The Unofficial Flame Mt Hood Meadows Ski Area Thread

M

MtHoodMeadows

Member
Hey NSers – Having been recently hired as the new Assistant Controller (I am the head accountant) at Mt Hood Meadows Ski Area, I have taken it upon myself to be responsive to the concerns of the Newschoolers community. This username is new, but I have been on Newschoolers for some time and am not the average n00b (I know all about how to get to Chad’s Gap, the way to go about being spancersized and have even been ripped off on some gear I purchased from another member). I was even at the West Coast Session.

Frankly, the best feedback a business can get is that which is acutely negative – those issues are most often the actionable ones. I am fully aware of the complaints with the parks, particularly the size of the jumps, and want to establish a means to get your comments and feedback.

I am extremely vested in this - my office is in the administration building – just below the Vista Lift and I look up at the Superpipe from the window. I have my skis in my office, am going to wear ski gear all winter (to maximize the time on my ride breaks) and will probably ride the parks more days that any other single person, including members of the park crew.

I fully plan on being here at Meadows for many years in the future and really hope that I can ultimately serve as an important resource for the Newschoolers community.

So there it is my fellow Hood Rats, let the flaming begin……
 
horrray. a breakthrough. i've written alot before about the problems meadows has had w/ their parks and could prolly put it all together sometime.. but by working there nxt season will you be able to address the concerns of the kids who actually ride the parks to make optimal changes. that would be amazing if meadows could pull itself back together with the quality and management of their parks next year thanks to your help
 
the guy with white hair in the alpenstube restaurant needs to stop being suck a dick to people. is he the new general manager of meadows or just the restaurant
 
That doesn't sound like Tom (Spangler - the new general manager). I am not sure who it might be - I am still new here and haven't seen operations during the on season. Rest assured, I will be paying attention to who is being nasty to the park kids (or nasty to anyone, for that matter) since I look like one too.
 
Hey Danny - you have provided excellent insight over the last season both here and on Matt's blog. Since I was a fusion pass holder and didn't ride at Meadows once last season your comments have really helped me get a feel for what has been going on.
 
I've always thought the most disappointing thing about meadows' parks is the fact that with a minimal additional amount of effort, they could have so much better results. For example - there will be good rails set up in the snow, but with no lip or jump on, or with a lip that's way cut up. With about 20 minutes of work from the park crew, that rail could be a sweet setup - a nice flat lip onto an urban style rail, or a bigger lip or disasters, or whatever. Instead, the rail ends up sitting there for weeks, not being hit by anyone. Also, some tables are a perfectly reasonable size, the snowcat hours have been put in to create them, but they end up being no good because the lips and landings aren't properly maintained. You've made the investment in that jump of however many cat-hours, it's really silly to not maintain it with good pop and keep the take off wide enough. Mammoth's South Park is one of the best parks I've ever skied...when I skied Mammoth for a season, I skied it probably more than the Main Park. South Park's jumps aren't really any bigger than stuff Meadows sets up, BUT they carefully maintain them to have perfect takeoffs (not abrupt, good angle, good amount of salted, etc) and smooth landings.

Also, I'm just gonna say it, because I've always thought it...It seems like the Meadows park crew are lazy. Granted, the last season Meadows was my "home mountain" was 05-06, but I've been there a few times last year and this year and it still seems to be true. I never see them do anything. In Mammoth and Blackcomb and other places, the park crew is out there maintaining jumps and jibs during the day, closing stuff that's unsafe, raking bombed out stuff, etc. It's not even that hard to do that kind of a stuff. A crew of a few guys can go through the park twice a day, and look over each feature.

Additionally, it does seem like the MHM management realizes that park skiing is valuable - they always hype new stuff, new park manager, new snowcat, new name for this park, whatever...But it's always ended up just being hype. That's pretty annoying.

Cliff's Notes: Put in a little bit more effort, get a lot more results.

 
Well said - I thought one of the really big differences between Tline in the winter this year and prior years was how dilligent Wes and the hand crew were. They were out there every day basically all day raking and shovelling. Takeoffs and landings that were beaten were closed and fixed. I would try to hire him but for the fact that he has scored one of the very few year round park crew jobs in the ski industry and I know we can't match that (unless he wants to do lift maintenence in the summer - anybody know Wes personally?)

