My Issue With My Home Mountain Park Crew

tri_photo

tri_photo

Active member
Just to preface – I haven’t worked on a park crew before. If I am completely off base, feel free to tell me.

At my home mountain, the park crew gives updates via social media about the conditions of the park. On a particular day, I went up skiing, assuming that the park was a go since they hadn’t given any updates.

The previous 2 days, it snowed about a foot, but I assumed they would have dug out some rails at least for us night shredders to hit.

When I arrived, they had closed off every feature. Snow was caked on rails, on takeoffs, etc. Not even one feature was open.

I politely asked a park crew member if I could dig one rail out myself, do their work for free. I just wanted to ski some rails, man. With my work schedule, I don’t get pow days anymore. Park skiing is my mental outlet now, I love it.

But I was denied and cussed out by this park crew member (why, btw. I didn’t say anything rude at all LOL)

In the mountain biking scene, if a trail needs maintenance, 99% of the time, you can fix it up yourself. Patch up trails, sweep dirt jumps, etc… people appreciate that.

Why can’t the park skiing world adopt this? If someone wants to genuinely help and create more fun for others and themselves, why is that a problem? Liability is no longer a relevant excuse.

Anyways, hope my rant makes sense. I’m guessing there are guys on NS that work on park crews that handle things better than this other dude did, and I appreciate all your hard work and give you all major props!!

Cheers
 
Idk but can someone on park crew tell me why you guys might not dig in a rail. Like my mtn has rails you can see under. Some are like 4ft off the fricken ground we have a rollercoaster box that’s taller than me because they won’t dig it in
 
liability or something. those trails are probably on public lands not owned by any company in particular so the community helps out vs. a ski resort with privately owned property and shitloads of insurance + liability out the ass. Youre not really wrong, its just how ski areas are. if the guest took it upon themselves to fix something, while its in good nature, would be a serious PR nightmare if something went wrong and employees "Allowed" it to happen or whatever. im sure there are others who feel similar to you OP and even folks who are park crew members but they probably dont want to get in trouble ya know.

**This post was edited on Jan 9th 2021 at 2:51:43pm
 
topic:tri_photo said:
Just to preface – I haven’t worked on a park crew before. If I am completely off base, feel free to tell me.

At my home mountain, the park crew gives updates via social media about the conditions of the park. On a particular day, I went up skiing, assuming that the park was a go since they hadn’t given any updates.

The previous 2 days, it snowed about a foot, but I assumed they would have dug out some rails at least for us night shredders to hit.

When I arrived, they had closed off every feature. Snow was caked on rails, on takeoffs, etc. Not even one feature was open.

I politely asked a park crew member if I could dig one rail out myself, do their work for free. I just wanted to ski some rails, man. With my work schedule, I don’t get pow days anymore. Park skiing is my mental outlet now, I love it.

But I was denied and cussed out by this park crew member (why, btw. I didn’t say anything rude at all LOL)

In the mountain biking scene, if a trail needs maintenance, 99% of the time, you can fix it up yourself. Patch up trails, sweep dirt jumps, etc… people appreciate that.

Why can’t the park skiing world adopt this? If someone wants to genuinely help and create more fun for others and themselves, why is that a problem? Liability is no longer a relevant excuse.

Anyways, hope my rant makes sense. I’m guessing there are guys on NS that work on park crews that handle things better than this other dude did, and I appreciate all your hard work and give you all major props!!

Cheers
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Liability is definitely a relevant excuse. Some mountain bike trails in the woods are different that a ski resort. There was one lawsuit that made it for 14 mil a couple years ago.

But yeah, sometimes not every park will be dug out, it depends on the amount of snow, drifting, amount of cats, time, features etc.

But theres no reason to not have a few features open. 1 foot is not a lot. I do refreshes for an inch sometimes less so its mint in the morning. Dig everything the fuck out even from big drifts. Thats how most places or at least the good ones do it.

At heavenly 2 years ago i had to rake the park just to ride it because their park crew was MIA on a mediocre at best pow day.

