New Standards in the Park

[dropinoutofschol]

Recently a blog post (when I say "blog" it comes from three outdoor professionals who know their shit) came out taking about new regulations that will start or that have already started about maintaining a safe terrain park. Some items that were talked about were the rating systems of features and how to do inspections properly while maintaining the safety in the park as well as creating documents that can be used if any legal action was taken against the ski resort after an incident in the park.

I'm interested a lot in looking into getting a job in the park and was wondering what employees, general public of skiers (and pros?) think about theses systems/ if they have seen them used at their local hill and if they think they will work at any resort, big or small.

Not only do new terrain park standards set a bar for all resorts it also means that the professionalism of the park at any resort should rise due to these new standards. This may take many years but I think that it has a huge potential.

Online Posting: http://www.adventureriskreport.blogspot.ca/2015/12/rm-documentation-part-1-what-gets.html

Secondary Note: The previous two postings are about redbull rampage and how the progression of the event has gone too far; the athletes have continued to ride gnarlier lines while redbull hasn't progressed their rider support (no compensation, and HUGE lack of safety with regards to the medical staff. good reads.

 

[TOAST.]

Where I work we go with the Open/closed approach because snow is to variable. I would imagine that keeping within a spec would be very difficult especially on really warm days. We write down every feature in the park, write down what work was performed on it and then whether it is open or closed. We don't specify jump sizes because if what is measured is different than what is written down it could be harmful in a lawsuit.

While standards would set a bar for all resorts, it could also bring some down. It would be more difficult to get creative with setups for resorts that know what they are doing. Resorts that don't have any idea of what they are doing could benefit, but they may also not be willing to put in the money to meet the standards and drop their park altogether.

Parks are expensive and its tough for small resorts to find builders and groomers that want to put effort into creating good and relatively safe parks. At many small resorts the groomers are farmers or construction workers that just need something to do in the winter and they don't have any idea of what anything should look like and upper management isn't willing to put in the time for proper training. Upper management at many small resorts could also use education on terrain parks, because they usually use the logic "bigger is more dangerous" , but in reality the small halfassed beginner jump/spine thing is going to hurt 10x more people because everyone overshoots the landing.

Have no idea if any of the above makes sense, was just writing some shit down and dont' feel like rereading.

 

[skeetskeet9000]

At my mtn they had a sign to tell jerrys how everyone's speeds are different o the jumps and how to properly do a jump... It's pretty stupid.

 

[neleson]

Where I work we go with the Open/closed approach because snow is to variable. I would imagine that keeping within a spec would be very difficult especially on really warm days. We write down every feature in the park, write down what work was performed on it and then whether it is open or closed. We don't specify jump sizes because if what is measured is different than what is written down it could be harmful in a lawsuit.

While standards would set a bar for all resorts, it could also bring some down. It would be more difficult to get creative with setups for resorts that know what they are doing. Resorts that don't have any idea of what they are doing could benefit, but they may also not be willing to put in the money to meet the standards and drop their park altogether.

Parks are expensive and its tough for small resorts to find builders and groomers that want to put effort into creating good and relatively safe parks. At many small resorts the groomers are farmers or construction workers that just need something to do in the winter and they don't have any idea of what anything should look like and upper management isn't willing to put in the time for proper training. Upper management at many small resorts could also use education on terrain parks, because they usually use the logic "bigger is more dangerous" , but in reality the small halfassed beginner jump/spine thing is going to hurt 10x more people because everyone overshoots the landing.

Have no idea if any of the above makes sense, was just writing some shit down and dont' feel like rereading.

Well after reading that i would hope people like that would be at my local hill. The staff there are good and nice butt the management sucks there. They think jumps and rails are a waste of time and if you say anything about the shitty conditions that they have there and were lucky if we even have one descent jump. It takes them ages to build one (usually very small) and then they dont even keep it in good condition. The management is full of slalom skiers and one person who likes freestyle.

