Question for park crew guys

If you're building a legit park there is at least one person making a plan keeping in mind flow, variety of features, snow depth and storage, and traffic issues as well as making a maintenance schedule and keeping a log book.
There are equations you can find with the correct measurements and proportions for jumps.
There's generally some flexibility in terms of changing up features, usually planned builds and adjustments on particular days.
Sometimes other builders will come in when there's a special event in the park.

There are some places where it's not that organized and builds are just based on available features and snow.

@a_burger

At my home hill, park crew sits in a room together while the park crew leader puts images of the features up on a projector 1 by 1. They then proceed to argue about where it should go

I wish I was joking

My hill is relatively new so it’s probably a lot different at established resorts but normally someone will draw up a rough draft and everyone that will be riding it will bicker about how they want it set up with the occasional “ if insurance catches us with that they will skin us alive “ coming from the managers.

Then 6-8 hours and lots more bickering about rails and lips later we have a mid setup

Hopefully more people who actually ride the park start applying for park crew soon rather than just people who know how to shovel

Gotta love the ol, jump over the entire feature and land in the flat

For us usually larger snow features like jumps stay in the same area year to year. Rails were usually pretty flexible, I’ll go in with some rough ideas for what I want and then let the rest of the crew fill in the blanks as a process where we work out what would flow best

Wo work a lot with angle measurements to find the jump and landing angles, also having the landing 3 times as long as the airtime is preffered but not always possible. There are more ways to do this but this is what i have used mostly. Also make rail jumps two rakes outside feature, just to be somewhat consistant. There are several shaper tools for different uses, for shapes i usually have two to three different ones, i have one wider rake which i use a lot for when snow is soft, a smaller rake that have sharper teeth for harder pack and a cutter which is only used when we cut sides of jumps, which is only done when needed. I mostly shape every day and at times i take half in the evening and half in the morning. I have worked both in a crew and alone, a crew is nice since the cold nights alone on hill can make you feel weird. Most places i have been able to come with ideas from the plan that my boss have set up, there have been bad vibes from debating where to put a feature. My pay is quite high actually, on par with a lot of construction work without full education. It’s probably the most fun job i can imagine. work hours are mostly outside opening hours, so it’s easy to get a lot of laps in every day. Hope this answered some questions

Agate420My hill is relatively new so it’s probably a lot different at established resorts but normally someone will draw up a rough draft and everyone that will be riding it will bicker about how they want it set up with the occasional “ if insurance catches us with that they will skin us alive “ coming from the managers.

Then 6-8 hours and lots more bickering about rails and lips later we have a mid setup

Hopefully more people who actually ride the park start applying for park crew soon rather than just people who know how to shovel

Sounds like the crew at the hill I grew up skiing at. No one on crew can even hit rails not even the manager lol

lil.BoyeWo work a lot with angle measurements to find the jump and landing angles, also having the landing 3 times as long as the airtime is preffered but not always possible. There are more ways to do this but this is what i have used mostly. Also make rail jumps two rakes outside feature, just to be somewhat consistant. There are several shaper tools for different uses, for shapes i usually have two to three different ones, i have one wider rake which i use a lot for when snow is soft, a smaller rake that have sharper teeth for harder pack and a cutter which is only used when we cut sides of jumps, which is only done when needed. I mostly shape every day and at times i take half in the evening and half in the morning. I have worked both in a crew and alone, a crew is nice since the cold nights alone on hill can make you feel weird. Most places i have been able to come with ideas from the plan that my boss have set up, there have been bad vibes from debating where to put a feature. My pay is quite high actually, on par with a lot of construction work without full education. It’s probably the most fun job i can imagine. work hours are mostly outside opening hours, so it’s easy to get a lot of laps in every day. Hope this answered some questions

That sounds like a good way to build jumps. Where do you work and what do they pay you? Seems like it’s kinda rare to make decent money at it.

Brighton and Woodward Park City crews be like:

switchlip2Sounds like the crew at the hill I grew up skiing at. No one on crew can even hit rails not even the manager lol

Every year there are more and more youngins getting into the park. They have been getting pretty good so my hopes are high for the future

skiP.E.I.That sounds like a good way to build jumps. Where do you work and what do they pay you? Seems like it’s kinda rare to make decent money at it.

It seems to work, i also feel i can trust jumps i have built more knowing what went into it.



I worked at Kvitfjell, Norway for 200kr/h (~18$/h) and starting at Geilo this season paid 210kr/h (~19$/h)
i was an apprentice as a landscaper and earned 217kr/h (roughly 20$/h)
i’ts a decent living for a twenty something year old in Norway.

worked at several other resorts but only part time with lift tickets as payment

The process is different in every resort. Depending on what the management is like and how involved in riding the crew is.

But for my experience, if you are lucky, you end up with a park crew that is deeply involved with how good the park works.

Reducing the number of injuries is always your top concern, and for this you have to consider the attide of non freeskiers more than the one of your peers. They don't know what the speed should be, how to use obstacles or where to stop.. In order to organise all that, my favorite way to look at it is to imagine skiers as water. So you create the flow of your park mainly to manage speed, if an area is too steep, you'll place something here that encourages to make a turn or scares peoples into slowing down.

If the danger cannot be managed with feature design, then you have to think about fences and signs. But those are less effective..

After years of experience, specially if you stay on the same terrain, it comes naturaly.



Once you did the risk management part, the fun part begins.

For us it's always been a process of really long conversations debating features. This is mostly done in the park house while smoking joints. That's the part most park rats witness and will later use to call shapers "lazy stoners" or some shit of that type. It can seem like a stupid process but it's what allows us to coordinate. Plus, later that day we will spend 8hours building in the cold night. And getting all the debating out of the way during the day is the best way to be efficient at night.

In my country it's not often that you'll have the luck to work with a cat operator that knows about freeskiing, so working with them can be a chalenge. You need to learn how to speak with them and get them stoked for what you build. Most of their work is about grooming flat slopes so when you hop in the passenger seat and start talking about precise lenght and angles, they can easily get annoyed.

But if everyting goes smooth at the end of the night you get a clean feature, next morning you rake the last details and test it.

For jibs there is not a lot of calculations going on, mainly debating what could be the coolest obstacle. But for jumps, there are a few rules we follow:

-Landing should be 3 times the lenght of the table.

-Jump shoud be as long front transition to coping as the table.

-Under 15meters of table, the takeoff angle should be +2° than the landing steepness.

-Every 5 more metter you add 1° to that.

-Landing needs to be 3cats wide at every point.



Those are just a few rules, but then there is so many little things you can tweak depending on your terrain and goals.. I could probably write an essay about it haha..



I'll stop here because this is long enough, but it's a subject i'm really facinated about so if you have more questions ill do my best to answer. Been park crew for almost 15 years, and not about to stop anytime soon.



Best job in the world, but also one that involves a lot more than meets the eye, politics, stress, exhaustion..



Ps: i hope my english was ok haha

I'm not sure, but you don't need to rake a feature for 20 minutes that 2 people have hit in 3 hours.

at my MN hill owned by vail it’s a pretty open process, but is often limited by things out of our control like cat operators, amount of snow, etc. they’ll only blow snow on the park to get it open and maybe one or two other times a season so we often don’t have enough snow to put in the things we want. Cat ops have no park experience so they usually try and build a small jump but it isn’t great.

usually we’ll brainstorm ideas on the white board and our park manager is always asking what people want to see. also some of the more experienced guys on the crew really know how the space works and how to make it flow.