I’ve given my local ski areas hell for their terrain parks in the past but this season, with our awesome 4″ YTD snowfall I am just happy they are all open, and all are offering something in the way of terrain whether it be a few boxes and ride-on features or something a bit more burly, this year I’ll take whatever I can get.
Anyways I rode some night-time hours at Pine Knob on Friday evening despite the bad weather I think they’re doing better than I’ve seen there in years.
Around closing time at Pine Knob - January 14, 2012
Conditions: Low 20′s and low wind. Crust to ice to verrrrry sketchy in places. Unfortunately unless they get some real snow, or unless you get there on a day that’s warm without rain/freeze, it’s not likely to be any better any time soon. No fault of the resort (OK some of the postholes could’ve been marked), it’s the damn weather, rain and flash freezes we’ve been having.
Pinery: Generally considered their “progression” or beginner park. As a result, it’s always crowded as all hell and despite the icy conditions Friday was no exception. Compared to years past, Pine Knob has added some features so there is the normal hip/tranny with random bumps up top that are sometimes mini jumps, a c-box banked up top of that, a 3ft wide butter box in addition to their normal 20 x 1ft box and the other 8ft box that they normally have set up. My biggest complaint with this park is the grade; on all of these features (in the BEGINNER) it is like a 6ft dropoff from the edge of the feature to the snow which is just super sketchy especially after a full day of kids has cratered out the landings.
Snowbird: As per usual, set up as a triple- or quad-jump line. I honestly don’t recall whether it was 3 or 4 because it was too icy for my old ass to bother with park. Nobody ever hits the first jump in this line for some reason but it is in good shape if you don’t mind icy park jumps of death at about about a 20-25 step down. There is not very much room between landing and the second hit which is another ~20 footer with a retardedly rutted out lip and equally bombed out landing. Hopefully they groom this out each night. There was at least one more and possibly two more jumps in the line, smaller about 15s. Sometimes they add some intermediate box/rail features but there were none set up yet.
Timberline: Legit this year they have added new features and a slightly improved layout although there is still too much empty space on rider’s right line. Up top there was a flat-down yellow rail, d-f-d box type thing, that box that kind of looks like a house which I don’t know what it’s called, a cannon made from a telephone pole, a small hip, a smallish 15′ kicker towards the end of the line, and a cable spool for bonks as well as a few other rail/box features that I did not make mental note of. With some more snow I would expect to see a few more small and medium-sized kickers in this park.
