Fernie Snowboard (terrain) parks

[dansavage]

Ok I’ll get this right out in hte open before I go off on a rant, Fernie is by far my favourite mountain, driving the 3 hours from Calgary is a small price for an amazing weekend or week (feb 13-20ish). When it comes down to their snowboard park, they have the rails like very few others in the region, lots of variety and lots of fun.

Except, that when it’s almost Feb and a large portion of the Snowboard park’s features aren’t available. Let me elaborate for a minute. The main focus of my complaints is the top snowboard park off of timber/whitepass, all too often a jump or ‘stepup’ will be taken down for a few days, the employees answer to this is to make it bigger and/or better. Very understandable, but the problem is that all too often the lip of jumps will be taken off for days, even entire weekends, then eventually put back together later on. Thus leaving the riders of that weekend disgrunted with a simple large mound. Even the brand new this year ‘tombstone’ aka quarterpipe that rides up a huge dead tree, will be perfect one day, then groomed and ruined the next.

Ok you might say, the maintanence people are just trying to make things better so what’s this guys problem? Definately a good argument and I agree partially. But the brunt of my next complaint is the rails in the same top timber/whitepass park.

I’ll start with the very first box that is easily missed by many, it’s just to the right of the ‘large mounds’ or lackthereof jumps. Great lil box, fun to try new tricks out on, it’s nicely maintained and raked once every day or two, though sometimes like all of last weekend the coping came off to rip off a chunk of a riders board. But hey ya can’t maintain this box 24/7 I’m sure it’s fixed now, right? I hope so at least. Next up is the red long flat rail and the rainbow box not more than 30 feet beside the red rail. Who was the genius who came up with the idea for this one. “Let’s put a long flat rail that you need a decent amount of speed to hit, on a flat portion of the hill, making it nearly impossible to hike and hit again.” Then not only that but they did it TWICE, with the rainbow box. That R-box has been sitting their since December I think it was! hell there isn’t even a jump built up to it last I checked and the same thing with the red rail, there’s no slope going up to it, making it nearly impossible to hike and hit again and again. So here we have two perfectly good rail/boxes that have been poorly setup. When we asked two young maintanence guys about it, they said and I loosely quote “It’s all about the smooth long lines in this park, you gotta go over the whoop-di-do’s to hit this rail or box, man! it’s all about the lines” Oh I must be confused then, why is the box at the top off to the right if this park is all for ‘lines’? Also when you think about it, if you did the entire park in one nice smooth line, then you’d be at the bottom of the hill and have to take another 30 min 2 chair rides to do the same line again. The park last year had a great setup for rails more or less, the jumps were non-existant last year but hey, at least the features were there and setup. This year it’s like someone who’s never even been in a snowboard/terrain park decided what was best.

Now don’t get me wrong, the rail jam park at the bottom which was originally setup for…well the rail jam. That park is great in my opinion, everything there is hikeable, you can do smooth lines on it as well and the variety of rails is great. But when you get to the top park, it’s not really worth it until something is fixed.

I could also rant and rave about the adults who bring their 4 year old kids on a pleasure cruise through the rail jam park, just for the scenery and whatnot, but I’ll leave that rant for another day.

I emailed Fernie about this requesting they forward the message onto somebody in charge, and days later no response. I havn’t given up hope yet, but honestly something has to be done.

[anonymous]

hey , sure hope it gets better,correct me if im wrong but is it not Hal Rogers that is head of terrain park and pipe features ont he mountain.I beleive he was handed the torch after that snowboard canada article on his backyard park i may be wrong.I was super disapointed last season with the park,i was there int he begining of march and i was all like yeah its gunna be sick casue in the years past,i guess the 2001-2002 season they had a good 8 boxes and teh tables were primo everyday,last year was a disapointment.so much great things could happen to that place if it stepped it up

[dansavage]

damn, if he can land himself a feature in a mag like that, then why can’t he learn simple physics? “If I go down a 2 foot incline to 10 feet of flat, then go up another 2 feet incline and jump onto a rail, I won’t have enough speed”

If he’s the same guy that did the rail jam park setup, then at least he knows what he’s doing kinda.

Yea last years park, well it was…different. As far as rails go I couldn’t complain, both the kinks near the later half of the year were in spots you could hike and get speed to hit, even the flat rail was hikeable. The C-rail or gravitron was kinda odd placement, but for anyone who loves jumps…they got screwed.

Live and learn I guess eh? just when do ya think they’ll learn?

[anonymous]

yea for sure,i think it may be a lack of utencils also,if you look at other resorts they have terrain groomer specificly foer builfing jumps,you just set the transition at the base of the jump and it lifts the groomer to its correct angle when u keep moving,also it maybe a a lack of knowledge,most park crews are like 20 guys of which who could all be sponcered for theyre riding abilitys,it takes more that a traillscraper to create nice jumps witht he physics behind it,if it were up to me or the RCR id get Jeff PAtterson down there like once a week to set out goals and teach,look how the LAke turned out best park int eh rockies if no canada right now.

[mr.brown]

whistler is by far the best terrain park
but fernie can be that much better if they only listen to the suggestions of the boarders and the professionals who ride there

[dansavage]

couple weeks ago talked and helped one of the park workers…casual nice guy.

No wonder the park has so much trouble though they’ve only hired 2 guys who work 5 days a week to do the park, and one cat guy. No wonder it falls into troubles. I hope they hire and throw more money into the park next year for sure. I love Fernie but they gotta work on the park more…yea yea I know Fernie is all about the snow and powder…but why limit yourself eh?

Just got back this past weekend March 5-7, the rail jam was taken down for the downhill derby, (the park monitor guy has been saying he wants to put hte rails back at the top again where they’re supposed to go). Anyone know when we can expect all the rails to be back up and running?

[anonymous]

personally, i still feel he park would do so much better right underneith the deer chair, look how much succes the Lake has had by putting showtime under its chairs,also u ahve to have a commited team to grrom the park and maintain rails,as of now since fernie doesnt have the dedication it needs for park staff i think its only fair to say get pre made rails from D railed design team(ironicly enought fernie is supposidly sponcered by them) and also get local feed back,have feed back sessions at local shops have contests every weekend rider input is a must

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