PASKIINGSUCKS

Looks like we will be doing a little work after hours tonight. Any suggestions will be taken into consideration and passed along. I can't make any promises other than your words will be passed along. We are open to any ideas though.

Yea, seriously......it's the pondwater smell. I can hardly stand even sitting in our new operations hut to eat and warm up. But seriously, The whole crew is returning employees except for maybe 2 of us and most of us have been on for quite a few years. All of us enjoy riding the park so there is a pretty decent amount of pride and good intention toward making our park as proper and fun as possible. Basically every build and set up this year is gonna be thought up and layed out by us diggers and our park groomer is also a dedicated BC skier and previous digger as well. Also there is talk of our old head veteran park groomer coming back and I can tell ya first hand that that guy knows exactly what he's doing in a machine and is probably the best park groomer BC has ever had hands down. It's gonna be a good year for sure. I'll do my best to keep you guys posted on here and put in your concerns and 2 cents as much as I can. Only thing you won't get from me is the sweet pics Tomcat used to put up last year in his updates as I can't have nice things and still use a flip phone to this day haha. I'll try and pass the word for someone to update the Parks at BC Facebook a little more regularly and I think our groomer is posting pics every now and again to an instagram account so I'll try and get a name for that or a link or something.

I'm in tonight so I'll try and get some answers on that and report back tomorrow. Sounds good Kyle, I guess that means they have been blowing a bit this week, always glad to hear that. Any improvement on those jumps??? I talked to our park groomer about it and he said he mellowed out the landings a bit. The lips can change day to day depending on how the groomer hits em at night and what we do with em in the morning, I'd like to think they are not still bucking people. I only work thursday and saturday now cause I dropped wednesday to get in a 3rd pool league closer to home, so I'm kind of out of the loop as to what is happening every single day up there. I'll give updates and take concerns and criticism as often as I can though.

yea I dig it, I remember when tomcat was mostly making that style of jump.

Just to clarify, cause we all know in the world of action sports there is often some discussion about terms, you mean a jump with the top of the lip roughly the same level as the knuckle correct? Step over, as opposed to step up or down?

a lil edit from some of the boys.

Understood guys, thanks for the helpful info. We can go ham with the shovels sometimes and mellow out wicked bumps in the lips but you're right Kyle, as far as spacing goes from lip to landing and total size of the lip there's only so much you can do with a rake and shovel. I heard something about another build last night so we will see if anything gets fixed up with those jumps. I'll shoot a word over to the groomer though and give him your two cents. Thanks guys. It's a work in progress this year for sure. Don't hold back, all insight is helpful. Yea Doug, the yurt was pretty much for storing tool and such, and drying out our stuff in between rake runs. You'd be surprised how much you sweat in 10 degree temps when shoveling manmade concrete snow. And that beside how soaked you get on rain nights or working under a snowgun that's on.

I personally never took part in any partying in the yurt, who knows what went on in there in the years before my time on crew though. It's sad but I think that is the main reason they moved us down into a more "well monitored" area of the resort though. Sucks for the customers though as being centrally located in the park like that actually helped improve ski patrol response time more often than not. Many times we would hear a crash or thud or just kids yelling from the lift to come out of the yurt and see someone hurt on the hill. We have many many times been the ones to call ski patrol for injuries and be the first ones blocking lips or jumps while waiting for ski patrol to respond just minutes after an injury. We aren't certified to help medically but blocking a jump so someone doesn't get landed on while they are laying there hurt is also a big help. And doug, in a job I basically work for the enjoyment of being on the mountain and taking part on the crew that brings happiness to so many riders and skiers. Moving our central workhouse out of the park and into a cement building at the bottom that stinks like pondwater is actually a bit of an inconvenience.

