Last night I received a really interesting email detailing some of the issues Hotham has had with the park in 2010. This is from someone with good working knowledge of the mountain and experience but they would rather not be named because they do not want to get down on their friends who are working hard up there. As they say in the email, “This is not meant to be a defense of Hotham, rather just a level headed look at what’s going on up there.” The following is their opinion on the issues that have existed this year and gives some light as to why there has been such a negative reaction from the crew on Pop to Hotham this year.

(Image from Hotham.com.au)

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I’ve been reading a fair few comments on Hotham Park lately and thought rather than wading into the Shoutbox, I might send you some thoughts and let you do what you like with them. You may well be savvy to it all, but here’s my two cents:

Did the Hotham park this year suck? Yep. Why?
To start with – it’s a hard place to build a park. Not much area with the right fall line etc. The resort actually gives plenty of cat time, and are interested in parks, so in terms of jumps and snow features it’s really just a case of doing what they can with the snow levels/terrain they have. But the last few seasons the progression of jibs has stood fairly stagnant.

This season in particular, two main factors were relevant:
1) The weather – this year was obviously shit. While most resorts have snow making in the park, Hotham’s main park is on the summit, and this has zero snowmaking. Not sure why, but I would think there is a pretty good reason for no snowmaking as they want snow on that area regardless of park. As such, no snow means not much park.

2) The second factor is  something that can be changed – the park being under the ‘Events’ banner and the guy in charge. He is a rad guy, that does care about park, but sadly for us just does not have the time to do anything for it. Working about 20hrs a day on race stuff means the park gets left to last. There has been a budget for new features for the last three years, but despite the park crew submitting plans, costing and just waiting on approval, nothing has been done about it. Bad form. Crew have not returned due to this, and this year some got so frustrated they quit mid season.

So what can be done?
One thing is that Hotham should have park taken out of the Events portfolio, and made into its own department, or something to that effect. Challenging when the people that own Hotham also own Falls and want all the parks focused there. But if your thinking about writing petitions or emails, do so, they really will listen to it and it might just get the change your hankering for.

This is not meant to be a defense of Hotham, rather just a level headed look at what’s going on up there. It would be great to see Hotham leading the charge in parks in Aus, but it is a challenging place to do it and would require a dedicated effort. Either way, it doesn’t look like it will happen while the parks are under the events/race banner. Something needs to change.