wildcat, nh- 4-5 , waterville nh, 4-6
- Thread starter joegm
- Start date
JimG.
New member
Spensar":h32fdffk said:
There is some truth to both of your opinions. The Hunter race foundation has made no bones about its' disdain for bump skiing...they'd rather not even deal with it; they did away with the annual Hunter bump comp this season. And Killington has turned most of Bear Mountain into a terrain park.
And these are the things that really tick bumpers off.
The racers are the same though. They have no problem staking out prime runs and having it for their exclusive use. The result is ski resorts are becoming more and more fragmented. For larger operations like Killington, etc. there are enough runs and terrain to handle it, but IMHO it is messing up small local operations.
<rant>
Around here (Ottawa/Gatineaus) local operations list around 18-20 runs - including all the usual BS with short ones, etc. By the time you make a terrain park or two, a bump run and the ski club stakes its turf, the terrain for the rest of us is often VERY friggin limited. I was frustrated more than once with racers staking out prime areas and hardly using it all day.
Instead of 3 or 4 decent blue/black runs we were cut down to 1 or 1.5 decent runs. I understand the business side and trying to cater to different segments but it is ruining a decent day at smaller hills.
I went to one local hill that I had good memories of and just shook my head. It has lifts on two faces, and though the vertical is minimal it had good variety and was some fun. It was a dismal day. The hill was so chopped up for special uses you couldn't cut between runs, other good runs were ruined, gliders were herded like cattle down a couple of main paths. The ski club had two slalom courses staked out on the best run, which channeled skiers down similar runs and hacked the run up very quickly. Too many factions, for so little a hill.
<rant/>
<rant>
Around here (Ottawa/Gatineaus) local operations list around 18-20 runs - including all the usual BS with short ones, etc. By the time you make a terrain park or two, a bump run and the ski club stakes its turf, the terrain for the rest of us is often VERY friggin limited. I was frustrated more than once with racers staking out prime areas and hardly using it all day.
Instead of 3 or 4 decent blue/black runs we were cut down to 1 or 1.5 decent runs. I understand the business side and trying to cater to different segments but it is ruining a decent day at smaller hills.
I went to one local hill that I had good memories of and just shook my head. It has lifts on two faces, and though the vertical is minimal it had good variety and was some fun. It was a dismal day. The hill was so chopped up for special uses you couldn't cut between runs, other good runs were ruined, gliders were herded like cattle down a couple of main paths. The ski club had two slalom courses staked out on the best run, which channeled skiers down similar runs and hacked the run up very quickly. Too many factions, for so little a hill.
<rant/>
Ahhh... CJ...
The pro mogul tour folded a number of years back due to sponsorship greed. During those days, I think bump skiing was more popular because it was on TV all the time (and very fun to watch... that's defiantely what got me into it). That coverage really helped the sport. I think now a days bump skiers are looked at by most of the general skiing public as "people on skis who take risks and just huck themselves down a mogul line" (if it were only that easy). Both me and my one buddy that I ski with have gotten these kinds of comments after making nice clean runs down the zipper at our local areas. We get a lot of comments like these from instructors and patrollers, and to your point there may be some envy there. Furthermore, around here those guys think they are gods gift to skiing (I would imagine that joegm is experiencing the same type of thing and thus the frustration).
I can tell you that even at K'ton, KMS has a lot of trouble finding mogul terrain to train on all of the time. I think that mogul skiing is really a dying art... maybe because of the McMountain thing? It seemed like once shape skis came out, it made things easier and people like easier. I remember seeing far fewer people that could actually carve back then too. That is about the time that I started to notice less and less people dedicating their skiing to moguls. Now that the masses can carve, they are probably having more fun, thus no need to go through "paying their dues" in order to learn to ski moguls. Same goes for powder skiing with the fat skis (man, Plake hits the nail on the head on this one in "Fistfull").
Let's just hope that the masses don't totally ruin it for the few of us that enjoy skiing moguls.
cj
Patrick
Active member
cj":3g0wlr55 said:
Masses have already ruined many things, not just for the Mogul skiers.
