Disney should build terrain parks. Then we all could go to seminars to learn how they are managed. Acronyms would evolve. Recognition pins would be floating around. Professional approaches to every situation imaginable would be in written form, to be memorized by every Cast Member, tested daily. The guest would know exactly what to expect, and would never have to make a decision about how to utilize a feature.

Instead, we treat freestyle terrain as this free flowing creation that follows no industry-wide management guidelines. No standards, just best practices. That is because freestyle terrain should be just that, free flowing and creative, constantly changing, fresh and exciting. Exactly how our guests want it.

This leads us to the many challenges involved in offering the product that our guests demand. A terrain park requires a lot of creativity and passion from a group of people who are known for their resistance to authority. Yet the tasks are so broad—layouts and planning, shoveling with no end in sight, shaping transitions, testing features, talking directly with guests, welding, inventing. That is why these people suddenly become infinitely valuable.

So how do we keep them in line, stoked, and professional? It all begins in the hiring process.

Line Them Up

When setting out to create a great park crew, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• Hiring based on attitude is an achievable goal.
• The candidate who shows passion for the sport has the most to gain.
• Positive attitude, creative thinking, and responsible choices are the primary ingredients for success.

These traits can all be recognized in a good interview, and it is worth the investment to come up with a good list of questions to draw them out. The good news is that there are ample candidates interested in this segment of the business—we can be picky. And taking the time now will provide the operation with the ability to build the best team possible, one that will compete with each other—and other resorts—to be the best.

Build Them Up (Motivation)

If we’ve chosen correctly, our hires are constantly drawing features on bar napkins, or these days Google Sketch Up, and it becomes obvious that the passionate staff we hired want to participate in the construction of the product. Putting up rope fences, signs, interacting with guests, this is just the stuff they know they have to do to be able to have The Best Job In The Universe. Therefore, giving them the opportunity to be more involved with the construction of a feature or two is the ultimate reward for their dedication and hard work.

When the park is all built and we have settled into a smooth operating rhythm (imagine!), we are presented with the perfect moment to reward our stars—the ones who didn’t yell at anyone over Christmas week, always had their nametag on, didn’t wear conflicting goggles just because they were sponsored, and have been begging for more responsibility. Bonuses, raises, and cash rewards are so last decade; looking inward at the experiential rewards is the way to go. Welding, operating snowcats, building jumps—those are the things dreams are made of.

Sure, these same employees may have earned the short-term reward of choosing which run he or she is responsible for on a day-to-day basis, or which tools they get to use (really, some rakes are better than others and make the day go by better). In the bigger picture, though, some chainsaw training would be valuable to the staff member who really shows the most attention to detail.

The more loyal digger may be gunning for that snowcat seat. Perhaps that employee could start by moving some rails around after closing with the park groomers, or do some utility work after hours for big park builds. Or how about giving the real star the chance to manage construction of a feature or two?

Soon that person could be designing the whole park. Suddenly, the successful freestyle terrain manager has trained someone to replace himself, and hunting for the good park guy isn’t so difficult anymore.

While building features is one giant component, the same philosophy can be applied to other tasks within the department. Educating non-terrain park staff, attending planning meetings, being involved with interdepartmental communication—these are all growth areas for an ambitious park employee. Allowing the good communicator the chance to tag along with the manager to some of these events helps them feel like a more important member of the team and opens the door for delegation.

Knock Them Down (Management)

Of course, given free reign, the experiments invented by the budding chemist sometimes lead to explosions in the lab, so employing best practices keeps a lid on the potential destruction. The staff should be able to show a plan, describe as many of the processes and variables as possible, and execute that plan with as much help as he or she asks for.

Our professional and confident manager can stand back far enough to catch the critical mistakes while still allowing the employee the freedom to accomplish the task. Since we are substantially more educated in the dos and don’ts of feature construction and terrain management than we were10 years ago, we can avoid repeating the same mistakes. Open critiques with peers and supervisors promote accountability and provide us all the chance to break down the task at hand.

This educational process is very time consuming, but well worth the effort, because it gets more people in the department on the same page—an essential component to a successful program. So going over the nuts and bolts of feature construction—from the first choices of feature size, trail choice, layout, and feature relationships, to the nitty gritty of in-run, takeoff, deck, landing, and out-run—is a great place to start. This allows that terrain park employee to put forth ideas that fit with the program, from top to bottom. Group ride-throughs (effectively called sessioning the park with your crew) can be amazingly productive if the leader actually stops to explain the decisions involved. While you’re at it, take your boss, too!

Sure, running equipment, supervising others, or representing the department just doesn’t make sense for some. Without the chance to find out, though, our employees may never realize their weaknesses and end up bitter for never having the manager’s blessing to try. (Okay, there are some that we would never give the chance to, but we are talking about our good employees here.) For those that show promise, the tedium that surrounds the work often comes as a shock, and they may have that moment of clarity that tells them to take a step back and think about where they are in the developmental process.

Give Them a Place to Land (Development)

One natural progression for the successful park employee may play out like this: Super digger starts working evenings to help the park groomers set rails and do some hand shaping. Next year, that person is running the old beater cat to move hardware around. Then comes a “year abroad” in the grooming department, as a trail groomer, learning the basics of snow management, efficient patterns, and equipment care. After becoming reliable in this area, they are prepped to be a park groomer, and have a good foundation to succeed.

Once in the park, start by working the daily maintenance program on existing features, and once these skills are mastered (most need more than a year), get them involved in a few daytime builds as the clean-up guy. Pushing snow to build features, shaping transitions, and finally on to the final product. Then, before you know it, you have developed a key person who can be relied on to get the job done, allowing the manager to focus on bigger picture tasks. And it only took four years!

Of course, there are alternate personalities who may not make it out of the cat yard with the old beater, and equipment operation is just not something that makes sense to them. This mental breakdown could occur at any time within the process, and could lead to potential collapse in the employee’s value, or better, lead them down a new path.

The second scenario may then play out like this: Super diplomat park guy has nothing but positive feedback from internal and external guests. Always seeking interaction, he becomes the spokesperson between marketing, retail, ski patrol, etc., and is charged with being the information liaison. These relationships grow, and soon he is attending any meeting regarding freestyle terrain alongside the manager, absorbing all the behind-the-scenes information that decides the direction of the program.

Getting involved in the bigger picture planning process now becomes important, and experimenting with designs and layouts of parks becomes more thorough, having more pieces of the puzzle. Using his excellent communication skills, we now have an employee who can create responsible plans, communicate these plans to everyone involved, and work with the ground crew to get those plans out on the snow. This person becomes a natural for the events and marketing department.
Find someone who can do both, and you have a new manager.

As freestyle terrain matures and becomes old hat for us, we begin to recognize that we actually can break down the job into smaller categories and skills. These are all tangible, trainable, and trackable performance-wise, and we have opportunities to develop and reward staff based on their execution of specific tasks. The chance to be a part of something special is often a reward that will keep them coming back year after year—the more they are at the core of the process, the more the reward.

Many employees come to work in the mountains out of passion and excitement for a sport they love, especially in this arena, so take advantage of that. Before you know it, your terrain parks will have that smooth-flowing, professional feeling of other well thought-out adventure businesses.