Ski Utah Blog - Articles by Author Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director
Showing 10 articles out of 22.
Park City Mountain Resort Hosts the Sprint US Snowboarding Grand Prix and Winter Games Team Announcement with concert by Thirty Seconds To Mars
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on January 19, 2010
Park City, Utah – Park City Mountain Resort will host the two final stops of the Sprint U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix, Friday, January 22 and Saturday, January 23, 2010. The two Park City Mountain Resort Grand Prix competitions will finalize the U.S. halfpipe team for the 2010 Winter Games, which will be named following the competition Saturday night with a concert by Thirty Seconds to Mars.
“We are honored to be hosting such an important event,” said Jeremy Cooper, terrain park manager and Chief of Competition. “It seems fitting that the U.S. halfpipe team for the 2010 Winter Games will be named in the Eagle Superpipe, which is the same location where U.S. history was made when the American men swept the medals in the 2002 Winter Games.”
The event is FREE to the public. The schedule will be as follows:
Friday, January 22, 2010
5:30 - 6:20 p.m. Halfpipe Finals Warm-up
6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Men's & Women's Halfpipe Finals
(Awards immediately following)
Saturday, January 23, 2010
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. Xbox Junior Jam
(Pick’N Shovel Terrain Park)
5:30 - 6:20 p.m Halfpipe Finals Warm-up
6:30 - 8:30 p.m. Men's & Women's Halfpipe Finals
(Awards immediately following)
8:45 - 10:00 p.m. FREE Concert and Winter Games Team
Announcement
Sunday, January 24, 2010
1:00 - 2:00 p.m. NBC Broadcast of Event
The Grand Prix will conclude Saturday night with a free concert by multi-platinum rock band Thirty Seconds To Mars who recently released their third album This Is War. The album’s first single “Kings & Queens” just hit #1 on the alternative radio airplay charts, marking the group’s second #1 single and third top 5 hit. This Is War is the follow-up to 2005’s A Beautiful Lie which hit multi-platinum status after two years of heavy global touring and winning fans over, one-by-one, garnering the band a growing and loyal fan base. Formed by brothers Jared Letoand Shannon Leto, Thirty Seconds to Mars have over 100 million views on YouTube, 40 million plays on MySpace, more than one million fans on iLike/Facebook and have won numerous awards and accolades, including an MTV Video Music Award, three MTV EMA’s, an MTV Latin and Asia Award, a Fuse Award, and three Kerrang! Awards. For more information on Thirty Seconds To Mars, please visit http://www.thirtysecondstomars.com/
For more information on the Sprint US Snowboarding Grand Prix visit http://www.pcride.com/winter/events/grand_prix/index.html.
To apply for media credentials visit http://www.pcride.com/winter/events/grand_prix/media.html.
About Park City Mountain Resort
Park City Mountain Resort, named the most accessible mountain resort in North America by the readers of SKI magazine, is located in the heart of Park City, Utah and is only a 40-minute drive from the Salt Lake City International Airport. With 3,300 acres of unspoiled terrain, the Resort offers groomed Signature Runs™, bumps, powder, trees, eight peaks, nine bowls, four terrain parks, and the Eagle Superpipe. Park City Mountain Resort was once again ranked a Top-five resort by the readers of SKI and Transworld Snowboarding magazines. For more information about Park City Mountain Resort, please visit www.parkcitymountain.com or call (800) 222-PARK.
Help Haiti by Shredding Brighton this Weekend
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on January 15, 2010
Brighton Resort will be donating $1 for every lift ticket sold this Saturday, January 16th, to the Healing Hands For Haiti International Foundation to support earthquake relief efforts. Guests will be given the opportunity to match the donation.
"We're glad to be able to help the people of Haiti in our own way during this extremely difficult time," said Randy Doyle, General Manager of Brighton Resort. "Hopefully people will come up and support the cause this Saturday while taking advantage of the improving conditions," he added.
Christmas Cook-skis!?!
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on December 17, 2009
I just had to share these adorable Christmas cookies that our intern made in celebration of our favorite ski brand Rossignol. Merry Christmas from the Rooster!
If you were a Christmas Cookie what shape would you be?
Avalanche Awareness Course Dec. 19 & 20 at Solitude
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on December 14, 2009
Now that its really snowing. There is no time like the present to practice snow safety. Join members of Solitude’s Professional Ski Patrol and Snow Safety team to learn how to travel responsibly and safely outside resort boundaries. This two-day course is a great introduction to the identification of avalanche hazard and the skills needed to safely travel in the backcountry.
