December 9, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

At Carinthia, the best just got better

by Matt Boxler/

Carinthia, Mount Snow’s all-park mountain face, garnered top rankings in the East in several readers’ polls. (photo: Mount Snow)

Carinthia, Mount Snow’s all-park mountain face, garnered top rankings in the East in several readers’ polls. (photo: Mount Snow)

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If you thought the incredible first-year success of Carinthia — the only all-park mountain face on the East Coast — was enough for Mount Snow to rest on its laurels in 2010, think again.

New design, new flow, new elements (including a man-made 12-foot cliff) and the finals of the Winter Dew Tour reinforce Carinthia as the hottest attraction for freestyle riding and skiing this side of the Mississippi.

This fall, readers of Transworld Snowboarding ranked Carinthia No. 1 resort in the East and No. 1 terrain park in the East. Carinthia was also voted No. 1 in the East by Ski Magazine readers, and Mount Snow was the only East Coast resort ranked in the top 10 for parks by Skiing.

The feedback Mount Snow received about Carinthia was incredible, said Vinnie Lewis, the resort’s events and public relations manager, who credits the park crew for hitting on everything riders are looking for in a terrain park.

“We already felt that Carinthia was a huge success, but it’s great to know that everyone else does too,” Lewis said. “Getting that ranking from the guests who were out there riding our features all the time is an absolute honor.”

So why would the park crew feel compelled to make changes to something that was already so perfect? Whatever happened to the saying, "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it"?

“We think our guests are really going to appreciate the changes we’re making because a lot of them came directly from their feedback,” Lewis said. “When you get insight directly from your core market, it makes it pretty easy to keep them happy. But I can’t overshadow the hard work and dedication of our park crew. These guys have such creativity (like building a 12-foot cliff drop). What they come up with is limitless.”

Elia Hamilton, mountain manager, built the 12-foot cliff by stacking boulders on a steep section along the lower part of the mile-long feature park Nitro. In addition, the crew added curved rails and boxes and widened Nitro by 25 feet, which allows more room for better flow.

The new and improved Carinthia will be on display for the world to see as Mount Snow was chosen to host this season’s finals of the Winter Dew Tour, the Toyota Championships, Feb. 5-7. The event draws many of the world’s best snowboarding and skiing freestylers for competition in superpipe and slopestyle, and this year’s finals are slated just a week before the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.

“I feel the Olympics being so close to the Dew Tour finals are going to have people even more amped up than usual,” Lewis said. “Let’s face it, when it’s close to Olympic time, you can’t change the channel on your TV to something that doesn’t have a promo going on. It will help get everyone in the mood for high-end competition, and it doesn’t get much better than the Dew Tour finals.”

Last season, 25,000 spectators swarmed the West Dover, Vt., resort, which hosted the second of three stops on the inaugural Winter Dew Tour. This season, resort management is anticipating even more insanity.

“From the event side, you really don’t notice it at first because you’re running around and making sure everything is going smoothly,” Lewis said. “Then there’s that moment when you stop and see all the spectators there and realize how much all the hard work pays off. From the marketing side, it’s exposure like you dream about. That many people watching the world’s best athletes competing for huge money on our mountain … it’s priceless.”

The Dover Economic Development Committee certainly put a value on it — voting again this year to provide a $25,000 grant to help produce the Winter Dew Tour. The committee cited the Dew Tour’s ability to draw visitors to the area, not to mention the massive TV exposure on NBC, USA, MTV, MTV2 and Fuel TV.

The other stops on the 2009-2010 tour include Torino’s Open at Breckenridge, Colo., Dec. 18-20 and the Wendy’s Invitational at Snowbasin, Utah, Jan. 15-17. Last season, Mount Snow’s own Kelly Clark was crowned the Winter Dew Tour champion in Snowboard Superpipe.

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