How to make a steep landing:
published
by Doug Bishop
( Mr.Bishop )
This is called a winch cat. If you have the problem of flat landings at your resort, this is the tool to fix it. Click on the picture for an enlarged view!You see the cat at the left side of your screen has a giant winch ontop of it. The 2000' cable attaches to some anchor point (in this case the other cat you see in the distance). Anchors can be big logs buried, or a perminant concrete post in the ground or something like that. Here's a shot of the anchor cat ontop of the jump. You can see the cable coming from the front of the blade. If you look closely, you can see that there is a mound of snow on the knuckle of the jump where the winchcat is depositing it...To make the landing steep, simply park one cat ontop of the deck of your jump, clip the winch cat onto it, and then add the snow from the bottom of the landing to the top. (your winch driver will know how to do this) You see, having the winch attached and pulling the cat uphill allows it to move snow up. Without the winch attached, the tracks will simply spin, and you won't be able to push snow uphill. I like to use an angle measuring device (called a clinometer I think) to make sure the landing is steep. Putting it on one of the spots in the cat that is flat with the tracks allows you to measure the landing. Anything under 30 degrees is flat as shit. If you're building a floaty jump, then 30-32 works. 32-34 if you want your jump to have some kick. Anything more than 34 starts to get into being too steep for park jumps, and you'll have problems getting it right. Best way to get a good landing is to NEVER guess. Just measure. No matter how good your eye is, it's so much work to make a mistake. If you just get one of these things, you know exactly what your landing is, and won't make errors. Nothing worse than thinking "That landing looks good" and when you hit it it's like dropping 30 feet to concrete... Just a waste of time. that's it... not too exciting a blog post, but I had a few people ask me what the winch cat is in my last one.
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