The course will focus on identifying avalanche terrain, analyzing snow and weather factors, managing group dynamics, and avalanche rescue skills. The morning of day one will start with the guides giving a presentation on avalanches, followed by the rest of day one and two being spent in the backcountry putting these concepts into action.
All participants will have the option to use our brand new Black Diamond touring setups, consisting of the Justice skis with Fritschi Freeride bindings and Ascension skins.
48 inches in 48 hours - Major Winter Storm Hits Utah Ski Resorts in Time for Holiday Season
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on December 14, 2009
A major winter storm hit Utah Sunday morning delivering as much as 48
inches of snow in 48 hours to Utah ski and snowboard resorts across the
state. With Christmas around the corner, Utah skiers and snowboarders
are thrilled by the excellent mountain conditions. More snow is still
in the forecast.
In addition to wonderful ski and snowboard
conditions, Ski Utah notes that Utah resorts and lodging properties are
offering the best holiday vacation deals seen in years. Local and
destination visitors can easily gift themselves a last minute and
affordable mountain retreat by visiting SkiUtah.com and clicking on the
Holiday Hot Deals icon.
Utah Resort 48-hour Snow Totals:
Alta Ski Area- 39"
Brian Head Resort- 10"
Brighton Ski Resort- 48"
The Canyons- 28"
Deer Valley Resort- 28"
Park City Mountain Resort- 28"
Powder Mountain- 15"
Snowbasin, A Sun Valley Resort- 30"
Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort- 44"
Solitude Mountain Resort- 46"
Sundance Resort- 36"
Wolf Creek Utah- 21”
Adventures of Snow and Flake- Episode 1
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on December 7, 2009
Stay tuned for future episodes....Coming to a blog near you.
Ski Utah Greatest Flake Search
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on December 7, 2009
With flurries in the forecast Ski Utah is thrilled to see that its snowflakes are finally returning from a brief hiatus to New York City. The Utah Office of Tourism snowflakes were recently in the Big Apple trying city life. To view footage from their trip visit http://bit.ly/7gYYY2.
“We loved New York,” said one snow flake. “ But, we absolutely can’t wait to get back to our jobs.” Their “jobs” are snowing in Utah.
In celebration of the snowflakes return, Ski Utah is launching a video essay contest on its YouTube page TheRealSkiUtah. Contestants are invited to enter 30-60 second videos on why they are “The Greatest Flake on Earth” to win a pair of Rossignol S3 skis or a Burton Air 48 snowboard.
Ski Utah encourages entrants to focus their video on their love of skiing or snowboarding in Utah. All entries must be submitted by January 1, 2010, and should be labeled “Ski Utah Greatest Flake.”
More Utah Resorts Open
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on November 20, 2009
Have you gotten out to ski or snowboard yet? By the end of this week five Utah ski and snowboad resorts will have opened leaving snow enthusiasts no excuse not to get out and ride! Wolf Creek Utah, Solitude and Brighton have already opened for the season. Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort opened Friday, November 20 and Park City Mountain Resort and Brian Head will open Saturday, November 21.
So, brush the dust of your boards and get your ski legs on!
Happy skiers and boarders load the first chair of the season at Snowbird on Fri., Nov. 20, 2009.
Westminster Students look to Crystal Ball to Predict Olympic Quotas
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on November 11, 2009
U.S. Snowboarding is a step ahead of the curve this Olympic season as a project in conjunction with its partnership with Westminster College has enabled officials to forecast how many athletes will be Vancouver Bound this year.
In the past, U.S. Snowboarding's athletes attended as many World Cup events as possible in order to ensure athlete qualification, as there was no data available to show which competitions were most advantageous to attend and which were not.
"We decided to create a model to help U.S. Snowboarding get rid of those educated guesses," Bonner explained.
While the U.S. Ski Team and U.S. Snowboarding has been a partner of Westminster College for nearly five years, U.S. Snowboarding first approached Westminster College in 2008 to ask for help with forecasting its athletes' competition schedules to maximize the U.S. team’s Olympic chances. With the team’s domination of the 2002 and 2006 Olympic Games, it hoped to continue a strong performance while balancing its athletes’ busy schedules. A key part of that is ensuring that U.S. athletes have strong results on the World Cup circuit which is used to determine national quotas for each of the three snowboarding Olympic events. The goal was to maximize the quota spots in as many events as possible.