 

[hemlockjibber8]

I used to manage a park in Canada 10 years ago. We had to have written protocol of how we build and maintain features as well as use the approved signage for the entrance, liability, sizes and opened or closed. Also, I had to compose a hand book on how to work in a terrain park safely. We had to check off a list or sign a sheet saying we went through these procedures every day.

A lot of it was BS and none of it besides the signage were to strict, but it was there in case of an injury to show we used due diligence.

When skiing was announced in the Olympics and the world cup my biggest fear was that it was going to create a completely new precedent to park construction. Basically I figured it would all have to be built to aome sort of FIS spec that would be the same as what you would find at an event. No surprises, no creative features, everything standardized so no matter where you went, it was exactly the same.

I still think this will happen. The reason being, if there is aome big enough law suit and a lawyer decides to ask who designed the jump and why it was not built to the same spec as a nationally certified jump course (FIS). Look at what happened in Snoqualmie in 2005. I was surprised that didn't change all the building specs.

 

[dropinoutofschol]

We don't specify jump sizes because if what is measured is different than what is written down it could be harmful in a lawsuit.

Are your jump sizes marked as a distance or by Small, medium, large, x-large... signs?

This is still how the park at my local hill signs stuff, a big metal sign at the top (that nobody reads) just explaining the terrain park.

Also what happened at Snoqualmie? used google but didn't find anything. I don't know if my key words were wrong or if the google evidence is removed...

 

[TOAST.]

Are your jump sizes marked as a distance or by Small, medium, large, x-large... signs?

Nope. Sign at the top of the park says Medium and Large features thats it.

 

[Dan-Man]

regulations are for pussyz. and ski resorts suck.

 

[hemlockjibber8]

Jumps were always labeled with xs, s, m, l, xl. I've never seen someone do a measurement sign. That sounds like it would open you up to liability if the measurement was wrong (and they essentially change distance everytime you groom it).

As for Snoqualmie, a guy straight lined into a shitty jump and paralyzed himself, sued and won $14 mil and as a reaction to that a number of hills got rid of their terrain parks for fear of liability. One of the major points that proved the hill liable was that the jump wasn't built by an engineer, it was only designed by a cat driver/ park manager with years of experience but no schooling.
https://www.newschoolers.com/forum/thread/319308/Death-to-the-Terrain-Park-as-we-Know-it?page=2
https://www.newschoolers.com/news/read/Jumping-Dangerous
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Are-some-ski-park-jumps-too-risky-1267313.php

 

[Casey]

Jumps were always labeled with xs, s, m, l, xl. I've never seen someone do a measurement sign. That sounds like it would open you up to liability if the measurement was wrong (and they essentially change distance everytime you groom it).

As for Snoqualmie, a guy straight lined into a shitty jump and paralyzed himself, sued and won $14 mil and as a reaction to that a number of hills got rid of their terrain parks for fear of liability. One of the major points that proved the hill liable was that the jump wasn't built by an engineer, it was only designed by a cat driver/ park manager with years of experience but no schooling.
https://www.newschoolers.com/forum/thread/319308/Death-to-the-Terrain-Park-as-we-Know-it?page=2
https://www.newschoolers.com/news/read/Jumping-Dangerous
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Are-some-ski-park-jumps-too-risky-1267313.php

The reason the settlement was so crazy is because it was punitive. Its take a 25 million dollar threat to even get their insurance companies lawyers to return a phone call. The moral of the story for these mega resort owners is don't just build shitty death traps with no maintenance and call it a day. I've definitely noticed now the jumps they build are way harder to overshoot. Obviously its cool to have a 100 foot step down, but should that really be open to whoever the fuck happens to ski along if visibility sucks and its super icy? Not saying that guy wasn't a moron, but it seems like some good has come out of it.

 

[hemlockjibber8]

Definitely. I agree with you. It sounds like the jump sucked and now they make better ones. The parent company of my resort does not allow jumps now though. I've been to lots of parks with shitty jumps and I don't hit them because I check them out first. No matter how shitty the jumps are it's always the riders fault. If the only result of his lawsuit was he got compensation and snoq builds better jumps then that would be great but it wasn't.

More to the point, lawsuits like this will eventually lead to the standardization of parks.