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Skiboarding in the Forbidden Park
Date: 01/01/05
By: Roussel
Every year now for the past seven years I’ve bought a pass at my local ski hill St-Bruno, Quebec. It’s a small resort with only 14 runs and a decent park sometimes. The resort is actually in a urban location being right in the middle of a few towns, and is also 15 minutes away from my house.
This year, like every other year I bought a pass and on my way in line for the snow park chair lift I see a sign, “PARC DE NEIGE INTERDIT AUX “SNOWBLADES” which in English means “snowblades” are not allowed in the park.
Of course, I wasn’t gonna spend all my day in the grooms so I hit forbidden park a few times hoping that rule wasn’t very enforced by the ski patrol. After a few park session on my way back to the chairlift a chairlift operator stopped me. He asked me if I knew “snowblades” weren’t aloud in the park. I tried to play the smart-ass hoping he wasn’t familiar with the term skiboard and said that these weren’t snowblades. They are still short skis he replied. He marked my pass with a red dot which is a warning, which I later smudged off with a bit of spit and elbow grease, While he did that I asked him why they weren’t aloud. It would take too long to explain he told me but I got him to sum it up. Basically it was because of the general lack of experience on the hill among “snowbladers”, and that they where unstable at high speeds. I didn’t want to hold back the line for the lift so I went on my way and went to some other runs for the rest of the day.
That night I sent an E-mail to the mountain asking the full explanation for the banning of skiboarding in the park. That was over two weeks ago, still no reply after having sent it twice.
I told myself I wasn’t gonna let the marketing of snowblades by big companies as a family friendly, inexpensive and extremely easy to learn form of sliding down the hill stop me from ridding the park. A few days later I went back to St-Bruno, and I went in the park. As I was going down getting ready to hit the rail I see two snowboarders cutting me off and yelling at me telling me snowblades aren’t aloud in the park. I played dumb and pretended I couldn’t hear what they where saying, and besides, why would I stop for him? He wasn’t a ski patrol or anything. Right before I hit the rail they started getting aggressive pushing me and trying to hold me back, but I got them off and pulled a smooth frontside butter fakie makio on the new rainbow rail right in their face. Right after I got off I figured I would stop this high-speed chase and stopped to hear what they had to say. They told me I had no business to be in the park along with some French cusses between a few of the words. One of the boarders told me he was the one in charge for the park and told me he was going to strip my pass away, which was total bull considering he had absolutely no authority to do so. They were gonna take me down to see ski patrol and again they had no authority to do so. I talked with them for a bit convincing them I wasn’t aware of the new rule trying to ignore their hostile attitude. Finally they rode away telling me next time he saw me in the park he would strip my pass away, and after I told them I would leave the park.
So this is where I stand now. I sent another E-mail to the resort after this last incident and still no reply. I thought about going to the office and complaining that I wanted my money for my pass back but that would mean sacrificing most of riding for that season. So what’s next for my fight for the park? Hmm, I’m not quite sure, petition? Rebel attack? Who knows…
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