Two snowboarders stand side by side near the top of the Half Dollar lift on Dollar Mountain, studying the meandering course of rollers, jumps, banks and berms below them. They stand for 10 seconds before pushing forward, initiating a race to the finish line. The winner's only prize is bragging rights, gloating that must be concentrated into the short lift ride up for the next run.
Brian Callahan, Sun Valley Resort's terrain park manager, said the ski/snowboard-cross course, open since Dec. 29, was immediately popular.
"Everybody's in there," he said.
The Sun Valley course is one of only a handful in the country.
"A lot of places don't have the real estate to do it," Callahan pointed out.
He said only about five other resorts have cross courses, and they're all in Colorado. Sun Valley has the advantage of operating two mountains. The smaller Dollar Mountain has quickly developed into a terrain park playland, initially built in the 2009-10 season with little more than a dozen features. The park has grown to include 40 features, including 15 progression park features that allow beginners to develop their jumping and rail-sliding skills, 10 medium features and 19 large features.
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The cross course is merely one of the latest additions. Callahan said it took five days of snowmaking to produce the snow needed for the course. The next three days were spent building it.
"It will continuously morph, making little changes here and there," Callahan said.
Resort spokesman Jack Sibbach said the cross course is just "another step in talking to that market." The market he's talking about is young skiers and snowboarders.
"If you want to be successful in the youth market, not having a terrain park is a big miss," said Callahan, who was drawn here from Breckenridge, Colo., two winters ago to push Sun Valley's character in a fresh direction.
The tactic seems to be working. The resort no longer releases skier numbers, but Sibbach said Dollar Mountain has continued last winter's trend of attracting more skiers and boarders, an achievement coinciding with the terrain park's existence. He said the season's skier numbers for both Bald and Dollar mountains are higher than last year's at this time, but lower than the resort's projections. He said the likely reason for the projection shortfall is a lull created by the recent frigid weather.
"We're happy where we are right now," Sibbach said, adding that the National Weather Service predicts the bitter cold to end later this week.
Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com
Photo by Mark Oliver
Two snowboarders race down the new Sun Valley Cross Course on Dollar Mountain. Photo by Mark Oliver, courtesy of Sun Valley Resort
