More needs to be done to keep park riders and gapers safe.

galardogod

galardogod

Active member
So today witnessed and was involved in Probably around 6 close calls in collisions, And saw one of the most gnarly ones when a standered gaper was skiing on top of a QP and a skier went to tranny find and absulutly crushed the kid who went right in front of him. I was sliding and urban rail and some lady cut straight in front of the landing resulting in a verry close call. So my question to NS is what can be done to prevent these situations from occuring? Has your mountain taking any procatiouns?
 
At Wachusett it weeds out some ofl the younger kids who don't have a parent on hand to sign it, and the waiver even turns some parents away from the idea completely. It won't stop everyone but it helps
 
My idea was pretty unrealistic but i suggest you have to take a test to see what park you are placed in simular to a swim test at public pools, so basicly you have to show that you can hit features safley but this is kind of unrealistic
 
Not seeing it, really. I think that would discourage progression in the few people who actually followed the rule.
 
Expensive park pass, and if you're 14 or younger you need a parents permission, on which should list loads of injuries to discourage them from signing it...
 
Eh... Just read the damn signs on the way into the park. And if kids dont, yell at them. Not like some dick or something, just tell them whats up and yeah. Worls 95% of the time. The other 5% they have dain bamage.
 
Honestly I've done the park pass at a few resorts around the country and it has always been highly ineffective. People aren't always there to check them, it's easy to get and really only slows down the people who belong in the park, and most of the time I just rode into the park without one.

I think park crew has to be responsible for this and be more active policing the parks. If they see or hear about an incident like these, the guest should be asked to leave the park for violation of the rules posted at the entrance. If it's bad enough pull a pass! We get our passes pulled for going fast on black runs but gapers can legitimately endanger the life of themselves and a rule following park rider at no consequence? Fuck that, pull the pass and set the standard.

Story time:

I crashed on #4 at Breck because a dude was taking his kids across the landing while I was in the air. Everyone involved could have been killed in that incident and the dude yelled at me when I told him he couldn't do that. He said he was going to call ski patrol on me and I said I'd ride there with him. But do you think they would have actually done anything? Anyone have a good outcome to a problem like mine?
 
Gapers don't read the signs and they destroy the parks. They have no clue that park riding is a privilege and their actions are extremely dangerous in a park like Freeway at Breck. Everyone has a first time in the park, but you can't just rage around obliviously like you own the place.
 
In the small park at Killington. Kinda fell on the second to last jump so took the next one slow and barely got air. Land in between gaper and his mom. Mostly upset with them being there I yell loud MOVE FROM THE LANDING. Turn around to see the guy behind me clip them both. Now they finally get it and start to hustle away. People, man.

We need like.. diagrams and videos and dioramas with sound effects or something. And why do these mountain ambassadors derp around the mountain being generally useless when they could be advising newcomers in the park?
 
I saw a snowboarder backflip and land basically on a 5 yr old girl who had yardsaled when rolling over the knuckle, it was like a 55 footer, and was ugly. Roping off parks help so no one snakes, but people if they do go in the park need to know whats going on as far as clearing landings, and stuffing off of stuff they arent actually skiing/riding
 
Yo, I agree 100%. There should be a wall of signs. More the better, have them every where. I hate gapers cause they get hirt all the time and then yell at me for hitting a jump properly. Just stay the fuck out of the park and I'll build you a little jump on the green trail you twits.
 
woah now, park crew already has plenty to do (depending on mtn/crew of course :P)

Who's the police out on the hill? Not necessarily Patrol, but the dreaded YELLOW JACKETS.

Where am i going with this?

Yellow Jackets not just on the normal runs, but in the park as well (knowing park guidelines / rules, etc) and enforcing there.

 
Its suppose to be easy but the whole point is the gapers who have never gone in a park will see that standing on the landing of a jump will get themselves and others hurt. Also, then the gapers signed some intense waver so if they do get hurt they cant sue the resort/skier that they got in the way of in the first place.
 
I was at keystone maybe two years ago and came off a rail to a 6 year old kid cutting right under it. When his parents started yelling at me and tried to get me thrown out patrol fully blamed it on them and stated it was there responsibility to know how the park works.

On the other hand my little brother and I were cruising through the beginner park and he came off a box into someone cutting under him and the yellow jackets blamed him for not being aware while hitting the feature....
 
Park crew at my mountain yells at gapers for using features incorrectly. I yell at gapers for using features incorrectly. Yelling scares people away. Not nice, but neither is someone smashing into them on a landing.
 
they should do it like bike parks and put a mandatory feature at the top of the park to scare away anyone who shouldn't be there. probably wouldn't work super well but its a start.
 
there should be a test, and then the registered gapers should be forced to were shock collar that punishes them when they go into a park.
 
i think there needs to be another way of telling people to get out of the landing, because when you tell them that theyre in the landing they just seem confused. most people have enough common sense to know better than to stand on a place where people are falling from the sky, but to them its just a steep mound of snow in the run
 
Ski patrol talking to people being unsafe, like standing in the landing and such.

Never saw that happen at my home mountain.
 
Winter Park has used a Park Pass system for years now, although just for its "big park", and its worked relatively well Id say. Kids under 18 have to have a parent sign the waiver and theres a 15 minute safety video thats mandatory to get the pass. Other than having patrol/yellow jackets in the park getting on people who arent riding properly/safely not sure how effective anything really would be. Sure I try and correct people and teach them the right way but the feeling I usually get, especially from families is "screw that punk trying to tell me and my family how to ski".
 