Using a spreadsheet-based software suite for predictive modeling, forecasting and simulation called Crystal Ball, the students put together a program that could determine which athletes should compete and where they needed to compete to get maximum results while minimizing costs and interference to the athletes’ professional competition schedules. Since many snowboarders juggle their schedules with major events like World Cups, U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix, the U.S. Open and X-Games, it was essential to develop a system that could help them balance their season.
After working tireless hours in the library and seeking guidance from their professor, Dr. Alysse Morton, the students completed what they considered to be a “perfect” model for the team. The model is capable of taking the athletes’ previous, present and future predicted scores, as well as the scores from other competing athletes from around the world to predict whether the athletes would qualify for the Olympics or not.
"The model works by predicting a range that each athlete could score in a given competition based on their previous results in similar events, such as the World Cup," described Bonner. "Then this score is multiplied by either a one, if they attended the event, or a zero if they did not attend the event. Then all of the athletes are put in order based on their ranking in the raw scores. The rank received is assigned with corresponding points to the athlete."
While the program sounds relatively easy to understand, the duo had a few glitches along the way.
"The main problem we faced when working on this project was the actual gathering of the previous athlete data due to many of the athletes' short history competing at the World Cup level. Also, snowboarding halfpipe is a relatively new sport in the Olympic Games, which made it hard to gather good data. We had to predict the athletes’ average performance and calculate the possible range that they could achieve at their maximum and their minimum potential," said Gerner.
U.S. Snowboarding Program director Jeremy Forster believes the model was very useful in planning the upcoming competition season.
"The work that was done was a great help in planning our season and the athletes’ schedules," he said. "The initial forecasting was very useful and looks like it will be quite accurate once the final Olympic quota spots are determined on January 18, 2010."
When asked if any of the results surprised him, he noted, "In general, I think the results were expected but the model helped validate our initial thoughts."
All in all, the feedback the students received was very positive.
"Overall, I think they did a great job. Both Claire and Karl put a lot of time into understanding the goal of the project and researching the results of the athletes to make sure the data was as accurate as possible," said Forster.
"All the feedback we have received from USSA has been extremely positive," echoed Bonner. "I believe that they are truly stoked about being able to reduce their costs and have the ability to predict more accurately which athletes are going to qualify for the Olympics."
The students are continuing to refine the numbers throughout the 2009 season to ensure the model is as accurate as possible. In January, when the official Olympic team is finally selected, the students will find out just how accurate the model really is.
Veteran's Day Snow and Deals
Posted by Jessica Kunzer - Communication Director on November 10, 2009
It looks like Mother Nature is likely to celebrate Veterans Day with a little treat for Utahans. Starting Wednesday snow is in the forecast for Utah’s ski resorts.
With snowfall likely through Sunday, members of the Military can kick off the ski season with unbeatable deals! Many of Utah’s great ski resorts offer special ski deals to Military and their families throughout the season. Check out the below list of military deals.
Brighton Resort offers discounted unlimited season passes for military.
Season Pass: $599
The Canyons Resort offers a $54 day pass by showing your military ID at the ticket window.
Deer Valley Resort offers special pricing to military members and their family.
Season Pass: $765/ Day Pass: $60
Park City Mountain Resort offers military personnel a discounted season pass. The military season pass is currently available for $595. A military ID is required for purchase. Park City also has daily tickets available for military personnel at a rate of $64 (during regular season). Military ID is required for purchase of the day ticket as well.
Powder Mountain Resort offers discounted season pass for both active and retired military and their spouses.
Season Pass: $405
Snowbasin Resort is offering 2 orientation sessions, exclusively for military and their families stationed at Hill Air Force Base, to introduce them to special offers at Snowbasin.
1st Session: Wednesday Dec. 9th, 2 to 4PM 2nd Session: Saturday Dec.12th, 10AM-Noon
Snowbird Ski& Summer Resort offers discounted day passes for active military.
Day Pass: $59/ Tram Pass: $51
Sudance Resort offers special midweek season pass for military for only $279.
Mon.-Fri. only. Excludes Dec. 26th - Jan. 1st, Presidents Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.All Active Military, EMS Services, Firefighter, Policeman, School Teacher, Hospital Personnel. Must show valid ID to verify service. Limited to the above listed service ONLY. Valid for service person and spouse only. $279
Most resorts require military ID in order to get discounted pricing. In addition to individual resort deals, Hill Air Force Base Tickets & Travel office sells discount lift tickets all season long.
