First Week of Spring Practicum at Burke.



Matteo, Connor and i rake the park at the end of the day while the sunsets.

The first rotation of our spring practicum, i am stationed at Burke Mountain. The department that i chose for this week was Terrain Parks. I arrived at the mountain bright and early at 8:00am, where i met with Steve Mahon and the park crew at the ski patrol mid station near the mid-burke lodge. Here we collected the park tools and were breifed on what our day would entail. from the ski patrol shack, we headed up to the top of Dashney mile (Burke's premier terrain park). First, we took a run through the park inspecting the jumps and features in order to figure out what needed to be fine-tuned and tweaked to offer the best product for the customers. The groomers often miss a few things that need to be raked out by hand in the morning. Also sometimes, small lips and bumpes appear on landings that need to be raked smooth. on saturday morning, we needed to replace a barrel jib that had been smashed the night before by a groomer, so we ran downm grabbed a new barrel and rushed to replace it before lifts started turning. Once the park was all fine tuned, we took a lap through to test the features and we approved of the conditions. Next we called in the park report while on the lift. the next few hours we were on "park patrol" which entailed keep an eye out for incidents and make sure skiers and riders are protected in case of a fall. We were to ride down to the guest to make sure they were ok, while another person stood in front of the feature in order to protect them. Also we were instructed to call ski patrol inf need be and give them the proper information of the person involved. luckily everyone was safe and we never had to call patrol. Our duties also included making sure lips and landings remained in good condition. if a lip was rutted we would "side slip" the lip in order to smooth it back out. In the case of spots becoming icy, we would ride to snow cashes (where excess snow builds up) and spray snow back into the icy areas. this proved to be tricky at first, but eventually i got the hang of it. At around 1:00 we went through and raked the features again to last the rest of the day. After the mid day raking, we were back on park patrol untill the end of the day, where we groomed the features for the last time once the park was closed. I really enjoyed the end of the day. raking out features while the sun set and groomers ran was a really cool experience.
         As far as sustainability in the park, they try their best to recycle the snow that gets pushed around and pull it back where it belongs in order to lesson the amount of snoemaking that needs to be done.
        Terrain Parks provide a great service to guest by bring something new and exciting to the customer. creative jibs and features are created to provide the most fun possible. This season, Burke has been changing their park more regularly and providing  a lot of variety to their guests. this year an entry level progression park has also been put in to offer terrain park features to lower skill level guests.
       There are a lot of safety aspects involved in terrain parks. features are regularly groomeed and looked after to insure that they are safe for guests. signage and reminders are placed to warn guests of what in front of them.
       

i think you will find the remainder of the questions in the body of this blog post.