I complained recently about Snoqualmie not painting their jumps. Well now Stevens pass has stopped painting their jumps, and instead put up flags. When asked about this they claimed it is the new "region standard." I pointed out that other mountains nearby are still painting their jumps, and they said that they have been in contact with those mountains and made certain that they too will be falling in line with the new region standard.
WTF? I was given some BS spiel about how on blizzard days they can't maintain consistency with the paint. IMO they should just close the park on blizzard days. On the bad ones they X off the features anyways, and it gets sketchy to hit stuff with the random speed changes that new snow, especially wet pnw snow, brings. Everyone should be out skiing the powder and let the park refresh.
Flags don't replace the blue reference lines on the knuckle so that you know where you are in the air after you launch. Flags can't even be put on odd features like hips. I almost blindly flew off a double snow spine/pyramid gap that I had no clue was there, because you can't put flags on a feature like that. How is that safer?
I understand that if you live somewhere that gets sunlight and good visibility you don't need paint, but we live in fog city here west of the cascades. 9 times out of 10 we are socked in with some degree of fog or flat light. We have the phrase "skiing by braille" because that's the level of visibility we are used to here.
What can be done? If you live in the area I encourage you to complain via email, or on mountain comment cards. Maybe with enough pressure from patrons we can bring back the paint.
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