Industry News
With the ski season coming to a close for most of us in the States, many of us are wondering when our next opportunity to hit the slopes will be. Well, for attendees of the Burning Man Festival this year, the next day of shredding may be sooner than expected.
Burning Man is a festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada where people from all over the world come together to create a temporary and self-sustaining city, Black Rock City. The festival is meant to celebrate art and self-expression by creating a temporary city in an uninhabitable environment, a dry lake bed in the desert.
BRC Snow Club is a Burning Man theme camp where festival goers can escape the heat, participate in snowball fights, and enjoy an Après like environment in the desert. This year, the club hopes to bring dry skiing to the festival.
“Lake Lahontan Ski Resort” would be a 14-foot tall and 62-foot long dry ski slope. Calling this slope a ski resort is a little bit of a stretch, but the plan is fascinating. Instead of snow, these dry ski slopes are mats that mimic the behavior of real snow, without the drawbacks of having to remain cold.
The Snow Club plans to have four key segments of the slope:
- A drop-in platform and upper ramp
- A flat middle section with a kicker and jib feature
- A lower portion of the slope
- A flat zone at the end designed for stopping
To finance the project, BRC Snow Club has taken to Kickstarter to crowdfund enough money to build the dry ski slope. The goal for the project is currently set at $35,000.
There is a lot of work to be done for this temporary desert ski resort to come to fruition before the festival, but BRC Snow Club appears to be well-equipped for the challenge. Skiing in a dry lake bed is unheard of, especially in the Black Rock Desert where dust storms and heat stroke are more common than snow. However, the plans look well thought out and the Kickstarter campaign is generating money, so only time will tell.
