TASMANIA – Ben Lomond Terrain Park

Snowboarders love terrain parks. One of the most talented snowboarders in Australia admitted last year to only having ridden the Front Valley Terrain Park at Perisher for his whole season. A good number of snowboarders will take at least one lap through a park every day. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a shredder who refuses to ride any park features. So it is easy to forget that terrain parks don’t magically appear. At some resorts, there aren’t parks.

Transfer Snowboard Magazine | Alex Cameron

From the beginning in Australia, terrain parks were confined to the big five resorts; Thredbo, Perisher, Falls, Hotham and Buller. Then some of the smaller resorts got on board; Selwyn and Baw Baw. This year, as the culmination of five years of lobbying, Australia debuted another park; Ben Lomond. That’s right, this year there was a terrain park in Tasmania!

The Ben Lomond Terrain Park. Ben Lomond Ski Area, Tasmania.

For a ski area the size of a football field in the middle of a National Park, it took some time to convince the authorities that they should allow a terrain park. The process started with some lengthy explanations of exactly what a terrain park was. We had the chance to chat with one of the key figures behind the Ben Lomond Terrain Park, Jono Rogers. Jono is a happy go lucky Launceston lad with a stylish tailpress and passion for Tassie. Enjoy!

Jono Rogers, one of the key figures behind the Ben Lomond Terrain Park, finally enjoying the park that was years in the making. Hard to imagine he learned to snowboard in Tasmania with a tailpress like that.

Jono, last time we spoke you were watching rally car races in Japan! Where are you now?
Hey Alex, at the moment I’m back in Tassie working away, getting ready to head off to China in a couple of weeks! Should be crazy!

Where did you learn to snowboard?
The one and only Ben Lomond! I think I first picked up a board from outside the pub late one afternoon when I was about 10, and went and rode the last couple of tows for the day. Even though the bindings were way too big and I had no idea what I was doing, I’ve been hooked ever since.

This was one of two jumps at Ben Lomond during the season; the Gap Jump. Crowd pleasing backflip from Brad Segda.

What has been the highlight of your years boarding?
Probably a real casual heli day in NZ with a bunch of mates, we were cranking beats and having a few beers while hitting some pow in the backcountry, not much would top it! At this point in time I’m not super snow travelled, so I’d have to say NZ – and probably Treble Cone on a bluebird pow day would take the cake!

For people who haven’t been there, can you describe the ski field at Ben Lomond? How does it compare to other places you’ve ridden?
Sure! Ben Lomond is a small hill, an hour east of Launceston. It’s tiny in size and vert, with not much terrain accessible at all. It’s got 10 tows (a mix of pomas and t-bars), a rad pub, a thriving little village and now a terrain park. It gets snow for about 3 months a year, but thanks to global warming (the average sea surface temperature off the east coast of Tasmania has increased by ~ 2°C in the last 20 years), snow conditions are now fickle at best. Compared to any other resort I’ve ridden in Aus or NZ, it’s pissweak, but it’s the best Tassie has, and when your choices are to pay to fly the ditch or to drive up the Ben, you quickly learn to make the most out of it!

This shot just screams “Tassie” – tinnie in hand, having a night shred, patchy snow. All time.

You mentioned there was five years’ work that went into getting the terrain park off the ground. Can you explain that process?
So, this little adventure started about that long ago, when we were campaigning on the internet and in person to the commercial tow operator to build a terrain park. We had to wait a few years for the government to release their Ski Slope Management Plan (only 20 years in the making!), which effectively gave anyone leeway to start an organisation and build a park.

After that, it was the simple process of starting a non-profit organisation, writing up a proposal to Parks and Wildlife Services (PWS), negotiating the terms of the proposal with PWS, all the commercial and non-commercial stakeholders on the mountain and interested parties, finding sponsors for some cash, finding a sponsor for public liability insurance, finding local manufacturers for steel work, and then designing and building the features!

Who are the key figures in Ben Lomond, at the resort and in the park crew? How receptive were they to having boxes on the hill?
So Ben Lomond’s a little bit unique in that it isn’t owned by one company or person, you’ve got Eryl at Alpine Enterprises (the commercial tow operator), Geoff & Flea at Ben Lomond Snow Sports (rentals/retail), Colin at the Creek Inn pub and then all the local village members who run the lodges and also take turns on the Ben Lomond Committee, a kind of management group. They were all fairly stoked about the idea to start off with, however I get the feeling they didn’t really understand what we were on about and they thought we’d do a half assed job of it. After this first season everyone seems really stoked and happy and just wants it to get bigger and better!

In the terrain park crew you’ve got myself and Chris Terry. We were the ones stupid enough to take on the project back in the day. Then there’s Brad Segda, a local shredder and froth-head who puts in heaps of time grooming, making sure the park is looking good and pumping everyone up, and Matt Holloway, who is our builder – he did a sick job finishing off all the features. There’s a heap more people I’d love to mention, but for brevity we’re all local riders who have come together to get this done, and all great mates! Our meetings are always at pubs and involve way too much Boags Red! Who knows how we manage to get anything organized!

The crew; the passion and dedication of the Tassie snowboarders is beyond impressive.

I was chatting to a friend from Northstar, Brandon Strong, and he mentioned that some Tassie crew came by their park office to have a chat about starting a park in Tassie. Was that you guys?
Sure was! Brandon and his boss (apologies, forgotten his name), were super friendly and helpful. We talked over a heap of issues to do with professional box & rail construction, which was great. It’s amazing the lack of information on the subject on the net, all you can find is amateur crap. I’d also have to shout out to the guys at Falls Creek and Cardrona as well, their park crews also took time out to provide us with much needed wisdom!

When we were there the park was pretty full; a couple of flat boxes, a flat rail, a flat-down box and a few jumps. Was that when the park was at its best for the season?
Sure was, you guys hit it on one of the best days of the season, with sunshine and enough snow to actually ride the mountain! We built another feature after that (gap on, gap off 3 m box), but that was basically the setup we rocked for most of the season.

What resources does the Ben Lomond Terrain Park have at its disposal?
As far as resources go; we’ve got amazing support from local businesses in terms of sponsorship, we’ve got the brains, dedication and perseverance of a great 10 man team, and the support and volunteer efforts of a rad crew of local riders, who help us out every time we need to do massive efforts like carting six steel snow features 400m up a hill! That being said, we built the park on an absolute shoestring budget – I believe all up the features were designed and built for less than $2k.

The jump was built completely by hand because the park is all fenced in for safety. We couldn’t get the groomer into the park, so hand shovels it was! When you guys were there, it was about 4 days after Brad had gone up and spent 5 hours shoveling snow by himself on a Tuesday, all so people could enjoy it on the weekend. That’s the kind of rad attitude and dedication I’m taking about, and why I love being a part of this group!

Stylish noseslide under the Tassie sun.

What is in the pipeline for the Ben Lomond Terrain Park next year?
We’re really hoping to work closely with all the different groups involved in the mountain to take the park setup to the next level. I’d love to see two separate parks operating next year, one beginner park next to our snow guns so that we can run it for a lot longer over the winter, and a more rideable park in a better location, with more interesting features and better flow between hits. Basically, we just hope we can make things bigger, better and more fun for everyone!

Cool mate, well we’ll look to check back in next season and see how it is going. (The last time I spoke with Jono, he was planning to get some time in Japan over the Northern Hemisphere winter. I wonder whether his focus will be park or pow over there…)

Snowboarders now have yet another reason to head on up the Ben next year!