Greater lift-capacity resulting in.... Widenning of trails. Excessive grooming. Adding Extras that the diehard skiers doesn't give a flying :-# about. All these improvements have contributed in increasing the price of lift-tickets.
It is probably lift capacity increasing much faster than terrain that has resulted in the increased collisions (commonly blamed on snowboarding).
Mt. High actually boasts that it sells more lift tickets per acre of open terrain than any other area in the country. That's why you won't find me there unless ALL of its terrain is open. And I've never been there without seeing at least one meat wagon in action sometime during the day.
This problem is exacerbated in November when you service one White Ribbon of Death with a high speed quad or six-pack. This was the situation in November 2004 at Breckenridge when former NASJA President Claudia Carbone was flattened by an errant snowboarder (who was never identified) and broke her pelvis in 4 places. Last month she had 2 of her vertebrae fused as after a year of rehab she was told that was her only chance to return safely to active sports like skiing.
In SoCal it's crystal clear to me that since the 1980's terrain parks have replaced moguls as the preferred form of challenge for energetic teenagers and young adults (answer to Mark Renson's question?). From a spectator's perspective (both TV and in person at SLC Olympics) both moguls and boardercross/pipe are more entertaining IMHO than racing.
Mt. High actually boasts that it sells more lift tickets per acre of open terrain than any other area in the country. That's why you won't find me there unless ALL of its terrain is open. And I've never been there without seeing at least one meat wagon in action sometime during the day.
This problem is exacerbated in November when you service one White Ribbon of Death with a high speed quad or six-pack. This was the situation in November 2004 at Breckenridge when former NASJA President Claudia Carbone was flattened by an errant snowboarder (who was never identified) and broke her pelvis in 4 places. Last month she had 2 of her vertebrae fused as after a year of rehab she was told that was her only chance to return safely to active sports like skiing.
In SoCal it's crystal clear to me that since the 1980's terrain parks have replaced moguls as the preferred form of challenge for energetic teenagers and young adults (answer to Mark Renson's question?). From a spectator's perspective (both TV and in person at SLC Olympics) both moguls and boardercross/pipe are more entertaining IMHO than racing.
JimG.
New member
Tony Crocker":1iebvofg said:
This is so true! And I have no beef with terrain parks, they're essential to an area's success today. Nor do I have a beef with traditional downhill racing.
But, given the fact Tony has mentioned, it is illogical for bumpers and park rats to clash over the scraps of terrain they get after the racer's are done. I agree with Spensar's description of terrain staked out for racing as "hardly used" (also called wasted). It is, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen.
Fact is, the ski school is usually in charge of racing programs and has alot of sway in terrain decisions. That's PSIA, and PSIA is about carving and racing and little else. So, racers get huge chunks of terrain to stand around on all day.
And the rest of the skiing public suffers, and we turn on each other fighting over scraps instead of using our strength in numbers to make it change.
In SoCal racing is also much diminished. The park scene is totally dominant at both Big Bear and Mt. High. Clientele at both is about 3/4 snowboarders. Moguls are nearly extinct at Big Bear; everything is either groomed or has park features. I'm only at Mt. High when its natural runs are covered, and some of those have bumps.
Mammoth has a very strong race program, but the Unbound Park (with its own dedicated high speed quad) occupies about the same amount of acreage as the race courses, and there's another smaller park over by Roller Coaster/Chair 4. But in general if you can't find suitable terrain for your tastes at Mammoth you need to take up another sport. I will have to admit that when you average 41 inches new snow per week for the past 7 weeks there may not be enough moguls around for some people's tastes. You'll have to make do with the new snow instead :wink:.
Mammoth has a very strong race program, but the Unbound Park (with its own dedicated high speed quad) occupies about the same amount of acreage as the race courses, and there's another smaller park over by Roller Coaster/Chair 4. But in general if you can't find suitable terrain for your tastes at Mammoth you need to take up another sport. I will have to admit that when you average 41 inches new snow per week for the past 7 weeks there may not be enough moguls around for some people's tastes. You'll have to make do with the new snow instead :wink:.