After a bit of a slow start to the snow season the Fusion Parks are really starting to take shape. To back up our commitment to our park program we started out as we do now every year with a couple boxes and a rail set up for opening weekend, and then spent the next few weeks trying to find locations with more snow to expand the early season park.

Towards the end of June we finally started to get some natural snow and more importantly some colder temps to try out our new Techno Alpin automated snowmaking systyem that we installed this summer in the Front Valley terrain park. The result has been even more snow than we expected, which has allowed us to build a five jump advanced line for the first time ever in the Front Valley park with jumps ranging in size from 30 to 55 feet long. We’ve also had enough snow to build a beginner jump line on the skiers’ left of the park with jumps ranging in size from 15 to 25 feet long. Add to that our new 18m long “S” box and you now have a top to bottom park line with great flow.

The key to a successful terrain features program and a fun park is to maintain a balance between consistency and progression. We monitor our consistency by ensuring that we have experienced night park groomers and day diggers each season.

We continue to progress our parks by offering 4 terrain parks and a variety of new jib features each season. The Columbia Fun Park, located off of the Piper T-bar is designed for beginners, with smaller true table top style jumps, rollers, banked turns and beginner jibs placed low to the snow. The Playstation Park at Blue Cow is located skiers’ right of the Side Saddle run off of the Summit Chair and is geared towards beginner / intermediates, but we still need more snow before we can start building this one. Next in our line of progression parks is the Coca-Cola Rail Park wich is accessed by the Leichardt T-bar in Center Valley. This was the location of our first terrain park which dates back to the early 1990’s and has been the original stomping ground for many of the local park riders throughout the years. Here you will find a variety of rails boxes and jumps designed for intermediate to advanced riders. Last but not least is the Playstation Slopestyle located on the skiers’ right of Front Valley. This is the home to our most advanced features and where many of Australia’s best skiers and riders can be found. This is also the location for many of our Big Air, Slopestyle and Ultracross events. But if you don’t feel up to the task to test yourself against the usual lineup of local and international pros that come here to compete you can always get a birds’ eye view of the action riding up the V8 Express. This will give you an idea of what you can expect in our Fusion Terrain Parks this season.

If you’ve noticed the big pile of snow and the yellow cat driving around up there to the right of Front Valley, then you’d know that the Superpipe is getting close to being finished, but we’ll talk about that next time.