What makes a good park and pipe? It starts with the people. In many cases, the best park designers started at the bottom, both figuratively and literally—raking hits, smoothing transitions, and carving artistry in snow for $9 an hour and a season pass. They also tend to be passionate riders and skiers who’ve spent hours hiking back up to a hit to work on their own tricks. For these individuals, the time spent riding their own and others’ creations has resulted in an intimate understanding of what works and what doesn’t: what makes riders line up for a rail or avoid it, what makes a hit a too small or too big, and what a landing should feel like when you stomp it.

We looked at resorts across North America to find some of the most innovative park designers in the business, the guys that are making it happen and winning accolades from customers who vote with their wallets, returning again and again to ride the rails, pipes and jumps that these gurus have created. Here are seven of the best.


Frank Wells
Project Specialist/Co-owner
Snow Park Technologies

Pipe expert Wells has labored in the large shadows of Snow Park Technologies founder Chris “Gunny” Gunnarson and SPT operations manager Josh Chauvet. But it would be foolish to overlook this former professional rider. Wells spent eight years as a pro, experiencing good and bad park and pipe design at events across North America. He made the transition to park designer at the Mount Hood Snowboard Camp from 1991 to 2001, where he honed his expertise on the glacier above Timberline. Wells has been involved with SPT since 1998, and has developed and overseen the building of pipes for events such as the Vans Triple Crown and the ESPN Winter Games.

The Parks: While Wells is known for designing events such as the Winter X Games, it’s his ongoing work in the summer that wins accolades from pros and amateurs alike. The mountain manager for the terrain-park-only Snow Park ski area in New Zealand, Wells heads up the best thing that’s happened down under since wallabies. The N.Z. resort attracts pros from around the globe with features like two superpipes and the “triple line,” a series of jumps that range from 35-40-50 feet to a maximum of 45-55-65 feet over the course of the season.


Oren Tanzer
Park Director
Mammoth and June Mountains, Calif.

Canadian transplant Tanzer ended up in Los Angeles in the mid 1990s. He quickly escaped from the city to Big Bear, where he scored a job as a lift op. But it was his fascination with parks that opened doors for him. After working as a park volunteer at Big Bear, Tanzer moved to nearby Mountain High, where he oversaw the park program, and eventually to Mammoth, where he currently is the park director for both Mammoth and June mountains. Tanzer specializes in creating unique features, such as the monster jumps for Super Park 5, and ski and snowboard shoots with pros like Shaun White. But he spends just as much time on, and takes as much pride in, building one-of-a-kind jibs for the general public.

The Parks: Mammoth and June have four parks, spread across two ski areas: Unbound Main, Unbound South Park, Fun Zone and June Unbound. The Unbound Main is the crown jewel, and home to “Boneyard Bonanza,” a zone featuring jumps from 60 to 80 feet long. Other offerings include a 40-foot banister rail and a 600-foot-long superpipe with 22-foot-high walls. Maintaining these offerings keeps Tanzer and a staff of more than 30 employees busy year round.


Jim Mangan
Action Sports Manager
Park City, Utah

Mangan arrived in Park City in 2002 and quickly set to work, completely changing Park City’s image in one year. Prior to his involvement, the resort’s park offerings had a dismal reputation among riders. Mangan engineered a complete reinvention of Park City’s parks to include a superpipe, tons of rails, and massive kickers. The stroke of genius: creating an all-star team of some of the country’s best snowboarders and skiers, to promote the radical changes. Park City further spread word of the new venue, the King’s Crown Superpark, in targeted ads in Freeskier and TransWorld SNOWboarding magazines. Mangan even bet his house on the project, funding a snowboarding movie—City. Park City.—which featured the park. Today, King’s Crown continues to gain recognition as one of the best parks in the nation, taking top honors in TransWorld SNOWboarding’s rankings for four years running. And Mangan still has his house, proving that gambling on himself was a sound bet.

The Parks: Park City exploded into the jib scene with the creation of Mangan’s King’s Crown Park. This world-class offering features plenty of medium-sized hits, an ongoing menagerie of rails and boxes, and is complemented by one of the largest superpipes in North America. Throw in three other parks—PayDay, Pick N’ Shovel and Jonsey’s—and you have every conceivable offering for any ability level.


Ken Gaitor
Terrain Park Designer
Mount Snow, Vt.

Gaitor’s work at Mount Snow has resulted in the type of accolades usually reserved for western resorts, including a top ranking from Freeskier Magazine. The current incarnation, overseen by Gaitor, is the result of years of evolution. The resort created the first park in the East, Un Blanco Gulch, in 1992. Gaitor has since overseen a massive expansion of the park terrain. One particularly creative offering is the Jiblet, a mini-rail park collection of rails, boxes and other features at the base of the mountain, which is lit for nighttime riding and events. The Jiblet even has its own sound system and a covered Magic Carpet.

The Parks: Gaitor instigated the transformation of the Inferno and El Diablo parks into one massive offering; it serves up more than a mile of dedicated park terrain. The new park is focused on offering a “rhythmical” flow in a series of medium and large jumps. The park is complemented by the original Un Blanco Gulch, with jumps, boxes and rails, and the Grommet park, designed for teaching park skills. Gaiter also oversees the Jiblet. The Vermonster, a new offering, and Au natural, a natural snow-only park, round out his creations.


Kevin Cates and Heath J. Corwin
Terrain Park Designers
Steamboat, Colo.

These East Coast transplants have their work cut out for them: The ’Boat has long been known as a powder skiing Mecca, but the resort’s park offerings have lagged behind the competition. Cates comes to Steamboat from Stowe. He arrives with wide-ranging experience in mountain operations, including extensive snowmaking and grooming work. His skills are complemented by Heath Corwin, who has worked as a groomer for Okemo and Attitash and was the park builder for Cranmore. Corwin, a former art student who studied sculpture for two years, brings an eye for the aesthetics of terrain parks. Look for these two to make a statement with Steamboat’s parks this season.

The Parks: It’s easy to create something when you have a blank page to work with, and the ’Boat is nothing but a blank page. Last year’s offerings included the Mavericks superpipe, a learner pipe and a small collection of other hits and jibs. This year things should be different, as the resort seeks to become a larger player courtesy of the Cates/Corwin one-two punch.


Marc Tremain
Parks and Pipes Supervisor
Mountain Creek, N.J.

Tremain scored his current position by working his way up the ladder as a protégé of Sean Oreccio, whom he replaced as parks and pipes supervisor. A local boy who started at Mountain Creek in 2003 working as a park specialist, Tremain was promoted to assistant supervisor for the ’05-’06 season, then became park supervisor last year. Highlights of his tenure include developing and executing Mountain Creek’s mini-park in Manhattan for the Union Square Street Sessions last winter. He also oversees such innovations as Mountain Creek’s JibLab, managing a collection of employees with more than 15 collective years of rail fabrication—and who create some of the best rails in the business.

The Parks: This season Tremain is engineering the transformation of Mountain Creek’s South Mountain, formerly a less-traveled trail network, into the largest park in the east—and one of the only all-park mountains in the nation. This massive project will focus on progression, with features for every level of ability. It incorporates eight “districts,” with six “small,” seven “medium,” four “large” trails and one “extra-large” trail. Tremain’s crew will deploy an 85-feature arsenal of rails, boxes and other jibs across South Mountain’s 60-plus acres.