It's been almost 60 years since Snow Summit paved it first trails. In that time the resort has seen its share of difficulties; from an endless struggle against sparse precipitation to holding onto and building on an already small customer base as resorts like Mountain High entered the competitive ring, Snow Summit and Big Bear Mountain Resorts have always managed to serve Southern California the best riding conditions the area has to offer.
In the 1990s, Snow Summit recognized snowboarding as their most promising investment and the company began putting in hours to innovate and pave the way for terrain parks as we know them today.
It worked!
Bear Mountain has built its reputation on its parks, enticing riders from some of the snowiest areas in the world to come to sunny, dry Southern California. They are the only all-mountain terrain park, meaning from the tippie top to the very bottom you can shred everything from jumps, to rails, to pipes in one smooth run.
And the park sure has gotten busy! Everyone wants to get out there and start doing those sick tricks they see in movies and magazines, and Bear has always prided itself on having something in the park for everyone. So now there is a new problem:
If you've ever had the opportunity, you know how fun it can be to flow through Bear's park--and also how dangerous. Not dangerous as in, "snowboarding is inherently dangerous", though.
As more and more unskilled--or at least uneducated--riders make their way into the park the dangers of snowboarding at Bear Mountain have escalated to new heights
It definitely isn't a bad thing to encourage progression, but nowadays a lap at Bear or Snow Summit is almost guaranteed to include riders climbing all over jumps, weaving in and out of rails like it was a slalom course, or sneaking up to rest on landings (perhaps the most dangerous thing you can do in a park).
The other day I was forced to pull out of a kicker line when a skier and his son parked themselves right behind the lip. Where they were, the ramp hid them almost completely. I knew there were riders lined up behind me and the situation was set up to turn fatal, so I approached the dad to get him off the lip.
"Hey man, what are you doing? People come flying off these things, you can't just stop on the landing like that." I explained.
"Fuck you! I can stop wherever the fuck I want!" was his reply.
I absolutely love Bear Mountain and Snow Summit. Nothing beats the feeling of a clean lap through their parks, hitting feature, after feature, after feature, after feature. That's why I hate having to say this, but things are simply getting too dangerous, and I think it might be time for a change.
Whether that change comes in a more structured park layout or a serious campaign to enlighten their customers about park safety and etiquette, right now we have a company with an all-mountain terrain park telling everyone to come ride it but not how to do so safely.
Bear Mountain, I sincerely hope you will make park safety your biggest focus going into 2010/2011.
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so true, a ton of people who seem to be oblivious of park etiquette or seem to have no common sense make even the small local mountain parks a mine field. i've never been to bear but i can only imagine what it's like seeing as so many different levels of riders go there and how many features there are.
ReplyDeletei dont really know if having serious safety campaigns would do anything because people tend to really take that stuff for granted no matter what....i'm all for more riders trying to progress themselves but putting that many levels of knowledge on the same slopes can cause problems.
Of course all resorts are going to see their share of problems, but I feel like Bear and Summit can be the worst of the worst as far as mine fields go.
ReplyDeleteBig Bear is the closest ski area that services Southern California including the densely populated Los Angeles, San Diego, etc. I've always compared it to Colorado resorts near Denver...
Except Denver has their choice of maybe a dozen 2000+ acre mountains, whereas Bear Mountain and Snow Summit combined don't even reach 1000.
Now you take an already small mountain, devote the main/milder trails to the park, and you are squeezing all of these people into a small area and pretty much forcing them into the park... you can imagine what a cluster fuck it becomes.