WINTER LIFESTYLE: Bob Holme - From Olympic Nordic Jumper to Terrain Park Guru
By Joan Christensen / Photos by Carter Photographics/Winter Park Resort
 Bringing Rails, Trails, and Features to “the Park”
Snowboard coach, snowboard program director, youth marketing manager, terrain park manager, street alias “7,” bike park manager, and general manager of Crankworx Colorado … that’s way too many titles for a business card so Bob Holme doesn’t even have one anymore. What he does have is an incredibly diverse job description that has carried him from a place on the U.S. Olympic Nordic team to a position as industry leader in the world of terrain parks – winter and summer.
A Denver native, Holme was a Nordic jumper and competed in two winter Olympic Games: Albertville, France in 1992 and Lillehammer, Norway in 1994. But when he wasn’t training for long jump competitions, he was teaching himself to snowboard.
In 1996 Holme was working in Denver for a sports marketing company and spending weekends at Winter Park Resort teaching snowboarding. The resort’s Competition Center leaders, Bob Dart and Tom Carey, had known Holme for years as a team member and persuaded him to create a snowboard team for the Comp Center.
Those first team members had a pretty easy tryout. “It was purely a sign-up so it was just me and three kids,” Holme recalls. “I felt a little guilty getting paid to ride around the mountain with these kids and doing what I would have been doing anyway.”
However, serious coaching skills would be required. “Having come through an Olympic training program, I knew what kids needed to develop,” explains Holme. Over the next few years he assembled a snowboard team and became its head coach and director.
The limited facilities at Winter Park made training a problem in those start-up years. “We had a snowboard team going to competitions and they had nothing to train on so we had to develop something,” says Holme.
It then became Holme’s job to create, ride, and promote the emerging terrain parks by writing the proposals, doing the marketing, and developing a risk management plan. After completion of the first two rails, the program started to accelerate but struggled to establish a solid niche as the location of parks kept changing from year to year. In 2003, Allan Phipps trail was dedicated as a terrain park and became one of the longest continuous parks in Colorado.
 “That was one of our best decisions – it was huge,” claims Holme. “That decision combined with Intrawest’s commitment and reputation for parks was the reason I moved to Winter Park full time.”
Park Progression Concept is Simple
What separates Holme from dozens of other terrain park managers and coaches is his leadership role and commitment to promoting the park progression theory. He still firmly believes that “the coolest, biggest, most technical features would be accessible if people took the right steps.”
Five different terrain parks provide gradually escalating features for progressive skill building. Starter Park, located below Snoasis mid-mountain lodge, has five introductory features that are wide and low to the ground for first-timers.
The next level of park challenge is found on upper Jack Kendrick trail with a series of small rails, jumps, and rollers. The rails are slightly narrower and higher than in Starter Park. Intermediate rails and jumps are available in Dogpatch and Dogpatch East near the bottom of Eskimo lift.
Once solid skills and confidence are established, participants can move into Rail Yard, the resort’s signature park. Upper Rail Yard has large jumps, technical trails, and a half pipe. The lower portion, or Dark Territory, has controlled  access. Skiers and riders must purchase a special $20 season pass and are required to see a safety video before entering.
Usage of the parks is about equally divided between skiers and snowboarders. Creating the right attitude and atmosphere for the parks remains a priority. “Our vibe is inclusive,” emphasizes Holme.
The hard work and unflinching vision has paid off. Readers of Transworld Snowboarding magazine have votedWinterPark in the Top 10 for terrainparks every year since 2004. “It’s a huge leap from a non presence a decade ago toconsistent placement in their Top 10,”says Holme with a grin.
The Team
Winter Park’s snowboard team can also claim enormous progress since that original team of three has now grown to approximately seventy members. Current members have posted top ten finishes in the World Junior Championships, and the women’s freestyle team includes a national champion. Several former team members have become pros and appear in promotional videos for equipment manufacturers.
Billy Wandling, 16, a multi-year competitor at the USA Snowboard Association (USASA) National Championships, joined the team in 2000 and developed under Holme’s easygoing coaching style, finishing 16th in the 2009 halfpipe event at Copper Mountain. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t love the sport as much as I do,” enthuses Wandling. “It’s the way he looks at it. If you don’t do well at an event or don’t perform, he doesn’t get down on you ... he helps you find a way to get around it.”
“You never doubt him when he says ‘You can do this.’ You know you can do it,” says Nic Nagel, a former team member and now a Winter Park snowboard coach. “He’ll make you push yourself while keeping it safe – it’s controlled fun.”
 Bringing Winter Park to the City
The natural next step for the progression-oriented Holme was to bring Winter Park’s terrain parks into the city so underserved urban youth could experience the fun of a snowcovered terrain park. The creation of a seasonal terrain park in Denver’s Ruby Hill Park is Holme’s newest project. The city of Denver owns Winter Park, and this was a perfect opportunity to collaborate on a project to bring a Winter Park experience to the city.
Building the Ruby Hill Terrain Park each winter takes one million gallons of water and is free to participants – including the equipment provided by the Snowboard Outreach Society (SOS) and Thrifty Stick, a Denver snowboard shop.
Summer Terrain Parks
Holme’s job doesn’t end when the snow melts. Like the fledgling terrain parks where he stepped in and influenced the direction, it was déjà vu with the summer bike trail system. With a nudge from the resort’s senior management team, “we took the spirit and energy of winter parks and started planning a viable big product to change the summer face of the resort,” recalls Holme. “Although the mountain bike trail system was in place, it was designed for climbing and descending. I thought gravity-fed mountain biking could be a good summer business because I knew it was huge in Whistler.”
 In the past few years, the resort has improved the existing trail system by adding features, jumps, and banked turns and opening a second chairlift, the Olympia, for mountain bike transport. Following U.S. Forest Service approval, construction started in fall 2008 on the first phase of twenty new sections of trail.
And yes, bike terrain parks are part of the vision. Trestle Bike Park encompasses all of the available terrain at Winter Park and Little Vasquez Mountain with skill parks throughout the area, including one atop the mountain at Sunspot and two in Sorensen Park at the base.
Holme has also championed the creation of CrankworxColorado, a sister event to Kokanee Crankworx in Whistler. This is a serious competitive event that includes a variety of mountain bike competitions from slalom and downhill races to best trick contests, and according to Holme, it has “redefined mountain biking.”
It’s a rare individual who can mesh authentic “street cred,” snowboarding and biking skills, effective coaching techniques and forward-looking vision with the mundane realities of the bottom line and corporate rules, but Bob Holme continues to get the job done.
Follow the links below for more articles within the Winter Lifestyle section.
READ MORE STORIES FROM THE WINTER LIFESTYLE SECTION:
• Mushing Through The Slush: Grand County Mushers
• Bob Holme: From Olympic Nordic Jumper to Terrain Park Guru
• Solve Your Ski Boot Problems Once and For All: One of the premier boot fitters in the world
• Sports & Wellness: All About Concussions & Kids and Sports
• Grand Lake Touring Center: In the Shadow of Rocky Mountain National Park
• 2009 Feature Articles |