Idk there's no excuse for lazy bullshit park crews. Do your job or find another one. Fuck anyone who gets into park crew but wont lift a shovel or rake to fix something. You're bullshit. If you fuck off at your job at walmart or 711 whatever. But you like to ski or snowboard, and you're going to fuck over tons of people who want to ride park because you're lazy?

Idk, there's still a terrible trend of lazy fucks getting into terrain parks.

Reference 14 seasons various day staff. Have literally carried 30+ foot rails up the mpuntan by hand with a few friends to set, had only cat detrack night before a $5 preseason jam at oak and still got 6 features in with 1 other person and using a snowmobile and shovels, have worked plenty of parks with many features and inly 1-3 daybstaff on a day, remember the days of a nump being a blade full of snow that you shaped, and then had to hand maintain everything and the cat just swooped.

Idk, parks matter a lot to me so maybe I'm seeming like an asshole but it really bothers me. If you don't do your job on park crew you're fucking over everyone that rides park. You might as well flip your fingers in the air and scream fuck you at every kid that came to ride. Shits bunk.

Butbyeah, see way too much of it. It's a job that attracts lazy pieces of shit unfortunately. I mean the ski industry doesn't exactly pay well but still. At least nowadays the cat work is so much crazier. I get pissed when I'll get rowdy cleaning everything up and then motherfuckers can't even spork a takeoff.

Idk, same shit different season.

Also if anyone was down to shovel, maybe I'd let them, but even if not I wouldn't yell at them. Like " hey man thats awesome youre down to help, but we just can't let you because you arent an employee"

But yeah, having the park closed for days for a foot if snow is bullshit. Id have handraked every feature in the park to swoopable mode the first day.

Fuck lazy people.

Sorry for bitching.
 
14225040:WoFlowz said:
Idk but can someone on park crew tell me why you guys might not dig in a rail. Like my mtn has rails you can see under. Some are like 4ft off the fricken ground we have a rollercoaster box that’s taller than me because they won’t dig it in
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It depends on features. Some rails are supposed to be high, but it seems like being lazy. Even if a feature is built too tall and needs to be sunk in some places won't. Idk. Everything has a range but the gosl of the park and the size of a feature has a pretty specific height range. When things are way out of that it's just lazy or being clueless. It's 2021, learn to build parks.
 
I see what you are saying.. but with all the liability release forms that you sign nowadays, how do these lawsuits stand a chance?

I appreciated your entire rant. I just didn't quote the whole thing so that this reply doesn't take up an entire computer screen, Lol

the fact that people are allowed to just let the parks sit and rot and get paid for it makes me infuriated.

14225045:theabortionator said:
Liability is definitely a relevant excuse. Some mountain bike trails in the woods are different that a ski resort. There was one lawsuit that made it for 14 mil a couple years ago.
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14225123:elm. said:
The real question is wtf were you doing hitting rails when there's a fresh foot?
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It had snowed the morning before, but had been mixed precip and very warm for about 36 hours by the time I went, to be more specific
 
14225125:tri_photo said:
I see what you are saying.. but with all the liability release forms that you sign nowadays, how do these lawsuits stand a chance?

I appreciated your entire rant. I just didn't quote the whole thing so that this reply doesn't take up an entire computer screen, Lol

the fact that people are allowed to just let the parks sit and rot and get paid for it makes me infuriated.
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This is America, the land of freedom, Walmart, and litigation. Signing a release forum doesn't mean you can't sue and won't win. It's all fucked.

But yeah i get super fucking angry at unmaintained parks, especiall these days. Still happens though. Some people just don't get it.
 
Unless you’re tight with park crew, unfortunately there’s no way for them to be able to tell that you know what you’re doing. If they let some random dig a rail out, turned out they did a crap job and then some Jerry goes to hit it and gets wrecked on it then it’s just not a winning situation for the employee or the mountain. Agree it sucks OP but sadly it sounds like your park crew is a bit half arsed
 
I needed to hear this logic. Appreciate it, Mr. Steeze. Good points here. and you are correct, as I am not tight with the park crew.

