Lazy Park Crew

Hyland Hills, Mn. Known for being one of the best parks in Minnesota for a decade. Unfortunately this season was shit, and it seemed the park crew was lazy to throw some knluckes on the hill, change features or groom lips and jumps.

JemsHyland Hills, Mn. Known for being one of the best parks in Minnesota for a decade. Unfortunately this season was shit, and it seemed the park crew was lazy to throw some knluckes on the hill, change features or groom lips and jumps.

Hyland Hills is Trollhaugen's older drug addicted cousin

JemsHyland Hills, Mn. Known for being one of the best parks in Minnesota for a decade. Unfortunately this season was shit, and it seemed the park crew was lazy to throw some knluckes on the hill, change features or groom lips and jumps.

that's whats going on at my home mountain too

matlk14Whats up with all the fuckin lazy park crews these days. smoking to much dope, drunk, or just lack of pride. I don't know whats happening, they throw up a jump line, few jibs ad let the others just sit there or wait till 11 am to open features.
Poor approaches, and no flow.

Main concern is this is about Schweitzer mountain in northern Idaho where they about 10 years ago had flowy parks jibs and jumps galore. Is this happening at your resort? Is it a lack of management or funding.

There are many reasons why this could happen, I know at my mountain (Blue Mt in PA) dosent put up features that mutch anymore because the mountain dosent see it as a priority.

Spirit Mountain has been getting on my nerves. The jumps and rails when they first get set up are impeccable, but apparently maintenance is too much of a challenge (ride on lips to big rails, rails getting buried, flat jump landings that don't get re-pushed). I've heard that management is to blame but there shouldn't be any excuses for lack of park maintenance. The best solution is to get yourself of job on park crew and fix things yourself.

Afton alps in Minnesota Park never grooms there kickers, also a lot of the features are snowboarder friendly sense they all board.

The park crew at my hill maintains the features and all, they just never change anything up. It gets kinda boring after a while. Could be worse though.

huggiebear54Afton alps in Minnesota Park never grooms there kickers, also a lot of the features are snowboarder friendly sense they all board.

Afton has such a killer park and I'm honestly jealous of it, not sure what you mean by snowboarder friendly but unless it's a skinny pole jam without a lip skiers can hit features just as well as snowboarders.

skiznutsThe park crew at my hill maintains the features and all, they just never change anything up. It gets kinda boring after a while. Could be worse though.

Resetting features is a major bitch and can't be done unless you have a big enough park crew. Chipping away at ice to dig out the bottoms of rails is work that's more suitable for inmates, I don't blame them if it's a smaller hill. Maintenance is first priority, switching things up is second.

The fact that Schweitzer never maintains the chair 2 mound is the most aggravating thing ever.
But, I was just up there last week and their park was super fun. Top to bottom hot laps, fun 3 jump line, creative rails, idk what's to complain about.

JakeBarrettThe fact that Schweitzer never maintains the chair 2 mound is the most aggravating thing ever.
But, I was just up there last week and their park was super fun. Top to bottom hot laps, fun 3 jump line, creative rails, idk what's to complain about.

Yea end of season was alright but they have plenty of snow this year it kept it very simple as in if they had low snowpack. In the 2000's era it seemed there was a double 4 to 5 jump linr, sometimes a channel gap, and alot more flow off to the sides with jibs and other sorts. Maybe I'm just getting older but also I'm comparing to like lake lousie, timberline, and mammoth parks. I think Schweitzer could step up there game a little

Vail's park crews are actually really good this year.

VailValleySkierVail's park crews are actually really good this year.

When i went there last weekend it looked good from on the lift but all the lips were choppy as hell.

Nickc88weekend

It'll never be prime on a weekend anywhere. Never had issues on the weekdays.

Sun valley's is weak as fuck. The only one I've ever seen do anything is Craig. Forces you to get creative. Nate if you read this step it up, Craig if you read this you're doing great buddy.

Blows my mind to see so many threads like this.