I think one of my big contributions will be the fact that I am going to be in the park every day on ride breaks and I know exactly who needs to hear the complaints. For some reason, operating managers seem to take calls from the accounting department - some of us are an intimidating lot. I can assure everybody that bombed out landings and beaten take offs that I find will be reported post haste.
 
first off, glad you are here. sounds like you really do care about what we have to say and being a park skier yourself, its a lot easier to explain things and you can understand how important to have things like maintained lips and such.

aside from what has already been mentioned, the one thing that always bugged me last season was the lack of rail features. i understand that this past season's numerous snowstorms made things difficult, but it seems like a lot more could have been done. as far as i can remember, the majority of the rails that ever got set up were beginner ones, there were a handful of more technical ones throughout the season but they were rare (i was injured for all of may so maybe some more were added in the spring). the rest of the rails and boxes were, for the most part, flat and quite short. everytime i would take easy rider up i would see a pile of unused rails sitting in the trees next to the top of the halfpipe, many of which i never saw set up all season. its frustrating when you wanna hit an s rail or a double kink and they never get set up (i may be wrong, i never made it up every single weekend)
 
Good point about the lack of variety/difficulty in the rails and boxes. I think the philosophy we need to embrace regarding park construction is that rider progression is the ultimate goal so there need to be features to allow all levels of rider (even the very skilled riders) to learn and progress. A balance is definitely required.

I think all of our rails and boxes are sitting in a pile next to the admin building. At some point in the near future I will go out there an do a quick inventory to post on the site. Knowing what the options are might allow us to come up with some new ideas for placement that could address these concerns.
 
Sorry for the callout earlier, i really appreciate you being on here. And am excited by the fact that a member of management will be riding the mountain and even more stoked you will be in the park. I've been posting on the blog for sometime under Toby, and you will defintely get to know me, (i was so upset this season Woody got to know me). I think other members are right in the fact that Meadows spends the money for great parks but has no follow through during the season, i might work on an essay for you sometime if i smoke enough and am bored enough.

Look forward to meeting you

Toby Morus
 
I started to do the inventory this afternoon at lunch - we have a lot of good stuff in the pile - it is going to take longer than I thought to measure and describe everything. I guess this is good news.
 
Hey Toby - I hope everyone is as candid with their critiques as you are. The collective group here has an exceptional amount of expertise in terrain park matters and Meadows as an enterprise will definitely benefit if the community is willing to share ideas and concerns. Feel free to voice your issues in any way you feel necessary or appropriate (public or private) - I am here to ensure that constructive ideas and quality feedback make us better.

We all have the same goal here - I want the parks to be the best we can make them because I am a rider myself. I am sure we will all know each other very well soon into the season.
 
I don't know anything about Meadows Park Crew. And I can't comment about their performance since I went to Meadows only one time. The one time I did go was around 9 pm and I hit up the rail yard ( i think thats what it was called) this was early season. There were bomb holes in the landings of the rail features and a bomb hole in the middle of the landing of the only jump, which I landed in after spinning...

It was a bad first impression but not the reason I didn't go back. I was pretty busy working at Timberline and Ski Bowl, sometimes pulling 16 hour shifts like some Fridays and Saturdays and I didn't have a pass to Meadows.

As far as Timberline Parks go, I know that we busted our asses. My first two days I was pretty sick, and couldn't even think straight. I got a nice intro to shoveling though..Lots and lots of shoveling.

I know there were days during the week when hardly anyone was at TLine in our parks, but we made everything look money. I know some of you had to ride through the park an hour before closing on some days and see newly cut and raked lips.

We take pride in our work. I remember shoveling out the rails on paintbrush after a heavy dump of snow just so they would look super sweet to hit and only a handful people even hitting them.

So yeah thank Steve, Paul, Wes, Matt, Josh, Morgan, Corby, Trent, Rob, Jay and all the other guys on crew who came on in the summer.

Ski Bowl parks...I know some of you were there too some nights. Ski Bowl stuff was a lot harder to maintain because of temp changes and heavy traffic. I was there pretty much every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night and we would do a rake and test run on all the parks. Then we'd usually focus on the most hit features, like the boxes on snow skate park. Bottom line, ski bowl parks were hard to maintain because of the heavy traffic and destruction of stuff. we'd spend lots of time repairing damage. Like ropelines and bamboo destroyed.

Working at Hood was the best time of my life and I'll probably be back sometime. Just remember that Park Crew does a lot of work, and I know kids who got on Park Crew at other mountains and quit because they didnt expect how much work it is..especially in a 850 inch season. There's a lot of work that you don't see because it happens early. Trust me, I am not complaining though, its the best job I've ever had.
 
The Timberline parks were top notch all year - from the Thunder park in December to the public park on Saturday afternoon (August 30). I have not one bad thing to say about them - There couldn't have been more than 10 or so people riding on Saturday and the crew was out setting features and grooming takeoffs. You guys have a class operation!
 
Can you get me a deal and some nice shoes and a cheap leather jacket. I want to take this girl I know up to mountain for sledding fun time in snowvillage ya.
 
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