JIB JUMP & SWITCH

WORDS BY Alex Miller

Can you teach an old skier new tricks? Terrain parks are all the rage with kids, but how are they set up for more mature beginners? Go investigates in Colorado.

Chances are, if you’re much over 30, the ski area terrain parks popping up all over the place will hold little appeal. “Look at those kids,” you might sa y to your chairlift partner, “spending all day sliding down rails and picnic tables sideways. What’s the point?” In a word, fun.

Parks are a simple reformatting of the skateboard park model, rendered in snow and dependent on slide rather than roll. While older skiers and boarders may be perfectly happy just going down the hill, kids love to do tricks, and terrain parks cater to that reality with a variety of different features that appeal to skiers and boarders alike.

“There’s a huge interest in it,” said Lauren Pelletreau, spokeswoman at Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado. “All you have to do is look at our Eagle Jib Park—it’s full of people every day, all day.”

If you’ve ever tried a “rail” and promptly landed on your back, you and your chiropractor will be glad to know that they’re

teaching this stuff now. Fun though they are, rai ls are made of metal or a combination of wood and plastic, and learning to negotiate them can have its perils.

“I’d much prefer someone show beginners the skills rather than just letting them learn by trial and error,” said JP Chevalier, director of the Copper Ski & Ride School. “A lot of it is learning the approach: the preparation, the maneuver and the landing.”

Terrain parks have become the great equalizer on the hill. Snowboarders were the early adaptors, but skiers are now out in force, encouraged by new ski designs which incorporate twin tips and high fl exibility that work well on park features.

One terrain park beginner, Austin, 14, admits his sole goal in life lately has been to do something called a “switch 180” on his new Salomon freestyle skis. Older terrain park adventurers may not have the time for such dedication, but spend half a day with instructor Matt Allan, who teaches freeriding at Copper, and you may find yourself warming to the sport. Like most instructors, Allan says it’s all about progression, whatever your age.

“It’s a whole different world than regular ski instruction,” he says on the lift up the mountain. “Progress takes more time—you can’t just go off the bigger features right away.”

At Copper’s smaller jib park, about a dozen different types of features await, but when teaching a beginner, Allan is likely to focus on a simple “box”: a plastic-topped wooden frame, about 15 feet long and a foot wide, approached by a ramp that’s fl ush with the edge. It’s a far cry from more advanced rails, where a mighty launch is required to get onto a rail just a few inches wide.

Park development has come a long way since the early days, when an old picnic table or two was made available. Now, resorts spend a lot of time, money and energy making their terrain parks the best they can be.

“It’s dynamic, it’s explosive and it changes every year—even within a season,” says Julian LaMarche, terrain park manager at Keystone Resort.

Like most of the larger resorts, Keystone has its own team of people working on terrain park construction. LaMarche and his crew spend summers planning, designing and building features for the next season, formulating Keystone’s 54 acres of parks with progression in mind.

“The beginner park is built for ski school, with rails right on the ground and wide fun boxes,” Lamarche says, adding that making the initial experience a positive one is a key goal.

Also in the beginner park, he says, are areas to stop and observe others: “It’s the best way to learn—see how people use the park by watching. There’s also a lot to learn about terrain park etiquette and it’s all gained through observation.”

Moving up

Parents and old-school skiers may look askance at the crowds of kids working the terrain parks, but take a little time getting to know the scene and it’s obvious that the bottom line is good, clean fun. Everyone there may dream of one day launching huge air and throwing 720s off the halfpipe, but the knowledge that you have  to start small and learn what it’s about seems to pervade. Kids have to exercise patience as they wait their turn, and they mix it up with skiers and boarders alike.

But it helps—it helps a lot—to take a lesson or two to get schooled in the basics.

“The majority of our focus is on safety, knowing your limits, and respect,” says Greg Willis, who runs the “Parkology” program at Beaver Creek, near Vail. Willis refers to what’s known in park culture as “easy style” —the recognition that you shouldn’t attempt tricks above your ability level and that success comes from a steady progression.

At Beaver Creek, says Willis, the emphasis is on lowering the apprehension level for beginners. That means giving them their own area, where the big hitters aren’t around to make them feel inadequate and where the features are close to the snow.

“We take our skis off, hold their hands, just let them feel what it’s like to slide,” he says. “There isn’t the pressure of the continuous fl ow park; there’s room for error. And then they move up.”

While Parkology is geared toward kids from as young as three up to 17, Willis says the adult ski and snowboard school is seeing interest from other age groups.

“Curiosity is growing among adults because their kids want to spend so much time in the parks,” he says. “They want to drag mom and dad into the pipe, so we even do private lessons that include the whole family.”

Park evolution

With a complete shop at hand—welders, pipe-cutters, builders and snowcat drivers— LaMarche and his crew are building the next generation of features at Keystone, letting some of the top freeriders experiment with them.

“These are things we wouldn’t offer to the general public,” he says.

The pros take the new hits and offer suggestions, as well as thoughts on what does and doesn’t work. Some of those features, perhaps in a toned-down form, may appear in the park later in the year.

For beginners, though, the bells and whistles of advanced features can wait. They may spend most of the morning on the same box, as well as time on the trail, practicing switch (backwards) skiing and learning to “pop” into maneuvers and do simple 180s.

“It’s exciting to take people through that progression,” Chevalier says. “We have a great group of instructors pioneering it and we’ll just get better at it.”