Terrain park

From their inception to as recently as the 1980s, ski areas generally banned jumping and any kind of aerial maneuvers, usually under penalty of revoking the offender's lift ticket.

It was the brainchild of Bear Valley's Marketing Director Sean McMahon and California snowboarder and contest organizer Mike McDaniel.

He enlisted the help of McDaniel, who had experience building snowboard-specific terrain features such as halfpipes and jumps, through his work organizing early snowboard events.

McDaniel in turn, brought in snowboard pioneers Mike Chantry and Keith Kimmel to consult on the design and construction of the park, to be located on the front side of Bear Valley's upper mountain.

The new mountain attraction was dubbed the “Polar Park.” Opening day in late November 1989 featured a demonstration by professional snowboarders Damian Sanders, Terry Kidwell, Noah Salasnek, Mike and Tina Basich and others.

Terrain parks (in the United States and Canada) have designations with respect to safety similar to standard alpine slopes.

In the park these feature consist of: Rails and boxes have many different shapes and sizes: straight, sloped, curved (often called a "Rainbow"), or kinked.

A rail that is stuck into a jump at an upward angle A feature that comes in many shapes and sizes and is meant to be tapped with either the tail or tip end of skis or snowboards.