14225135:Julius_Steezer said:
Unless you’re tight with park crew, unfortunately there’s no way for them to be able to tell that you know what you’re doing. If they let some random dig a rail out, turned out they did a crap job and then some Jerry goes to hit it and gets wrecked on it then it’s just not a winning situation for the employee or the mountain. Agree it sucks OP but sadly it sounds like your park crew is a bit half arsed
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14225131:theabortionator said:
This is America, the land of freedom, Walmart, and litigation. Signing a release forum doesn't mean you can't sue and won't win. It's all fucked.

But yeah i get super fucking angry at unmaintained parks, especiall these days. Still happens though. Some people just don't get it.
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So tell me, why does it happen? Is it from the top at the leadership of park crews? You're way more knowledgeable about this arena than I am.
 
At a lot of smaller places, park crew isn't put on park duty full time- as a cost saving measure. Could be that no one was scheduled to work that day, or they were in a different department, doing snow removal, rental shop, checking tickets or any number of things.

If some mixed precip. started up on the back end of the snow, or still snowing they were probably just waiting for the weather to clear so they didn't dig everything out only to have it melt and freeze or get buried again.

Or maybe they just took some time off digging to ride pow, in which case go easy on them because riding is probably the only reason they're working at the mountain for shit pay in the first place.

Your situation for sure isn't ideal but no matter what the park is like anywhere, every mountain has legions of people complaining about the park, so park crew folks end up often being less receptive to complaints.

My 2 cents: just enjoy some shredding outside the park, and enjoy the park when it's dialled in. There's so many ways you can have fun on skis without putting in a bunch of work digging out a rail at a resort to hike it a bunch of times.
 
It's hard enough getting the whole crew on the same page for features sometimes, throwing a bunch of volunteers into the mix sounds like a nightmare unless the supervisor has no chill

OP you probably wouldn't be too stoked if your favorite urban on down rail got turned into a ride-on monstrosity just cause some jabroni who doesn't know how to pop decided it needed to be "fixed"
 
14225138:tri_photo said:
So tell me, why does it happen? Is it from the top at the leadership of park crews? You're way more knowledgeable about this arena than I am.
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Both. I would say the biggest issue is that people get park crew jobs because they a. Want to ride, or b. It seems cool. Not enough people get into it because they have a good work ethic and like fixing things.

Also a job where you need to be self motivated. A lot of people are lazy fucks if theyre not being baby sat. Unfortunately people work park crew the same way they would 711 or something. Idk it sucks.
 
14225040:WoFlowz said:
Idk but can someone on park crew tell me why you guys might not dig in a rail. Like my mtn has rails you can see under. Some are like 4ft off the fricken ground we have a rollercoaster box that’s taller than me because they won’t dig it in
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Low rails are snow skate game
 
My home hill has no park crew so I put stuff in but I gotta ask higher ups usually its not an issue but I always wondered about liability of a bunch of kids 14-25 digging there one stuff in.
 
What I dont get is if park crew was working/at the hill that day and none of the features are open, then WTF were they doing alll day? Hill seems to just be paying dead beat stoners to hot box the park shack instead of doing one of the simplest jobs in the world
 
14225901:poofartpee said:
What I dont get is if park crew was working/at the hill that day and none of the features are open, then WTF were they doing alll day? Hill seems to just be paying dead beat stoners to hot box the park shack instead of doing one of the simplest jobs in the world
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Unfortunately wayyyy more common than it should be :(
 
14225040:WoFlowz said:
Idk but can someone on park crew tell me why you guys might not dig in a rail. Like my mtn has rails you can see under. Some are like 4ft off the fricken ground we have a rollercoaster box that’s taller than me because they won’t dig it in
Click to expand...

If your at a really snowy place it could be so they don’t have to reset the rail as often. Pretty sure they do that at timberline
 
At my park there was a landing so dug out that some random guy just grabbed a shovel and added some snow to the landing

When he walked back to the top of the park he thanked him (none of us had ever thought of using the park crews shovels and stuff) and he was genuinely surprised that there actually is a park crew. He was amazed they would allow the features to be that unmaintained and assumed it was a DIY situation because he hadn’t seen anyone doing anything
 
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