A Place Built for Speed

Snowbasin enters the 
big leagues of downhill racing

by Greg Moore

Fifty yards out of the start of the Grizzly course, the 2002 Olympic men’s downhill course at Snowbasin, Utah, racers are going more than 70 mph; farther down, they soar 60 yards off the Flintlock jump. Farther still, they accelerate to 80 mph. Just another ho-hum Olympic downhill course?

Not this time.

The Grizzly, and the women’s Wildflower course, both recently constructed at Snowbasin, are the most intense downhills in North America.

Snowbasin is Sun Valley’s “sister” resort—both are owned by Salt Lake City billionaire Earl Holding. Holding’s financial resources have been instrumental in bringing Snowbasin, formerly a locals-only kind of place, up to world-class racing standards. By race day, Holding will have poured $70 million into constructing the courses, installing snowmaking and building a high-speed quadruple chairlift, a tram and four day lodges.

According to Snowbasin general manager Gray Reynolds, the resort obtained the Olympic downhill and super G events by default; no other ski area in the vicinity of Salt Lake City had the capacity to pull it off. Snowbird, even though it has good terrain, doesn’t have enough space at its base for a finish area, and, in any case, organizers agreed that the narrow confines of Big and Little Cottonwood canyons couldn’t sustain the environmental pressure the Olympic crowds would create.

So it fell to little Snowbasin, east of Ogden, to take on the job of creating a World Cup-quality downhill course.

In 1995, former Swiss downhill ace Bernhard Russi began walking and skiing the steep, tree-shaded slopes to the west of the then-existing ski area. Since retiring from World Cup racing, Russi has become one of the world’s foremost designers of downhill courses. He designed courses for the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, France, the 1994 games in Lillehammer, Norway, and the 1998 games in Nagano, Japan.

Most of the ski area’s terrain is within the Cache National Forest. In 1996, Congress authorized a controversial exchange of national forest land to allow Snowbasin to build new base facilities, and the forest’s master plan was amended to allow the resort to expand. Runs were cut by fall of 1997, and by 1999, crews had installed extensive snowmaking and the two new lifts. After terrain was contoured and posts installed to hold thousands of meters of safety netting, the downhill courses were ready to go.

Reynolds said Russi is “very proud” of the result.
The men’s Grizzly course drops about 2,900 vertical feet in a little under two miles. The women’s Wildflower course drops 2,600 vertical feet in about the same distance. The two are mostly separate, though share a section just below the start of the women’s course. The super G events will be held on somewhat shorter courses set on the same runs.

“It’s the Kitzbuhel of North America,” said Ben Tidswell, assistant director of Snowbasin’s race department. The famed Hahnenkamm downhill at Kitzbuhel, Austria, is considered the world’s most difficult.

The Downhill Courses at Snowbasin
(click on graphic above to enlarge)

World Cup men’s downhill and super G races were scheduled on the Grizzly course for last February. Bad weather and snowfall kept the races from happening, but the competitors did get two training runs in—enough to get a feel for the course.

“They were very impressed,” Tidswell said. “The athletes’ comment was that it’s very intense. There’s nowhere to rest—it just keeps coming at you.”
Tidswell said racers on both the men’s and women’s courses experience intense accelerations down steep pitches, decelerate considerably in areas of tight turns or jumps, then get quickly up to 70 or 80 miles an hour again as they drop down another steep face. Unlike many other World Cup downhill courses, there are no cat roads or other flat sections.
“If you make one mistake in any area, there’s no chance to win it back,” he said.

The Grizzly course was inaugurated early last February with the running of a Super Series downhill (a notch or two below World Cup level). Six former racers from Sun Valley, now in their late 30s and 40s, foreran the course. Since they were to be the first people ever to race the entire course, no one knew exactly what to expect.

“Before we started, everybody was a little sketched out,” said Ketchum, Idaho, resident Mike Levy.
Levy said that after one of the forerunners took more air than expected off the Flintlock jump, one gate just uphill was reset to slow racers down.

“It keeps your attention all the way down,” he said of the course. “That was the funnest thing I’ve ever done skiing.”

The women’s course has seen more action, having hosted the 1999 U.S. National Championships and Super Series downhills in 2000 and 2001. Former Sun Valley Ski Team racer Picabo Street won the latter against a field that contained top European World Cup racers. It was the first step in a comeback from a bad injury that Street hopes will culminate in gold at the Winter Olympics.

By Olympic race days, a fleet of 24 snowcats will fine-tune the course by pushing snow into just the right contours to form the rolls and banks needed to create smooth, sweeping turns and long but controlled jumps and compressions.

