EXCLUSIVE : Ben Lomond – Tasmania Gets A Terrain Park | AussieSnowboard.com // The Home Of Australian Snowboarding

AussieSnowboard.com got a chance to catch up with Jono Rogers and get some insight to the new Terrain Park being created on Ben Lomond, Tasmania

Can you tell us a little about Ben Lomond? and the idea behind building a park.

Ben Lomond is Tassie’s only commercial Ski Resort, offering easy access, 8-10 poma tows, about 150m of vert and a pub to drink your sorrows in. The idea for a park has been floated by people for years, mainly because there’s nothing else to do on the mountain, and the runs are so laughably short, at least a park gives people some fun stuff to have a stab at.

Who’s idea was it to get the terrain park up and running and how is this happening? (funding, landscape etc)

The idea is really the communities; it’s been mentioned for years that the commercial operators of the mountain should get something organised, but they’ve never really been interested. So, in late 2010, Jono Rogers and Chris Terry took it on themselves to fund a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a park; we got a group of like minded mates together, raised some dosh, talked to all the stakeholders and interested parties and put forward a proposal to Parks and Wildlife (who control development on the mountain). The proposal was accepted in 2012 and so we’ve been busy beavers getting things ready to open up this season and get some jibbing going on! It’s all community funded – we’ve basically gone out on our knees and begged local and snowboarding businesses to spare some cash so we can get stuff done; we’ve been incredibly lucky to know some great guys who’ve done great deals on steel manufacturing and plastic supplies, which has helped out immensely.

What skill levels are you marketing your park to?

We want the park to be available to all skill levels; and as the first year is a trial (and hopefully building from here), we’re basically taking a ground-up approach – start small, and work our way bigger. To that end, we’ve got a butters box, two 3m standard boxes, a 6m long box, a 4.5m flat-down box and a 4m urban rail, as well as building some booters out of snow. In the near future we’re looking at some donk boxes, wall rides and more rails, with more advanced stuff to hopefully follow in the years to come. We’ve gone all-out on our feature design to make sure they’ll last the test of time – in fact I’ve never actually seen better designed, manufactured or built features, on the mainland or overseas – everything’s over-engineered to all hell, in the hope that we can save on maintenance and just add more features to our inventory over time.

It says on the website you guys are planning on running a few competitions, care to elaborate?

We are planning on running some comps, but unfortunately Tassie’s snow climate is so inconsistent it makes planning anything really difficult – for example the local skiing downhill races haven’t been held on their actual date for about 10 years! So what we want to do is run some fun days – basically if there is snow, and the sun is out; we’ll be on the hill riding features and handing out prizes for rad tricks, as well as cranking some beats and having a good time.. This way the local grommets know that if it’s gonna be a good day up there, they’re guaranteed we’ll be up there to make it even better!

So what is the total goals of the park?

The goals of the park? To enable local riders to jib without paying for plane flights! To let our local community have a bit of fun on the mountain when the cover is marginal! To let people progress and learn new tricks and a new side of boarding that just isn’t available in Tassie! And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t damn keen to get up there and session what we’ve created – I’m honest and selfish enough to admit a big part of this push has come because I wanted a park to ride