Park building isn't hard at all...like at all. Close parks an hour/half hour before the resort closes and go to town rebuilding lips, takes 10-15 minutes to properly rebuild a lip after a rough day, less than that if you maintain the park through out the day.
Being on park crew I get how some days you just wanna ride and enjoy the day on the hill but if lips need raked you gotta stop and do it, it takes a little effort to make everybody's experience more enjoyable. Sucks that so many people are experiencing this

Chubz.Blows my mind to see so many threads like this.

Park building isn't hard at all...like at all. Close parks an hour/half hour before the resort closes and go to town rebuilding lips, takes 10-15 minutes to properly rebuild a lip after a rough day, less than that if you maintain the park through out the day.
Being on park crew I get how some days you just wanna ride and enjoy the day on the hill but if lips need raked you gotta stop and do it, it takes a little effort to make everybody's experience more enjoyable. Sucks that so many people are experiencing this

if you lived in minnesota, youd realize that just isnt possible because everything is ice at night. all the fake snow packs together and it sucks. the knuckles are hard to fix because there are so many rollers in the snow and it takes too much time for them if they close at 9pm and open 9 next day. They have to focus on other hills first because of ski lessons the next day. This makes them spend less and less time on planning and creating the features. With barely being able to groom the hill they are for sure not gonna have time to create new features. One place, elm creek, actually only has 3 tiny hills so they make changes regularly since it's 2/3 park.

yurtyif you lived in minnesota, youd realize that just isnt possible because everything is ice at night. all the fake snow packs together and it sucks. the knuckles are hard to fix because there are so many rollers in the snow and it takes too much time for them if they close at 9pm and open 9 next day. They have to focus on other hills first because of ski lessons the next day. This makes them spend less and less time on planning and creating the features. With barely being able to groom the hill they are for sure not gonna have time to create new features. One place, elm creek, actually only has 3 tiny hills so they make changes regularly since it's 2/3 park.

I live in New York and have had my fair share of icy below zero nights on park crew and it's shitty when it gets super cold and the lips to get really hard to shape but it's still doable. From what you're saying it sounds like groomers are also responsible for the park? That's odd. At my hill, relative size to the Midwest resorts, we have a piston bully park pro for our park only, our park manager is the only one trained on it and went to cutters camp so he's usually always in the cat. If knuckles need repushed we'll spend a slow weekday and go to down getting the knuckles back to good shape. But lips are totally on park crew. Even on icy nights it took me probably 20-25 minutes to get a lip back to amazing shape and ready for the next day. The hardest nights on park crew were builds. Maintaining a lip is a cake walk. There's no excuse for not putting in the work to rebuild a lip and if you maintain it during the day, when you close up shop you're gonna have a lot less work to do then if you just let the lip get beat to shit all day.

Sounds like a lot of hills just have lazy guys on their crew.

Shit at timberline they had people raking features almost every hour..

Keeping things nice really isn't hard

For the mountains around me and my home mountain it was lack of funding. Mountain Creek called Chapter 11 and the other mountains are just so focused on the race program that they do want to spend money anywhere else

mr-mcsteezeFor the mountains around me and my home mountain it was lack of funding. Mountain Creek called Chapter 11 and the other mountains are just so focused on the race program that they do want to spend money anywhere else

Ive skied at Mountain creek and can confirm this.

Never had a chance to make it to West Mountain this past winter because college, but from what I've seen on instagram and on ns from other members, it seems like they shit the bed big time aside from the jumps they built to claim that they had the biggest jumps in New York. Prior to this past season, there was a lot of effort put into their park under the new management, with focus on stuff that everyone can actually hit, but this season it seemed like they only cared about the big jumps and stopped giving a shit about everything else in the park.

john18061806Afton has such a killer park and I'm honestly jealous of it, not sure what you mean by snowboarder friendly but unless it's a skinny pole jam without a lip skiers can hit features just as well as snowboarders.



Resetting features is a major bitch and can't be done unless you have a big enough park crew. Chipping away at ice to dig out the bottoms of rails is work that's more suitable for inmates, I don't blame them if it's a smaller hill. Maintenance is first priority, switching things up is second.

