Volume 14 - Terrain Park & The Passing of a Legend DISCUSS THIS FEATURE HERE 20th February 2004

Without fail the start of this white season had some surprises in store. Perhaps the first was the late arrivals of the snow, unprecedented in recent years. The late snows caused the resort to consider weather-based scenario planning at the start of the season for the first time. Just when it got to the point of slashing hotel rates, snows came on and made regular operations possible. In January, two snow boarders ventured out of bounds and were lost overnight. The next day, a dramatic but successful search and rescue operation was carried out. This month, ARAI saw the passing of a legend (more on this a bit later), and presently has only four meters of snow up top compared to the average of six at this time of year. 

Resort life is anything but normal.....

Ever work in the same company as somebody for years, but never quite been able to understand all of their job responsibilities? Or perhaps worked with a colleague, but besides small talk have never sat down and talked for a couple of hours?

Well, the setting journals gave me a chance recently to request an interview with such a person, who happens to be the leader of a new terrain park at ARAI. The process shed a bit of light for both of us about what the other person does at the resort, and the results speak for themselves.

Can you tell me a little about yourself and provide some details about your background before you joined this company?

What jobs have you done since joining the company?

When I joined the company in 1992 the resort was still being built, so I was involved with construction for the first year. I worked with many people, including Mike Larson from Vail, and enjoyed it very much. At that stage the work was not too difficult as I was in an entry-level position and involved with basic design work.

When the first courses opened at the resort in 1993, I was transferred to Ski Patrol and worked three winters in that capacity on the mountain. During the summers at that time, I was involved in maintenance on the mountain.
   

From 1996 to the present my work has been grooming, and I find this to be the most enjoyable and challenging work at the resort to date. I take a lot of pride in the daily grooming of courses to a greater extent than when I was involved in construction. That said, it has been very interesting for my job to evolve from construction to patrol to grooming - I sometimes see the mountain in my dreams I’ve spent so much time on it!

  
What is your ultimate goal in working here?

Actually, I’m happy doing grooming. Moving large amounts of snow in the middle of the night is actually quite dangerous work, especially when involved with vertical lifts. Fortunately, grooming offers a variety of other work such as the Digger for example. One day I would however like to enter the Pisten Bully competitions. I understand that such competitions are held yearly in North America.

Please tell me about your first experience on a snowboard.

Growing up in Niigata Prefecture gave me several opportunities to ski on school trips and the like, and such experience served me well when I became a member of ski patrol. However, I got to the point where I found that I could not go much further with skis and so 3 or 4 years ago I switched to a board. Though my first experience was painful (and my last for that matter as I recently dislocated my shoulder), I’m ready to go again as I feel as though there is so much more to develop concerning my boarding abilities.
  

ARAI has had a half-pipe for several years now. Were you involved with this? If so, what did you do?

I’ve been involved with the construction and grooming of half pipes for several years now and find the work to be challenging. Either you have too much snow to work with or not enough, and rarely is the quality of the snow consistent over an entire pipe. This year we intended to build two half pipes at ARAI (a beginner level one as well as an expert one intended for an event). However, as we have been lacking snow for this time of the year compared with previous ones, we ended up with one pipe that is at the mid-level in terms of difficulty.
  

ARAI is featuring a Terrain Park from this year. Tell me a little about it.

Though the image below provides a pretty good idea about what the park is all about, what I’d like to say here is that every two weeks we rotate the features in addition to modifying them daily in order to keep things interesting. I find the 2-way kicker the wildest, but actually had my recent spill on the spine. You would think that would be that, but I can’t wait to get out there and take on the terrain park again!

My injury is a sign that staff are passionate about enjoying what they create and are in fact themselves daily users of the park. What this means is that you can count on the ride through the park to be fun, because the staff also want their daily experience to be enjoyable. Once a staff member rides through the park, he/she will then return as a digger/groomer. Maintenance based on their most previous ride will then be carried out - quite a dynamic process that in my opinion is necessary given the constantly changing snow conditions.