Putting ribbons next to the lip so it blocks off the knuckle helps a lot. That way people can't go launching the knuckles and such. That combined with the lips being cut straight down in the back, assuming its a relatively tall lip, makes it pretty much impossible for people to be in the landing. Of course they can still cut across the very bottom of the landing but it takes a lot of the risk away.
 
In order to get a park pass you should have to slide a rail and hit a jump. Otherwise they're mini parks where kids can learn
 
im surprised more larger resorts with reputable terrain parks haven't implemented it yet. PC/breck/key/mammoth are all places id expect some sort of rules. PC needs one bad. too many walks of life in the park that shouldn't be there. the other day i saw some dude trying to jack a flag off of a jump.
 
Best way a park pass would work

Make it relatively easy to get, have a basic safety test, under 18 need parent to sign.

Have somebody checking them at the top of the run.

If you do something dangerous/dont follow park etiquette your park pass can be taken.

Wait a day or two then you can retake the safety test to get your pass back. The more times your pass gets taken the longer you have to wait to get it back.

This way your arn't clipping peoples lift tickets but you can still punish dangerous behavior.
 
I know what you mean. I've went skiing at this one place 4 times, and 2 of the times someone got hurt because they ran into eachother
 
I know for a fact that all (at least most) of us started out as those gapers who were sketchy as fuck to be around. We all used to jump off the sides of the jumps for rails and we all used to cut people off. If they didn't let gapers in the park we would never be where we are today so I think the system works just fine
 
Every hill that I've been to that have park passes would check me at least once, I think they work pretty well. Especially at place's like Tremblant, where the features are pretty intimidating, I don't think I ever had a situation with a gaper at their bigger park.
 
They could have like 3 terrain parks, all accessible from the same lift. One beginner, one intermediate, and one advanced. That way beginners have a better place to start.
 
For the most part I really don't see a problem with it. There will always be gapers / little kids/ just curious people who want to check otu the park and see what the hype is all about. If people get in the way well that is just common sense.

There are only 3 TRUE ways to learn in life. Gapers will learn as everyone else has and will stay out of the way or learn to respect other park riders.

1. loss of money

2. pain

3. humiliation

Theis applies to anything in life
 
With skiing and park growing at such a rapid rate, it seems like it is kind of inevitable that it will become a similar situation to what people deal with in crowded surf areas.

It's nerve racking riding any terrain park stuff in places like Bear Mountain in Cali because it is where 90% of all LA people go on the weekend to ride.. the result is almost a continuous stream of bodies going over jumps and rails.. SUPER dangerous.

Maybe some of these places need their own version of Da Hui, ha.

 
If I see someone acting dangerously, I will usually give them a friendly reminder TO FUCK OFF AND DIE, THEN I KILL THEM SO I HAVE SPACE TO SELL DRUGS. FVCK YALL!
 
It's tough. The gapers run the mountain at a lot of places. They're the ones bringing in a ton of money. Coming from wherever, renting gear, buying full priced tickets, buying food for the whole family in the lodge etc. They're also the kind of people who bitch about everything that doesn't go 100% their way.

As far as a park pass it's not as simple IMO. You can find good and bad things to either side of the argument. I've def seen park passes weed some of the gapers out of the parks, especially if they have another beginner park without a pass requirement. At the same time it can be a pain in the ass when you show up to a mountain you've never been to for one day, get up to the park and find out you can't go in till you go to the lodge and watch a super noobish video and pay some extra money just to ride the park that you bought a lift ticket to ride. The fact that that park is built for people like you. Some mountains blue the line and seem to do alright. I rode Okemo a whole day and never had any problems. Found out they had park pass after the fact. Nobody ever stopped me but I guess it's just young kids or obvious gapers.

In reality it's up to each individual resort more than a one size fits all policy. Some resorts have far more problems with gapers. Some mountains have different layouts that almost funnel kids toward the parks. When I worked at gore I found cutting some fencing and fencing the takeoff to the edge on both sides of the bigger jumps to be fairly effective. With the amount of gapers there it was the only thing I could do to keep them off the landings.

I'm not disagreeing that some changes wouldn't be nice, but just saying there isn't a perfect plan that I'm aware of that could be put into place right now at every resort to fix the problems.

/I'm sick and wrote a bunch of words about stuff
 
I think there just needs to be a mini mini park for the gapers to play in. At MSLM I know there's the Junkyard, the intro park, then the Outback, the larger one and most of the noobs will be in the Junkyard. But even then, when I teach cross country skiing, a little place with rollers and jumps and stuff is a great place to get people moving and balancing and stuff. Having those kinds of features sized for the little guys somewhere on the mountain can do no harm, and keep some of the youngins out of the larger parks.

It all depends on the mountain's resources though and what kind of support the management has for the park.
 
Not here. We have to take a test, get a picture taken, get our names and stuff into the system, pay, and if we're under 18 have our parents sign a waiver
 
That's the kind of thing that might keep me from going to a mountain. Great for locals, get your pass for the year and you're good, shitty for the 1 day skier.
 
this, the mountain needs a mini park, then a proper park with lots of fencing and warning signs around the entrance to make it look dangerous, maybe throw up some bio-hazard signs or some shit
 
blast flocka in the park, that will keep all the gapers out, not mention solve any ghost problems your park has
 
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