Superpark 8: The Mud, the Blood and the Beer

SNOWBOARDER Magazine's Superpark 8 saw a return to Canada, the first time the event has taken place in the Great White North since Big White hosted Superpark 1. Canada has socialized health care, subsidized education and very young drinking ages (18–19). Combine these factors with the 90-foot death gaps of Superpark, and you sometimes end up with a populace too smart--or too drunk--to hit the jumps. But at least they can get patched up on the government dime, right? Superpark 8 dealt out some heavy carnage over five days. Good thing the Meatwagon never asks to see your Visa card as you lie bleeding in the snow up here....

Along with the change of venue, this year's Superpark also saw a change of format on the Cutter's Cup side of things. Instead of holding a contest for the best park building team, this year involved more of a communist Cutter's Cup, with builders sessioning the snow piles instead of competing against each other and the clock. June Mountain's team leader, Eric Rosenwald, put it this way: "At one point in the event, someone from every team helped out on every feature. Everyone was working together. No ‘that's my snow--get away!' or anything.... That definitely allowed us to get more creative instead of staring at our watches all the time."

The commie format seemed to work because the features were imaginative, daunting and, as you can see, camera-friendly. There was some speculation on the part of certain parties that Banff/Lake Louise was actually chosen as the venue for Superpark 8 due to editor Pat Bridges' fondness for Alberta's lax smoking laws. A quick look around, however, and it was impossible to deny the pupil-exploding beauty of the area: big, steep, Rocky Mountains as far as the eye can see; an alpine sky big enough to consume you and elk meandering up the main streets of the Banff town site.

The night before things got rolling at Lake Louise, a shocked Kyle Clancy came around a corner saying, "I just saw a moose!" After a quick run through of antler and hindquarter descriptions, Clancy and the SNOWBOARDER staff determined that his sighting was, in fact, an elk. Wildlife tends to get up close and personal in Banff National Park--even if you're Kyle Clancy.

The day before the hammer dropped, most of the Lake Louise resort (half an hour west of Banff) looked pretty sleepy. It was a typical late spring scenario: a patio full of beer drinkers; classic rock blaring from tiny outdoor speakers; the smell of mud and slush; ski jeans and sunburns on the few hardcores still at it in the beginning of May. The park just above the lodge, however, was operating at a different speed: Six snowcats were going overtime, buzzing up and down the Superpark, performing last minute fixes to the monster features. Seeing so many cats working at such a frantic pace looked like a time-lapse film.

The park was an easy walk from the Sitzmark Pub--nerve center for Superpark 8--but the chair could take you halfway up the resort and allow you to get a little freeriding in on your way down. The middle jump, which appeared to be just a big booter from the lodge, bared its teeth as you rode by it on the lift. Jump 2, June Mountain's death gap/quarterpipe combo, seriously looked like nothing we'd ever seen. Ninety feet to the landing with a perfectly HPG'd vert wall, it was like a custom creation for a supercross circus show or something. According to the jump's creator, June Mountains Eric Rosenwald, "I've been wanting to build it [gap] for three years, kind of like the wall ride last year. One of the jumps we made for Mack Dawg at Mt. Hood Meadows was similar; it started as a 70-foot table and we cut a big gap in it. We turned that gap into a quarter and I thought we should have just made the quarter a part of it. The opportunity to make that feature has never presented itself until this event." But, let's be honest, even pro snowboarders don't come with shocks. Things were going to get interesting soon....

At Superpark, every ten minutes pretty much guarantees you will see something gnarlier than what you've seen in your local park all year. The assembled talent--combined with the sheer enormity of the features--means you need eyes in the back of your head to catch all the action. You'll see Marc-Andre Tarte do a nosepress to Nollie to nose bonk to frontflip on Lake Louise's rail and then find out you missed Ryan Lougee's perfect, flapless backside 180 over the gap. A session might bust out on the hip at the bottom of the park--seeing huge airs from locals like TJ Schneider and Justin Baun as well as balls-out riding from Colin Langlois and the Grenerds--but you might miss local digger, Dom Pelosi, guinea pigging the huge third jump days before anyone else has even figured out how to get enough speed for it. Life's like that at Superpark.

Luckily, nobody missed Andrew Hardingham's three over the dicey gap wearing a tight polyester suit. Nor did they miss Andrew's boys, Jonas Guinn and Kelly Schovanek, gapping it up, doubles-style. (Guinn bounced on his face but was seen hiking back up, laughing.) Dozens of photographers and filmers are jockeying for angles at all times; keeping poachers out of the park becomes something akin to herding cats; hundreds of riders are either going off or trying to psych themselves up to go off. Andy Finch is doing backflips over the gap and another rider is fighting with his team manager up at the drop in:

Team Manager: "You have to hit that gap."
Rider: "No way, dude."
Team Manager: "Hit it. You'll be fine. Finch cleared it three times already."
Rider: "Yeah but Finch is, like, 185. I'm only 150!"
Team Manager: "You're gonna hit it!"
Rider: "I can't get enough speed!"
Team Manager: "You're gonna hit it!"

Slow, difficult snow tended to turn Superpark 8 into Superpark "Wait" at times. The gap and third jump presented significant physics issues, meaning the quarterpipe, hip and A-frame rail became the focal points when the big booters were being serviced. The quarterpipe wasn't huge by modern standards, yet seeing Martin Gallant hipping the far side of it wearing a flapping Canadian flag won't leave anyone's mind any time soon. Neither will the image of Rio Tahara knocking his jaw off its hinges on the other side of the quarter after a botched alley-oop Rodeo. When the flat bottom was done with him, Rio looked like a marionette after a run-in with some steel-toed boots, and he ended up spending most of Superpark 8 in the Mineral Springs Hospital back in Banff. Guy Deschenes did enough huge one-foots on the quarter to allow him to leave two days early with a swollen ankle and a big smile on his face. Charlie Morace got put out on the top of the quarterpipe like a cigarette butt and had to head back to Banff for X rays. When you're built like Chachi, it takes a pretty decent knock to take you out of the game. Neon Warrior, Travis Parker, was actually pulling Elguerials-to-handplant and other inverts on a shovel stuck into the deck, using the shovel like a tombstone.

Superpark 8 concluded with four inches of spring pow falling in the Banff town site and up at Lake Louise. The top of the resort had enough snow to qualify May 5th as a pow day for those who were still unpolluted, uninjured or un-jaded enough to enjoy it. The five days of Superpark ended with an organic 25-stair rail session outside the main lodge. Fry cooks in kitchen checks, tourists in wet ‘80s ski fashions, and the assembled media were all privy to Lane Knaack, Pat Moore, James Beach and a few others trying to settle this high-consequence kinked rail with its cheese-grater stairs. All-around standout, Jake Blauvelt, gave the bottom stair a helmet-less Glasgow Kiss and was out early. Knaack stepped to the nasty round rail and even ended up showing it a 50/50 to switch 50/50 out before the day was done. Nic Batko strapped in to try a frontside boardslide on the extra-evil-retaining-wall-side, pulled it, and called it a day.

So, after spending thousands of dollars on diesel and cat time, building one of the heaviest parks the world has ever seen, dealing with the logistics of getting a few hundred riders to Canada's Wild West, SNOWBOARDER bid Superpark 8 adieu with a handful of hardcore jibbers riding a resident rail that's probably been there as long as most of them have been alive. It didn't end with a bang--or a whimper--but with the clang of edges, P-tex, fiberglass, and skull bone on handrail.

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