Most snowboard and ski areas have some sort of terrain parks. Most of the time it seems like it’s little more than acquiescing that it’s what draws in teenagers, and they bring in adults with money. Especially when it’s compared to how much money comes in from the minimal effort of producing a race course for skiers. This draw seemingly because of lower risk and an easy form of competing in beer leagues. (The beer part being what is the money maker.) But even most places who spend millions on terrain parks still build uninspired rails and jumps in a row. Nothing inspirational, or anything that looks even close to what skateboarders would consider to be flow.
It isn’t that great terrain parks don’t exist, but how few and far between they are. Everyone seems to have heard about Holy Bowly, Audi Nines, maybe even the Pine Knob Parks in SE Michigan. These are some of the most fun terrain parks in existence, and most of us see them from afar. All because most snowboard areas don’t want to spend the money on them anymore. It doesn’t help that most good cat drivers will also make a better living as heavy equipment operators than cat drivers. This is part of why most park crews are made up of twenty-somethings; it’s a job that only “pays enough” when you’re in college. When you pay the bare minimum, your talent will always be scooped up.
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During the late 90’s and early 00’s, half pipes were all over the place. Resort operators knew it was the only way to get the freestyle riders on site. But many of them sat unused, because cheap profit ideas forbid that we teach people how to use them safely and manage fear/risk. So their million dollar projects sat unused and the idea was scrapped instead of improved. Back to the rails in a line followed by jumps in a straight line, back to limited freedom of movement. And freedom of movement on a snowboard is why most of us ride, right?
Yes, flow parks are hard to build and maintain. But just like all skiers who want to pretend to make perfect turns, snowboarders and freestyle skiers yearn for freedom of movement, of flow. This is precisely why Holy Bowly is so popular. The reason Brain Bowl Sessions on Instagram goes out and build their own. Yeah, that’s right. A crew finds back country spots and builds bowl parks by hand. And often in flat spots requiring them to be towed in by a winch. This is what lengths people will go to to get 15 turns of creative flow that puts them in the air. Jump as high or low as you want, choose the line you want, ride how your soul says to ride. Largely because your ability to ride that terrain isn’t determined by your fear of casing a jump, or falling from 15 feet in the air at 40 miles an hour.
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People fly to Holy Bowly locations for the open ride week they love these parks so much. The same with It’s Tits, the breast cancer awareness bowl park that is also put on by Snowboy Productions. People drive from all over the midwest just to ride the super pipe at Seven Springs Pennsylvania. Imagine what they would do for a bowl park that can be ridden a different way each lap. Not just different tricks, but completely different lines through the same park.
Snowboarding deserves better parks, you deserve better parks. And if for once we pay the builders of these a wage that isn’t abysmal, the amount of quality builders and designers will expand. Which will mean more people on snow because they aren’t bored of snowboarding or skiing anymore. Until then, I’ll be finding side hits everywhere else on the mountain.
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