STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

A miner’s shaft has arisen on Dollar Mountain.

It’s a nod to the mining heritage that first brought white man to the Wood River Valley. But it also ushers skiers and boarders into the future of skiing in the ever evolving ski scene that brings people to the Sun Valley today.

The shaft, built of timber taken from the Trail Creek Bridge which was dismantled this fall following floods, leads to the new Mine Shaft Park on Dollar Mountain. The park looks like a skateboard park with berms, banks and rollers carved out of snow.

And this weekend it quickly became a go-to for those who experiencing the re-imagined Dollar Mountain.

“So fun. We really like the features that loop around,” said Erica Bren, who was skiing with her child.

Dollar Mountain is undergoing a transformation from terrain parks designed exclusively for elite skiers and boarders to a playground designed for pros, beginners and everything in between.

Sun Valley Resort has dubbed it “Dollar Live.”

“It’s so rad that Sun Valley is innovating. Sun Valley is on the forefront of what we believe to be the future of these parks. It’s definitely on the progressive side,” said Andrew Erath, principal designer for Snow Park Technologies.

Sun Valley brought Erath here to design a blueprint for the re-imagined Dollar Mountain.

When finished, the mountain will include a handful of pocket parks with features suitable for all abilities accessible by Quarter Dollar lift. A skier- and boarder-cross named Lombard Street after San Francisco’s famously crooked street will snake down the mountain.

There’ll be a field of perfectly built “magical moguls.” And Trestles Park, named for California’s best known surf spot, will feature some more challenging features, including a mini pipe.

“This guy builds the biggest competition venues in the world, and he’s calling Sun Valley ‘rad!’ ” enthused Sun Valley Snowsports Director Tony Parkhill of Erath.

The features lay the foundation for introducing skiing and boarding as a fun, sociable experience.

“We’re so excited. The beauty is that many more levels can use our expanded terrain features,” said ski instructor Alan Hogg.

Erath, whose job has included keeping the Shaun White Superpipe in pristine condition at Northstar, says the level of snowboarding and skiing has gotten so high that it’s become easy to look at all the metal in rails, pipes in terrain parks and be intimidated. Dollar Mountain’s new blueprint offers less intimidating more user-friendly terrain features that are still dynamic enough for pros to challenge themselves on.

“We want people to not be so intimidated but still have a high level experience. In recent years we’re seeing people have as much, if not more fun, in the ground as the air. This captures this,” he added.

The Olympic-sanctioned super pipe with its 22-foot vertical walls is being replaced with a few smaller half-pipes said Dollar Mountain Manager John Matteson.

Prospector Park has been beefed up to include such features as a spine, a long vertical mount of snow that invites skiers to go up and over and back over again as they make their way down the spine.

Skiers can ride a 350-foot long magic carpet dubbed the Silver Dollar that takes them to the top of the park over and over without having to ski to the bottom to ride Quarter Dollar back up.

“All of our areas are designed for people to pick and choose what they want to ride. We chose that because that’s what people like,” said Matteson.

Sun Valley’s ski instructors will use the terrain features to help skiers develop parallel turns and other skills earlier, said ski instructor Irvin Bier. Sun Valley’s Snowsports School began using terrain to teach skiers a couple years ago, but the new features allow instructors to step it up significantly, said Parkhill.

“The learning terrain on Dollar Mountain is really remarkable,” said Parkhill. “I guarantee we can take adults skiers in there and they will get ‘aha!’ moments,”

The focus on terrain will be coupled with a focus on the sociability of skiing. For instance, said Bonnie Wetmore, ski instructors will pair those in their groups, give them a task to do and have them come back and report to the group.

“Most learning comes from social interaction—watching one another. You just happen to put them in the right terrain and lead the way,” Parkhill told instructors during clinics this past week.

The resort’s 366 ski instructors include 80 newcomers from other ski resorts as far away as the East Coast. Many came here after learning about Sun Valley through the Mountain Collective, which has raised Sun Valley’s visibility, said Parkhill.

At the same time Sun Valley unveiled its new look on Dollar Mountain, the resort took the wraps off  Dollar Mountain’s new mascot.

Sunny the Bear, decked out in Austrian lederhosen, made his way through Sun Valley Village on Saturday, high fiving children who’d turned out for Sun Valley’s Winter Wonderland and shaking the hands of retailers like Anita McCann, who came out of their shops to meet him.

The 6-foot-6 Sunny will stage surprise visits from time to time, helping youngsters make their way onto the Magic Carpet and leading pint-sized skiers in spontaneous dancing.

“We decided bears are part of our history,” Parkhill said. “Herman Maricich used to ski around in a big white polar bear outfit in the 1950s and people loved it.”

Over on Baldy, a new pocket park will be developed on skier’s right of Ridge under the Christmas lift on the south slope as soon as snow permits. Another will be built at the top of Broadway Saddle on Seattle Ridge and a third on the top of Upper Warm Springs.

All three will follow more of the traditional terrain park model.

Mountain Masters Director Drew Merklinghaus told how he took a group of Mountain Masters, which caters to intermediate and advanced skiers, into a terrain park last winter. They were reluctant at first.

“They said, ‘What are we doing here?’ I said, ‘Just follow me.’ ” Merklinghaus recounted. “By the time we were done, they were saying, ‘Can we do it again?’”

DID YOU KNOW?

Collisions and reported injuries have dropped since Sun Valley replaced its punitive signs with signs touting “Family Zones,” said Tony Parkhill, director of Sun Valley’s Snowsports School.

“The new terminology changed the culture. It worked,” he said.