In the event of a dry, early winter, a state-of-the-art snowmaking system should provide plenty of snow. The downhills are held early in the Olympics’ schedule so they can be postponed in case of bad weather.

Combined with the snowcats, an army of 1,600 volunteers, wielding 1,100 shovels, should be able to whip the courses into racing shape after all but the most severe snowfalls. Before last February’s canceled World Cup race, four feet of snow fell during the week of training runs. Even at that, Tidswell said, “we really only missed getting a race off by about an hour and a half.”

The snowmaking system will help not only to provide enough snow, but also to create snow that is denser than that provided by nature. Dense snow holds up better under the pounding the course will get from racers carving high-speed turns.

On the men’s course, sections will undergo further hardening as course workers hose them down with water and actually inject water into the snow. Being heavier, men beat up the course more than the women and are able to hold an edge better on ice at high speeds, Tidswell said.

Crews will install safety netting to keep fallen racers from sliding into trees and the 32 television camera towers. 

Three types will be used. About 28,000 feet of four-meter-high, heavy polypropylene nets will hang from permanently installed poles. Nets with tighter mesh will hang in front of those to allow racers to slide rather than getting tangled.

About 23,000 meters of “type B” nets will stretch between smaller plastic poles, in two or three rows, to slow racers gradually when there is enough space to do so.

Behind those nets, “type C” nets will provide protection for course-side personnel.

Opportunities for the general public to watch the Olympic races, however, will be very limited: spectators will be confined mainly to the 15,000-seat grandstand at the finish area. Those watching at home on television will get a better view of the entire course.

Two Sun Valley Ski Patrol members, Dave Swenke and Whiz McNeal, will join patrolmen from Vail, Crested Butte, Taos and other resorts to beef up the Snowbasin patrol during the Olympic races. Swenke said he expects there to be a reasonable chance of serious injury given the difficulty of the courses.

The tough courses will also decrease the likelihood of a fluke Olympic victory by a long-shot racer, though the field will open up a bit due to the probable sidelining of Austrian star Hermann Maier, who broke his leg this summer in a motorcycle crash.

U.S. men’s coach Bill Egan has downplayed suggestions that American racers have an advantage on their home turf.

“Advantage, schmantage,” he told the Associated Press last winter. “We want to be good enough to win on any playing field.”

With Picabo Street leading the women’s attack and Daron Rahlves leading the men’s, Egan may get exactly what he wants. •

Snowbasin: 
a Sun Valley Resort

The venerable Sun Valley sun now graces the sides of new gondolas at Snowbasin, Utah. Promotional literature and banners at the area proclaim “Snowbasin a Sun Valley resort.”

Not only do many local skiers there feel their mountain is being subordinated to Sun Valley, but with the Olympic hoopla, they fear they will lose their private powder stash in the Wasatch as well.

So one such skier, encountering a Mountain Express reporter on a gondola ride, should perhaps be forgiven for asking with a sneer, “So are they going to call it ‘Sun Valley, a Snowbasin resort?’”

But as usual, with something lost comes something gained. Hosting the Olympics has brought construction of a high-speed quad chairlift, a tram, snowmaking and four new lodges. Most importantly, creation of the two downhill courses has opened Snowbasin’s most exciting terrain.

Terrain-wise, Snowbasin and Sun Valley couldn’t be more different. The latter is famous for its long, consistent pitches; most of Snowbasin is rolling, fairly gentle terrain. Its new section, where the downhill courses are located off Allen’s Peak and No Name Mountain, is the exception. There, double-black-diamond runs tumble down tree-lined gullies and bowls.

Skiers familiar with Sun Valley’s luxurious day lodge at River Run will feel right at home warming their toes at one of the five fireplaces in Snowbasin’s new 45,000-square-foot base lodge—its log construction is modeled after those at its sister resort. An adjacent 26,000-square-foot skier-services building will house a day-care center, ski shop and lift ticket counters.

Two more log-and-stone restaurants have been built high on the mountain.

Next summer, Snowbasin will open 20 miles of lift-serviced mountain biking trails.

What’s there:

• Base elevation: 6,391 feet
  
  

• Summit elevation: 9,350 feet
  
  

• Vertical drop: 2,959 feet
  
  

• Skiable area: 3,200 acres
  
  

• Lift capacity: 14,500 skiers per hour
  
  

• Snowmaking: 581 acres
  
  

• Average annual snowfall: 400 inches
  
  

• Lifts: One 15-passenger tram, two 8-passenger gondolas, one four-passenger high-speed chairlift, four three-passenger fixed-grip chairlifts and one two-passenger fixed-grip chairlift
  
  

• Lift ticket rate: $48

For information, call toll-free at (888) 437-5488