On the heels of March 29 closures at Deer Valley Resort and the Mountain Village side of Park City Mountain, Woodward Park City is fighting the odds just a little longer, closing to the public at the end of day Saturday. After months of steady work across the season, crews repeatedly reshaping a nd rebuilding features to keep terrain usable, crews will move all remaining snow into the event footprint as the resort shifts its focus fully to building up the course for The Uninvited Invitational. The event, which runs April 9 through 11, centers on a custom street-style course and an all-women’s competition created to address long-standing gaps in opportunity within the sport, bringing 75 athletes from more than 20 countries to Woodward Park City. Snowboarder Jess Kimura started The Uninvited Invitational in 2023 to elevate the talent and success of women in snowboarding. Credit: Woodward Park City “The key has been salt and a whole lot of hard work from our teams,” said Luke Giacopelli, brand activation and events manager at Woodward Park City. “With the last week of over 70-degree days, they have to hand-build, physically rebuild the park every day.” Warm daytime temperatures frequently softened the snow to the point that features degraded within hours, while overnight refreezing locked in hard, rutted and often icy surfaces that required crews to rebuild takeoffs and smooth out landings before they could reopen in the morning. That process included repeated maintenance cycles within a single day, as crews addressed wear on terrain that would typically hold its shape longer in colder conditions. “When snow is super soft, the lips of all the rails and the jumps get pretty beat up really quickly,” said Giacopelli. “It just takes so much more work to reshape everything and keep it riding well.” Janel McInnes, Woodward’s senior manager of safety and risk, said the team focused early on figuring out what terrain they could realistically maintain and pooling their resources there. As coverage stayed limited, crews began concentrating snow and features into a smaller, more manageable area. Facing limited snow and repeated melt, crews at Woodward Park City piece together terrain by shifting snow, linking sections and rebuilding features to keep a continuous, rideable line open. After Saturday, crews will move remaining snow into the event footprint ahead of The Uninvited Invitational April 9-11. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record “From day one, we’ve been concentrating on making this little Woodward glacier and making a plan,” said McInnes. “If this gets gnarly, what do we survive with, what do we sacrifice, and how do we still provide a good product?” Crews pieced together a rideable map of terrain, opening and linking whatever sections they could as conditions allowed, while focusing maintenance on key zones where they could move snow, rebuild features and keep a continuous line open. “We could utilize guns in certain spots to make piles and have kind of a zigzag pattern down the mountain,” McInnes said. McInnes said crews relied heavily on their knowledge of what sat beneath the snow, like the summer dirt work that had shaped berms and built up landings, allowing them to prioritize areas that would hold structure longer and require less snow to maintain.  Rather than trying to keep full runs open, teams focused on connecting durable sections into a continuous, rideable line while making ongoing decisions about what to maintain and what to let go. “We hit January and knew we would have to reassess and make a plan for what we are going to do,” Giacopelli said. “We just condensed everything, and that’s how we’ve been able to keep it open and riding well and fun too.” Giacopelli said Woodward’s focused layout allowed it to continue operating its terrain park into late season, with a clear goal of sustaining enough coverage and structure to support the upcoming event. “It’s been a year of adapting,” Giacopelli said. “We’ve just been on our toes, working with the blows we’ve been dealt.” “This is for the younger us. Because we wouldn’t get invited to things, we had to fight tooth and nail to get the same opportunities. Being a mentor to the younger girls on the team has been more impactful to me than my pro career ever was,” says pro-snowboarder and Uninvited coordinator Nirvana Ortanez. Credit: Photo courtesy of The Uninvited Those operational decisions have allowed Woodward to host The Uninvited Invitational for a third year in a row and welcome athletes to the event’s fourth edition. Founded by professional snowboarder Jess Kimura, the event began in 2017 as a film project made to center women, girls and non-binary snowboarders who had historically received limited visibility and opportunity within the sport.  It has since developed into a competition series in which those athletes are the primary focus, with the now-$60,000 prize pool working to close the long-standing gap in pay within women’s snowboarding.  “This is about inspiring confidence in a group of people that confidence doesn’t necessarily come naturally to. It’s not even about the riders — it is, to a degree — but it’s also about all the little girls in the audience watching, all of the women in the industry watching, anyone who feels like an outsider, who feels like no one’s ever given them a chance like that. It means something to them,” said Kimura. Hosting the invitational has required coordination across Woodward’s operations teams and The Uninvited organizers, particularly in designing and constructing the custom course under limited snow conditions. “We could not pull this event off without the level of effort and care that Woodward puts into this event,” Kimura said. Friday’s qualifying day will also feature a Youth Day from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., bringing riders ages 17 and under to connect with pro riders, take part in activities at the Woodward tent in the Partner Plaza, complete a bingo challenge, make signs and enter a raffle for prizes. The full Uninvited Invitational event schedule: Thursday, April 9 — Qualifying Day OneRiders on course: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday, April 10 — Qualifying Day Two and Youth DayRiders on course: 10 a.m.-2 p.m.Youth Day: 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, April 11 — Finals DayFinals: 11 a.m.-2 p.m.Awards Ceremony: 2:30 p.m. The post Through a tough winter, Woodward Park City makes way for The Uninvited appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less