COPPER MOUNTAIN RESORT — Step into The Barn at the base of Copper Mountain, and it hits like a misty flip landed on your head: Progression is inevitable.
It won’t be long before every young skier and snowboarder in Colorado with aspirations ranging from basic park and pipe prowess to global domination of the action-snowsports future comes to know The Barn. This cavernous rumpus room of endless possibility will soon serve as base camp for the long-awaited Woodward at Copper, establishing the world’s first action-sports training facility dedicated to park and pipe in its Summit County epicenter.
“Woodward is the most progressive training environment on the planet for skateboard, BMX and in-line,” Woodward at Copper director Ben Brown said. “And we’re just going to continue that with the first-ever ski and snowboard version.”
For more than a decade, the X Games generation has come to know Woodward Camp — named for the location of the original training facility in rural Pennsylvania — as the home and testing ground for many of the world’s most progressive action-sports athletes.
The who’s who of action-sports icons to make their way to the Amish country training camp reads like the back of an Xbox 360 video game package — Tony Hawk, Shaun White, Ryan Sheckler, Dave Mirra, Bob Burnquist, Chad Kagy, Ross Powers, Tara Dakides, Gretchen Bleiler, and the list goes on.
Start with gymnastics
Eight-time X Games medalist Jamie Bestwick of England is perhaps Woodward’s best poster boy. The BMX freestyle star has lived and trained at the facility for more than 10 years, leading Woodward’s transition from its 1970 roots in gymnastics to its modern action sports identity and forever altering his chosen discipline into a form of fluid artistry along the way.
Bestwick, 37, earned the X Games gold in BMX vert again last summer. Over the past three years, more than 75 percent of the X Games medals awarded to BMX riders have gone to athletes who have spent at least a summer in Woodward, Pa., and there’s no reason to believe the same couldn’t soon become true for skiers or snowboarders at Copper.
“I think, in general, anything that Woodward touches will happen just like it did with BMX and skateboarding,” said Nate Wessel, a former BMX pro in charge of building the ramps and jump features for Woodward at Copper. “We’ve figured out ways to learn things at a faster rate and higher progression rate than anybody is doing in the world. That’s what we’re trying to bring to slopestyle skiing and snowboarding and the whole action-sports industry.”
The secret to Woodward’s success lies as much in facilities like the nearly 20,000-square-foot Barn at Copper as in the progressive training techniques adapted from its original gymnastics camps. Since 1996, the camps have made use of gymnastics training tools such as landing pits filled with soft foam blocks and spongy resi mats for action sports that are otherwise typically associated with hard landings on wood, concrete or ice. Trampolines, harnesses and video analysis assist with aerial awareness, and the safety tools offer a graduated learning process less likely to result in injury.
“They don’t have to do what I call the ‘huck and hope’ method of learning a new trick outside — where they look down at the jump, huck themselves off and hope that they land it,” said Brown, who will work with Olympic gymnastics medalist Phoebe Mills in training athletes at Copper. “We can really provide a facility that allows them to practice a trick in a safer environment, learn to stomp the trick over and over in the foam pit, then take it out to the hill. So it’s still a transition period, but it allows them to try something new and progressive without having to just do it on the snow.”
Perhaps the greatest advantage to Woodward at Copper is its location — steps away from a mountain with six terrain parks and a superpipe. As evidenced by its four-year streak as the first resort in North America to open a superpipe, Copper is increasing its dedication to the freeride phenomenon. It’s quite feasible for athletes — beginner to pro — to learn a trick in the controlled environs of The Barn and take it to the park the same day.
“It will be really neat having it so accessible to the mountain,” said Olympic and X Games snowboarding gold medalist Kelly Clark, who has trained at Woodward, Pa. “I don’t know what it will do to the progression of the sport, but being able to go from the trampoline and foam pit to snow potentially on the same day could make for some progression for sure.”
Built for individuals
Woodward at Copper will offer a vast array of programs for all ability levels. It currently plans to open before the end of January with about a half-dozen trampolines, three pool- sized foam pits, a 35-foot big air ramp and a “jib park” with interchangeable features covered in a lubricated synthetic snow material. In addition to the resi mats, there is a large springboard gymnastics floor alongside the foam pits. A massive wooden bowl designed for skaters and freestyle bikers fills a corner of the building.
As with the industry itself, there is no blueprint for the bowl or many other features in The Barn, just a roughed-out schematic and the watchful eyes of an action-sports artisan.
“We wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing without some of the gymnastics tools, but the thing that’s so different about gymnastics from action sports is that it’s a really controlled environment and there’s not new tricks being invented all the time. Your routine is already written up,” Wessel said. “None of that matters here with what we do. None of us involved with action sports even want to hear about that stuff.
“We’re all individuals doing individually different kinds of styles and things. That’s what Woodward is all about.”
