The Experts' Corner: Take a tip from the Tahoe pros

By Wendy Lautner, wlautner@TahoeRenoOnline.com
April 1, 2008

As winter’s storms become few and far between, it’s a good time of year to try riding in the terrain park or half pipe. This week, we talked with Dave Eidson, Boreal’s lead park supervisor, to find out a little bit more about what goes into creating a great terrain park so you can ride safe and have fun.

Not all parks are equal
As lead park supervisor, Eidson spends his time managing all of Boreal’s four parks. At almost every resort there will be parks for different ability levels, but features are not necessarily designated by difficulty. Always take a practice run without hitting any jumps or features to make sure you’re familiar with the landings, takeoffs and size of the features. At Boreal, this is just an example of what you’ll find.

Kids X, the mountain’s smallest park features practice rails that are set close to the ground so riders can practice jibbin’ skills and jumps that range between 15 and 30 feet. That’s not vertical drop – these jumps are measured in length from takeoff to landing. Night Park is more of an intermediate park, featuring different hips, spines, table tops and step downs. Upper Night Park starts with a 40-foot step down into a 52-foot true table, Lower Night Park’s jumps are somewhat smaller but there’s more features. Rail Alley features handmade flat and kinked rails. Kinked rails change direction so they might go flat and then down or down and then up and are a more advanced feature than flat rails. If you really want to see some action, or think you’re up for the challenge – stop into 49er Park. It’s where all the pro-lines are. Check this out: a 50-foot step down into a 65-foot table top, a water tank jib and, new this year, a school bus donated by Red Bull.

How do you ride a school bus?
The school bus feature at Boreal, Eidson said, is used like a transfer. What that means is a rider takes off a few feet away from the bus, lifts into the air and taps the bus before landing back at the takeoff spot.

How do you keep the park and pipes from getting all rutted out?
Everyday maintenance is the answer. “The pipe is cut daily from 4-6 p.m. by our master pipe cutter Eric Rosenwald. He cuts it with the Zaugg Pipe Monster, which is like a snow cat with an attachment on the end of it that looks like a big ‘L’. Cutting the pipe is an extremely specialized skill,” Eidson said.

How do you keep a park from looking like every other park?
The answer here, Eidson said, is to make your own features. In addition to snow-made features, parks also have heaps of features not made just from snow – like rails and boxes. Eidson said he spends a lot of time welding and working with metals to create authentic rails and features to later add into the park. Another component of keeping the park up-to-date, Eidson stresses, is getting feedback from riders and users. “It’s a really creative process, and it’s really fun when you get a lot of people’s input on what to add to a park.”

What’s the basic design process?
Knowing which feature should go where is incredibly important to maximizing the flow of the park. “You want to make sure you have enough speed coming off of the previous jump to go into the next one,” Eidson said. “So we take steepness into consideration and really work with the pitch of the mountain to design appropriate jumps.” Generally, the steeper the slope, the bigger the jump that can be built. But not everything works perfectly the first time; that’s where constant evaluation comes in. “We have people try out our new features and give feedback and we modify from there.”