What Makes a Terrain Park

Over on First Tracks they have a blurb about how the Resorts for Canadian Rockies (RCR) are removing big air jumps for reasons of safety. Considering the Big Air and Sno Jam is typically held at Fernie (an RCR owned resort), this is surprising news.

From the article there are a few interesting tidbits:

“We have found that one of the main issues that increase the likelihood of serious injury on our mountains is big air. When we are making decisions about safety at our resorts, the big jumps in the terrain parks always come into the equation. We decided to make a change.” -- Matt Mosteller, Senior Director of Business Development for Resorts of the Canadian Rockies (RCR).

To start with, actually there is nothing wrong with the initial reasoning for investigation. They were seeing a large number of injuries in one area and realized something needed to change. Although I'm not sure what options were presented, but my guess is something like:

1. Do nothing - financially a known research and development cost, although with an unknown total cost for injury support per year. An average can probably be determined.
   
2. Require training before allowing riders into the big air section - financially this should funnel some new money in to the Ski/Snowboard school per year. The downfall is you'd have to pay someone to check tickets/certification before allowing them in the park.
   
3. Remove the big air section - financially this will cut costs. Park crew will spend less time building the jump, snow won't need to be pulled in from other areas, and the potential loss of riders will probably be less then the yearly cost for injured riders.
   
4. Change the big air jump somehow - financially the complete wild card of the options. It would either require option 1 or 3 to happen in conjunction with it, which can add significant cost to any enterprise in the short term. The long term payoff is high, provided the resort is willing to try something new.
   

Breaking down the choices financially, it makes sense why they've selected option 3. Injury count is obviously something no resort wants, but what's not shared is how high is the injury count? The park has never been about providing an injury free area that is part of it's attraction. (One could argue that riding the groomers should not be considered an injury free area.) Pushing one's self towards the limit of your ability is what keeps people coming back for more, a fairly solitary man-vs-nature challenge. At the upper skill limits is also the area where the most number of injuries happen. Back to the point, injuries numbers. Once you've taken out big air jumps as the number cause of injuries, you have new number one. How long is it before a decision to remove that feature from the resort happens? What happens when that feature is the double black terrain?

"However, we believe we have a strong moral obligation to not compromise the safety of our guests.” -- Matt Mosteller, Senior Director of Business Development for Resorts of the Canadian Rockies (RCR).

Wow. The signed release waiver obviously isn't enough for RCR. Nor is providing trained instructors and emergency services for the guests and staff. Nor is personal responsibility for where I go and what I do. Nor are the numerous signs that typically surround the terrain parks warning of injury or death.

I clearly don't agree with the decision to remove the big air jumps, and I'm not even a fan of them. What will be interesting to see is at the end of the year what impact this decision has had on their business, and which other resorts may follow suit.