“It’s awesome because even our park crew is small. We
only have an average of 12 to 16 guys on a year. And
everybody is super passionate and hard working.”
– Pat Morgan
and ability can go out and use our parks; there’s something
for everybody.
“And one of the things that we’ve really come into in the
past couple of seasons are our women’s initiatives,” said Morgan,
referring in particular to a series of events known as Park
Affair which takes place at Big Boulder in the early spring.
“That’s a women-only event. It’s 60 participants and it’s just
an all-day, awesome experience, whether the girls are coming
to learn to ride or if they’re looking to take their park riding to
the next level. And then we just got an event with Nikita this
year called Girls Who Ride. And we’re pretty proud of being at
the forefront of that stuff.”
Adapting for climate change
Anyone who depends on the weather for their career knows,
Mother Nature can provide the biggest challenge.
“I think the challenge is the uncertainty of what the winter
is going to bring,” said Morgan. “I mean, we’re not blessed
with bountiful snowfall anymore. But the success is we are
truly able to provide a level of winter that our guests keep
COVER FEATURE
coming back for. And that boils back to the snowmaking
commitment from Peak right through the top down.”
With that commitment comes some of the successes the
JFBB crew has had, such as being ranked the No. 2 park on
the East Coast, against much bigger resorts with more terrain
to work with and being featured in various publications.
“We’re also excited to keep this momentum going with the
recent acquisition by Vail Resorts, to be alongside the same
team with some of the best freestyle terrain programs in
North America,” said Morgan.
Friendly competition
Less technical, but just as important these days, is the task
of handling the communications for the resorts. Instagram
comes up frequently in the conversation, especially when
Morgan is referring to the teens and twenty-somethings who
populate his slopes.
“We call ourselves the ‘content factory’ and it’s a frequent
hashtag we use. We create so many edits and photos and
things like that. I have 13,000 photos from just this season
alone. And obviously I don’t need 13,000, but probably 7,000
are legit bangers that could be used for just about anything,
due to the deep talent base around JFBB.”
Then there’s the particular social media approach to the
two resorts. This is another way in which JF differs from BB,
especially for Big Boulder who responds to disses and attitude
not with a press release title or a link, but with a challenge.
“If somebody’s calling us out, which doesn’t happen often,
we real-talk them; we don’t curse at them or anything
like that, but we’re not going to let somebody walk all over
us,” said Morgan. “We’ve kind of cultivated the culture where
you can say real things, there’s no marketing fluff and typical
resort marketing fodder. From a Big Boulder standpoint,
we’re never going to tell you about machine-groomed packed
powder and all these other buzz terms…. We’re just going
to be, ‘You know, there’s 75 features on the hill, and it’s sick
– get here.’
“But obviously with the Jack Frost account, you’re talking
to more of a family customer, so you can’t deviate too much
from traditional marketing without going off brand.”
In the end, as with most jobs, the satisfaction is as great as
the sense of community.
“Our park guys are so active on the hill and then there’s
always guest education going on out there. I mean, it’s not
uncommon to see park guys working with a guest that’s
trying to figure out a trick or learning the ropes or what’s
going on around the place. We, like I said, have quite the
community here.”
Ryan Freeman takes a jump at Freedom Park at Big Boulder
PHOTO COURTESY OF SHAWN KALATUCKA
snowopsmag.com | SnowOps 29
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