For a little over half a decade Bear Mountain has hosted it's annual pre-season contest, Hot Dawgz and Handrails, to serve several purposes. First, the contest offers Southern California--often the last folks to get snow--a chance to see the white stuff before that final month-and-a-half push to the season; second, it gives everyone one last chance to buy their Bear Mountain season passes at a discounted rate; and last but not least, Hot Dawgz and Handrails is the official unveiling of new features coming to the mountain. This year the park crew has posted up several preview shots of the Hot Dawgz and Handrails, jibs and all; you may have heard about Bear Mountain and Analog's Design Unlikely Features contest... I have a feeling it was inspired by the course design thought up for the 2009 HDHR:
Imagine a horseshoe shaped course lined with haystacks and trashbags, then covered with snow shaved from giant blocks of ice. This format gives the riders their choice of around 10 features not usually seen in competition. Forget your standard rails, boxes and staircases; drop to the left of the course and hit a curved kink rail to giant pyramid box, or drop to right where you can hit a granite ledge and either take on the wallride to the left or the C-rail to the right, then end your run on the doghouse.
One of sub-topics in snowboarding I have an affinity for is feature design and production. Just like Jeff King and his show Built to Shred, I love seeing or thinking of something that you wouldn't normally ride or consider fun and moving from conceptualization to realization; hell, put me in any snowy patch with a shovel and some random object and I'll have something shreddable in an hour. I thought that last years HDHR was very centralized and while all of the proper precautions were taken, the course didn't seem very fun to ride and the threat of colliding with another rider loomed at every corner. I imagine using lanes will make it easier to single out riders as well as much safer, since only one rider will be able to take their run at a time; the lane design also means this contest will be as much about full lines as it is about tricks. Finally, the horseshoe shape not only doubles the variety of features, but also spreads out the contestants to two lanes to keep the hits coming. It will be fun to see what the riders do with this unique course.
New features out this season are the down-flat-down curve rail, a huge ledge-pyramid box, and a 30 ft. granite ledge. Most appealing to me would have to be the granite ledge, I've never seen anything like it on any resort; it's definitely a surface you would have to venture into specific urbanities to ride... and now it will be right here at Bear Mountain!
The contest goes down...tomorrow, actually! So tomorrow, Saturday, September 19th if you are in the area with nothing better to do, head up to Bear Mountain and catch the festivities. Invitational contest means no riding for the little folk, but from games, company booths, discounted passes, a couple of movie screenings, a full bar and a party there's plenty to do to make it worth your while. If you can't catch the contest, make sure you catch this video tour of the 2009 Hot Dawgs & Handrails setup because the pictures really don't do it justice.
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