The Pipe Dragon Cuts and Carves
There’s nothing magic about Doug Waugh’s Pipe Dragon, except the rate at which it allows groomers to build halfpipes and fun parks for snowboarders.
To the delight of groomers and boarders alike, Waugh, an agricultural engineer and entrepreneur from Berthoud, Colo., developed a radical new machine that harrows the snow to form halfpipes in record time. The Pipe Dragon can accomplish in four days what can take up to four weeks of grueling labor.
“It used to take us over three weeks and a lot of backbreaking shovel work to build a halfpipe,” said Ray Sforzo, head of the Vail Ski School’s snowboarding division. “Doug’s Dragon saves us a lot of time and money. And we’ve got a lot of other things to do, like run a ski school.”
Waugh developed the hydraulic snow tiller four years ago while working for Maxey, Inc. as an engineer. He has since left the company and improved the machine on his own. “I knew there needed to be a device to help make halfpipes, so I generated a lot of ideas and just settled on this one,” Waugh said.
The Pipe Dragon attaches easily to most grooming vehicles and can build snow walls up to 10 feet tall. The groomers begin the job by building a mound of snow. Then, the tiller cuts and forms the snow on the transition wall with a continuous action, creating a uniform slope without a lot of manual labor.
“He did our pipe in 1992. It was the first pipe he ever did,” Sforzo said. “it came out so great, he got five jobs in Colorado that year. We brought him back in 1993 because it was such a success.”
Along with farming in the summer, Waugh has made an occupation out of developing, using and selling the Pipe Dragon. He contracts out his services for $3,500 a winter. The price includes an initial halfpipe or a fun park built to specification and two re-grooms during the ski season.
Sales of the $30,000 machine have not exactly taken off, primarily because, until now, there was only one Pipe Dragon in the world. Last summer Waugh made some modifications to his original model and sold the improved version to a contract groomer in Michigan.
Besides his work in Colorado and in California, Waugh has a contract with Ted Hoxsie to build halfpipes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ontario, and to represent him in the Midwest and East
The Blower Blade Does Double Duty
by Paul Janoff
Meanwhile, last season Kassbohrer and the Zugspitzbahn in Bavaria, Germany, developed and tested an attachment for the PB 260, 270 or 330 that builds halfpipes in two to three hours. The trick is the device can build both sides of the pipe almost simultaneously.
Called the Halfpipe Blower Blade, this implement, which attaches to the front of a grooming vehicle, picks up snow and then blows it out a chute, first to one side and then to the other. As this is being done, oversized blades on either side of the implement build and smooth walls that are 20 degrees and up to nine feet high.
The device was used in Germany last season and, so far, Mammoth Mountain, Calif., and Schweitzer Mountain, Ida, have purchased the machine for use this winter. The price tag is about $45,000.
