Burke Febuary 3-4

I arrived at Burke bright and early on friday and met up with Brian, the Lift manager at the maintenance shop. Here Brian instructed me to head over to the Mid-Burke express to start my day. Once i got down to the lift i met up with Zollie, one of Burke's fine lift operators. Zollie went through the whole system with me and showed me how to operate the lift. Someone needs to be at the pedestal at all times weather it be inside the shack or at the one outside. someone needs to be in reach of the stop button. Before the lift opened i set up some fencing to make the lift lines and keep everyone in order. Also we pushed some snow around and put a nice base on the loading area which we did periodically throughout the day as it got skied off. I spent most of the morning scanning tickets and running the lift a little bit. at around noon i headed up to to check things out where i hung out with kyle the lifty. there is not a whole lot to do up there unless something happens. This lift is a top drive and you can only speed it up from the top. This lift is pretty effortless to run, there is no need to bump chairs or anything like that so the job can get pretty boring, but it is always important to pay attention just in case something happens.

On saturday, we were all on the events crew beacuse the Dashney Mile Style slopestyle event was going on this day. in the morning, we prepped the park like we usually would on park crew which took a little more work than usual beacuse of the new snow we got overnight. it was important to pack down all the lips to keep them firm for the compettition. we did a lot of slide sliping in the morning in order to fix the quickly forming ruts in the new snow. we also set everything up for the jam including roping off the park and bringing up all the sound equipment as well as tables an chairs and a tent. durring the jam some of us judged and made sure the features were holding up. At the end of the day we tore everything down brought it all back down the mountain. also we did the final prize ceremony which concluded the contest.

Burke Practicum Saturday 1/28

For this day of practicum, I spent my last day with the park crew. We started off with the usual routine and met at the mid-burke patrol station at 8am. We gathered the park rakes and hiked up to the top of the park. upon inspection the morning prep today proved to be a lot more difficult than than what i had seen before. Because of the freezing rain the night before, all of the rails and boxes had a layer of ice on them that needed to be scraped off. Sam and i went to work on scraping all the features while Steve mahon and Connor Osullivan tented to the lips and landing. Scraping the ice took alot of elbow greese and took a little longer than i would have expected. Sam and I broke out quite a sweat. we finished up prepping the park just after the lift started spinning so we had to work fast in order to get everything ready before guests started coming through. Once the morning prep was over, Sam and I went on park patrol and kept on eye on everything making sure it was holding up. Since this day was particulalry busy, we saw a lot of bombholes on landings that need to be fixed throughut the day. at around 1:00 we did a rake run and smoothed out all th lips making sure to fll in the ruts that were created throughout the day. From now untill the end of the day, we went back on park patrol untill it came time to wrap everything up and close the park for the day. Today the park took quite a bit of maintenence to rebuild the lips because of all of the skiing and riding the park saw on this busy day.

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.

Stowe clean-up day

Last thursday for Practicum class sent it over to Stowe to Look over their progress on the new lift process and to do some maintenace on their acess road. First thing we met up with josh who walked us up to the base of the new lift. i was pretty shocked to see that the lift is complete and the maintenancwe guys were doing a weight test on it. They were using barrels of water to simulate people being on the chair. the way the water moves in the barrels pretty acuratly depicts the same motions as people would. This is the final step in the process to actually use the chair to move customers up the mountain. once the state inspector gives them the go-ahead, the chair will be ready for use this season. After a quick chat with the head of lift maintenance, we got back in the vans, and headed up the access road where our rakes ang leaf blowers where waiting for us. our task was to rake and blow all of the leaves out of the drainage ditches along the side of the road. we went ad it full force with everyone working hard to get it done. it was hard to find a simple way to do it sonce there were so many of us, but eventually we got the hang of it, got a system in place, and went to work. After a couple of hours of work, we got to a stopping point and then headed up to the top of the mountain to check out the lift terminal and new patrol building. after that we spread grass seed and hay around the unloading area of the new lift. after a long day of hard labor, we sent it back to school.

Burke Seat Pads and Chili Cook-off

Last thursday we headed over to Burke Mountain to put seat pads on the wiloughby chair. what seemed to be a pretty meanial task proved to be a bigger task that I originally expected. the chair started up and we went to work in two teams strapping the pads to each chair on both the downhill and up hill side. we worked great together and moved at a really quick pace and ended up getting the job done in under two hours. The compettition that formed between the two groups made the task a little more fun and definitly expedited the process. The guys are Burke were very happy with our work and thanked us for a job well done.

On Saturday it was the big day. The Chili Cook-off and Skate-jam. We got there early to get everything set-up which went a lot quicker than we thought, so it became a waiting game. at first i was a little worried about people showing up, but as the day went on we got much more people than iexpected as this was my first chili cook off. The Skate-jam also went off without a hitch. we could have used more competitiors, but there were a lot of spectators which made for a great vibe and exciting event. The skating that went down was incredible and its awesome to know we have that kind of talent right here at LSC. my boi cam cmobs took the much deserved win with some superrr sick hardflips

Bretton Woods and LOC Clean-up

On thursday, our practicum class made the drive over to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire's largest Ski Resort. First thing we met with a representative of their ski and snowsports. Here we took a tour of their Lodge and all the facilities in their main base including the rock wall and bouldering cave. The lodge looks huge from the inside because of the multiple floors and open space on the inside. We saw all of their cafeteria and eating facilities withing the main base lodge as well. After we left the main base lodge we headed over to maintenance to take a look at and talk about their snowmaking system. We met up with Big Tuna, head of snowmaking and he explained to us their whole system. I was surprised to hear how much the additive cost that they add to the water used for snowmaking at $100 dollars a bag. After snowmaking we headed over to take a look at the canopy tour and talk about their summer operations. The canopy tour being the beginning of their summer ops. After a long talk about guest services, we headed over to tour the Mount Washington Hotel, the oldest wooden structure in new england. The hotel was extravagant and a total change of pace from the resort next door.
This past Sunday, a small portion of us went over to the outing club for trail maintenance and cleanup day. many members of the class were either too hungover or out snowboading to make it, talk about not being commited to your school work. Anyway the few of us that were there put in work cutting and clearing brush from the trails while the LOC guys started up their chainsaws and started dropping trees left and right with no communication going on whatsoever i might add. but whatever no one died. the lodged was organized and cleaned up, trails were cleared, and we got free soda. made for a fun filled day of hard work.

Jay Peak

On thursday we headed out bright and early off to jay Peak Resort, There is a lot going on a jay peak right now with many construction projects taking place. Jay is building a huge start of the art hotel with every luxury you could think of including a big heated pool and hot tub that will be right out front slopeside. Along with the hotel, they are putting in an indoor water park with many water slides, a lazy river, wave pools and a wave rider. we got to the opportunity to speak with a representative from marketing which i found pretty intersting. The way jay markets themself is a way no other mountain could pull off. the posters of muddy boots and snotty beards really stand out in the industry next to other mountains marketing tools. jay peak gets away with marketing themselves as "hardcore" mountain rather than a family kind of vibe and with the type of skiing and terrain that they offer, it works really well for them. we also got to do a whole hard hat tour of all construction sites and existing facilities. we walked through the new hotel, the almost finished water park and got to see the ice haus, ice rink. The ice rink is really cool with the big windows look right out at the mountain. Jay Peak is expanding quickly with plans of more terrain on west bowl. They are putting themselves on a whole other level.