That's almost all our park at bittersweet in Michigan was, skinny pole jams with no lip lol. 90 percent of the park crew was/is 16-18 years old..and it doesn't help when they want to do a reset our hills management only allows them 6 minutes of cat time a night.

What lips are in the park do normally stay beautifully maintained though, and honestly all I really have to complain about is the lack of creativity in the setups and lack of cat time, that alone makes it next to impossible

Because midwest resorts management care about NASTAR more than parks.

just sayin

SterlingArcherBecause midwest resorts management care about NASTAR more than parks.

just sayin

Too true

Brule.Never had a chance to make it to West Mountain this past winter because college, but from what I've seen on instagram and on ns from other members, it seems like they shit the bed big time aside from the jumps they built to claim that they had the biggest jumps in New York. Prior to this past season, there was a lot of effort put into their park under the new management, with focus on stuff that everyone can actually hit, but this season it seemed like they only cared about the big jumps and stopped giving a shit about everything else in the park.

I really hope they get things together there. Place is definitely home turf for me. Last season they got so sucked into numbers games of trying to have the biggest jump they never really built a proper park. I'm sure the guy there is a good guy but I don't think there was a ton of building experience this last year. Hopefully they've learned a few things going into next season.

I think the new management wants a good park, seeing they hear it from all the kids 24/7 but they need to put a little more effort into it. 2 seasons ago was a pretty rough winter for the east, and with all the new upgrades that year the money was tight.

Hoping that the rails hold up better than they did in the past. Was pretty bummed to have saved the lift towers to not have a chance to build with them and I think they got scrapped last summer. If they're still around jesus fuck I hope they use them. Even just some straight flat and downs. A little love with a wire brush, some capped ends, a fat tow hitch and paint and they'd be sick.

I know they listed the other parks last season but didn't build them. Hoping that happens this year. Pine Island would give the mtn a better lap feel.

I just hope they build a nice park instead of trying to make a 100' jump like it's a carnival event. The mtn should never have over a 40-45' outside of a photoshoot, and even then it's a waste of effort for their staff and budget.

Curious to see what happens next year but I was massively unimpressed with the previous season. Nothing but claiming on insta and facebook posts and no delivery. "Park crew is killing it" "Awesome park this year" "look at this look at that" "1 million foot jump" but the park never really got that decent.

Just got back on the webs and saw this post. Sorry for all the words. If you make it there next year hopefully they build a good park.

Chubz.Blows my mind to see so many threads like this.

Park building isn't hard at all...like at all. Close parks an hour/half hour before the resort closes and go to town rebuilding lips, takes 10-15 minutes to properly rebuild a lip after a rough day, less than that if you maintain the park through out the day.
Being on park crew I get how some days you just wanna ride and enjoy the day on the hill but if lips need raked you gotta stop and do it, it takes a little effort to make everybody's experience more enjoyable. Sucks that so many people are experiencing this

Basic maintenance isn't rocket science but a lot goes into the parks in general if you really want to keep things top quality.

That said I have no patience for places who come nowhere close to their potential regarding there layouts and day to day maintenance.

If you have several parks and a shit ton of features, maintenance can be pretty crazy especially in the spring. If you don't have any weak links on the crew, and people stay up with everything you can avoid a lot of problems though. Still, even with salting and mid day rakes sometimes the end of day canvas is completely fucked.

Def agree though. There is time to ride and time to work. If you're riding all day regularly the park should be immaculate. If the takeoffs are skew, rails are leaning to the sunny side, gnar ruts, choppy sides etc, you should be on that shit.

Any place could have a pretty dope park, it's just finding the staff that's motivated and knowledgeable enough to make it happen.Then keeping them happy enough that they stick around.

Things are getting a ton better, but a lot of mtns have a long ways to go. Everyday at some random mtn isn't a photoshoot or pro event, but it's not that unreasonable to maintain them to an extent as if it were.

When I ride a park that's set up well and meticulously maintained, I'm way more likely to throw down harder than if everything looks sketchy as fuck.