We don’t actually call it a terrain park but instead "PJ Park". The main concept behind this park is that it is universal - in other words, any guest is welcome to it. So far we have hosted skiers, snow boarders as well as guests with trick skis. Another aspect of the universal approach is that users individual ability does not matter too much. We designed the park to appeal to average ability, so you will not find items that cater specifically to users of a beginner or advanced levels.
  

So who designed PJ Park, how long did it take and are you happy with it and the location?

When it was first decided to make such a park, we took a look at the experience required for building/maintaining such a facility and quickly established that being able to competently operate a digger was crucial. This narrowed the number of full time staff qualified down to about six persons, who then met for two days to work out all the details concerning the basic structure of the park, as well as items related to daily operations and maintenance. With that out of the way and enough of a snow base available by early January of this year, we then spent about six hours constructing the park.

Inspiration for features in PJ Park came from other parks that each member visited, magazines dealing with the subject, as well as countless doodles from the past. That said, the dynamic conditions available when constructing the park also played a factor, as the type and quality of the snow then forced us to work with what was available.

Why is it called "PJ Park", does it get many visitors and is it expensive to run?

PJ stands for "Poco Jump", so I guess you could call it "Small Jump Park". We actually do get quite a few visitors to the park located on the Romance Course. Of course, they are mostly boarders but there are some skiers as well. It is more expensive to run such a park than the same amount of land dedicated to a groomed course. Reasons for the additional expense include supplying items required for such a park and then paying staff to work there. The frequent maintenance required means additional staff compared to a regular course of the same size.

The resort provides 4 or 5 staff members to attend to the park daily, though if there is an accident the patrol will ultimately deal with it. Such a number of staff backed by the patrol is necessary to ensure that common sense rules are followed for the safety of all those involved.
 

What are the rules of PJ Park?

Rules are required for the park in order to ensure universal access that is safe for everyone. Perhaps the biggest difference between the PJ Park and our half pipes is that for the former, users are required to ride through the park to the lift without backtracking to ensure a smooth and safe flow. Users also need to be proactive in terms of safety by proceeding one at a time and ensuring that the person in front has successfully cleared the immediate feature, kind of like when using a waterslide for example. Finally, the high maintenance at the park requires diggers to be used during operations. At such times, users need to heed the instructions of the staff as the user flow in the park is redirected around the feature in question. Such high maintenance also requires users to observe the parks operation times of 9 AM to 3 PM.

  
What would you like to say to international guests of Japanese resorts?

Well of course my answer is going to be biased, but I’d like international guests to come to the resort to enjoy the excellent "burn" of the grooming done here. What still catches my breath after all these years however is the beauty of the Japanese Alps, and the Nature that must be seen and experienced in person in order to be fully enjoyed.

Mr. Ueno, thank you very much for taking some time to share your experiences with the readers of Snow Japan - it has been a pleasure.

It was with sadness to hear recently that one of the founders of the resort, Mr. Kazuo Fukuyama, passed away in Tokyo. Though his health had seen better days for some time now, even this season he was out on the slopes, so this news has caught everyone that knew him by surprise.

Just last month I met up with him in the staff tunnel, and he was proudly carrying a life size cardboard figure of himself skiing through the famed snow-frozen trees of Zao in 1979. Such was his passion for mountains and snow that until recently he was voluntarily working in an industry that he helped to found in Japan. I particularly like the story of how he somehow managed to unify the rival rice farmers with individual ski lifts over their rice paddies, so that Zao could become one resort instead of a place where you had to buy a different ticket each time for a lift!

Read more about Mr. Fukuyama and his legacy from an interview that took place with Matthew Cox here:

http://www.snowjapan.com/e/features/chairman-20.html

This version of the setting journals is dedicated to the memory of Kazuo Fukuyama, referred to by many that knew him simply as "Fukuyama Sensei". Thank you for showing so many the safe ways down the slopes…

Next time in the setting journals I’ll explore the ins and outs of what it is like for Seasonal International staff to work at a snow resort in Japan.