we have to bite our tongues. And when it's not busy me and my friends take things into our own hands. We grab the shovels and do work.

15 minutes an hour to touch up all the jumps seems like the end of the world to them.

But they are all a bunhc of friends, and boarders at that and you'll never see a skier on the park crew IMO.
 
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