The superpipe is back at Park City Mountain resort. It’s like a halfpipe, only the walls are twice as high at 22 feet, and it’s 700 feet long. Part of what makes the superpipe unique is that Park City Mountain has carved it into the dirt already on the mountain. Most other halfpipes are buil t up from the ground and made entirely of snow.  Jake Kiejko is the snow surfaces manager at Park City Mountain. He’s also been the project manager for the development of the superpipe. Jake Kiejko, snow surfaces manager at Park City Mountain and superpipe project manager, stands in front of completed superpipe construction. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record The project started, he said, when Park City Mountain signed a contract with The Snow League to host its second season World Championship event. Kiejko said they were given an “ambitious” early-season date to have the pipe ready before the competition. “That got us in snow services going, ‘Well, maybe we should be doing some dirt work to alleviate some of the water needed and some of the time needed,’” Keijko said. “Dirt work,” Keijko said, “is excavating the existing dirt on the mountain to better suit our needs for final winter builds.” The pipe was designed by Pipe Cutter and Terrain Park Specialist Eric Rosenwald. He created a modeling program and wrote his own code using a LiDAR scan, a 3D representation of the area from a laser imaging machine, to design the pipe.  Rosenwald also operated the machine that cut the pipe into the dirt once the modeling was ready. Traditional halfpipes are made by plowing and carving snow into the right shape. Because of the early season deadline from The Snow League, and the nature of Utah’s snow, Keijko explained that this would require a lot of water for snowmaking.  But because this superpipe has a dirt foundation, it will only need to be filled in with snow. Based on snowmaking for previous superpipes, Park City Mountain estimates this design will cut water usage by half.  The superpipe’s foundation is dirt carved right into Park City Mountain. Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record Credit: Jonathan Herrera/Park Record Park City Mountain Senior Communications Manager John Kanaly said this will allow them to distribute snowmaking resources across the rest of the mountain.  “We’re bringing the superpipe back,” Kanaly said. “It has been here in the past, but this is a way of bringing it back and making it much more of a permanent feature that we’ll be able to bring back year after year.” The Snow League may have been the catalyst, Kanaly said, but the superpipe isn’t just for that competition. Kiejko explained that halfpipe riding has become less popular in recent years. Part of that is because of how expensive traditional halfpipes are to build and maintain. The size of the average halfpipe makes it a hard sport to learn, too.  “Here at Park City Mountain we want to be at the leading edge of halfpipe and transition riding in general,” Kiejko said. They already have “Pipetopia,” home to the beginner friendly mini-pipe and several terrain parks, which Kiejko said help lower the barrier to entry for learning the sport. Building the superpipe in a sustainable way will help reduce the cost of maintaining a competition size pipe at the resort in the long term, too.  The superpipe will be open to the public as soon as it’s completed, and Kiejko and Kanaly said they hope it will be a place for local athletes to train just as much as a stage for elite competitions. “A main goal is to not let halfpipe riding fade away and to lean into it and try to keep that discipline in the sport alive,” Kiejko said. The post ‘Superpipe’ back at Park City Mountain bigger than ever appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less