Nanook Terrain Park: Coming Soon!

While terrain parks are commonplace at ski and snowboard areas and resorts, they are not so often seen on college campuses.  Luckily for any of you winter sports enthusiasts, UAF strives to be anything but commonplace. Opening this coming semester is the new Nanook Terrain Park. While it may not have all the features of the big mountain resorts, it will be complete with freestyle jumps, rails, and boxes. Snow permitting, the terrain park will be operational early next spring semester!  As if rock climbing, ice climbing, cross-country skiing, intramurals, and snowshoeing weren’t enough fun for the UAF campus? They decided to go ahead and add yet another awesome activity for students to do in their time away from the books and classroom.

The terrain park will be located south of the Museum of the North, on the hill above the roundabout and Tanana Loop. A basic outline for the terrain park can bee seen below. This will not disrupt the cross-country trails, as there is a fence between the bottom of the park and the trail. Also, the community use sledding hill will remain as it is, on the other side of the trees. The terrain park is coming after several winters of student made jumps on this hill that did not meet safety standards.

Risk management did not welcome the idea of an actual terrain park at first, but the US terrain park council was consulted on the new design for jump, boxes, rails, and traffic flow in the park. Helmets will be required for participation in the park, and all users will need to sign a waiver and watch a safety video in order to use the Nanook Terrain Park.  Those are pretty reasonable requirements for having the first real on campus terrain park in the United States. Stay safe, and hope to see you on the hill!

 Photo courtesy of Department of Recreation, Adventure and Wellness