Can you guys be a little more detailed with the criticism on the jumps, it helps us improve how we make stuff. Too steep? Too short? Ungroomed lips?? I hit em both and they didn't seem super sketchy, honestly I thought the hip was more sketchy than the black bear jumps. I think we just threw those two small jumps in to get something for the kids to air and made em smallish cause of the light amount of snow we had at the time of the build. Kyle, you know as well as I that if we took out every feature that had injuries on it......well we wouldn't even have a park at all. Joeys can manage to buy an ambulance ride on just about any feature in the park. Yup, park crew no longer works out of the yurt as of the beginning of this season. Worst part is, it still stands, empty and unused. We tried to give legitimate reasons for needing to use it but I guess the uppers just didn't agree. We now operate out of one of the maintenance buildings down the bottom. Honestly I almost didn't come back this year because of it.

RIP the Yurt

I'll be sure and suggest that into the next build.

Burton I think that park build on black bear was only set up as the only park for a total of 2 days. We did it thursday night and by saturday morning there were 4 easier features on cascade and rails in baby park. At least it wasn't the only option for weeks on end. Feel free to post any and all suggestions in here and I will try to relay. If you think that stuff is too expert you should have seen some of the other stuff that was drawn up haha. It's a lot the crew that are frequent riders right now giving ideas and most of em are pretty good riders. I'm sure once we get full swing into the season there will be much more of a variety. All suggestions and criticism is welcome in here and I will do my best to make your voice heard. And yes, please for the love of god ban doug at least from this thread.

Black bear is an expert park I believe. I was in saturday and there were some mellow features on Cascade and there is always Family park over off the triple for smaller features.

Thin and skinny. Skiing on about half a trail but still have about 5 or 6 features out. Not looking forward to shoveling cement but we need some blown snow in a really bad way. I'll take anything at this point. http://www.bcmountainresort.com/index.php/snowsports/snowsports-l/webcams

I second that. We need a serious cold spell.

I too have a long history of fruitbooting experience good sir. I could have guessed that from seeing your flippy spinny whirlybird tricks at the comps at BC.

I'd imagine the boneyard like all our other defunct features from the past decade.

Funny to say but also very accurate and true in terms of just about every extreme sport. I once saw a bmx racer tank it on a blacktop parking lot going like 20mph, dude rolled like a steamroller with speed I didn't think humanly possible for about 20 feet, he jumped up and dusted himself off without one spot of roadrash. It really blew all our teenage minds at once.

Unless you are getting them for free I still need some binders for those Oskar Blues Nomad RKRs. Justo, what kind of touring bindings did you get?? I always wanted Fritschi and heard good things but I got a steal on dukes when I put em on my old powder boards. Any input?

We need a more solid base before we can start diggin the spike pits and cesspool moats around features. We have already started saving all our um "waste" though, so we've got a head start on the season I think.

Stretch, keep in shape, wear protective gear. Know your abilities and take calculated risks. When all else fails, use this pre-season workout to craft your very own bomb proof body. Being on a park crew I personally focus mostly on about 300 reps of "The Brainer". Never know when some Joey is gonna surprise ya with the bar down while you're texting your sweetie. http://www.powder.com/stories/fitness-exclusive-getting-really-shape-pros/

The park is built already, well at least the first edition. They open today at 4pm. I don't work there full time, they had the build yesterday or early today I think. From the web cam it looks like they are set up already, 5 features I think is what they are advertising, I'm sure we will add to that very quickly. We've got a skilled crew of both skiers and boarders this year and almost everyone is a returning park crew dude and very passionate about our BC Parks.

woohoo, just in time for my first saturday morning shift.

Good Lord, BC needs to open just to improve the quality of this thread. Are we really hashing out a difference of 5 degrees in snowmaking temps. OK he was a little off, the point remains true, the pocono mountains have an easier time making snow and opening early. Ya don't see Spring open yet do ya?

Don't know what you're looking at doug but I'm seeing snow for wednesday and temps in the upper 20s for the next three nights on Macungie's 5 day. I haven't even tuned up my skis yet.