Industry News
Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania has brought back one of its most iconic freestyle features, the halfpipe. It is a mini halfpipe, meaning that it is not as big as an Olympic halfpipe, and its walls are 13 feet high, 55 feet wide, 350 feet long, with a 16-degree pitch. Seven Springs defines it as a progression halfpipe, which gives East Coast skiers and snowboarders a dedicated, approachable venue to develop and push their skills.
The last time the ski resort had a halfpipe was during the 2020-21 season. At that time, Seven Springs’ halfpipe was huge, with walls 22 feet high, 60 feet wide, with a 500-foot descent at an 18 percent pitch. SnowBrains spoke with Brett Cook, Vice President and General Manager, Seven Springs, Hidden Valley, and Laurel Mountain, about why the halfpipe was no longer at Seven Springs in an interview in January of 2024. He explained that the halfpipe had not been rebuilt because of poor weather conditions, lack of snow, and the resources to build a halfpipe. Another factor why it was not built over those years was the limited number of skiers or snowboarders with the skill level needed to actually hit it. Building a halfpipe that large didn’t make sense, and those resources could be used on other terrain.
However, with the great season the East is having this year, and with consistent cold temperatures and natural snowfall, it only made sense to make it happen. “We (Cook and Gillan) talked about it and see if it’s feasible and if it makes sense,” Keenan Gillin, Director of Mountain Operations, said to SnowBrains in an interview. “With the winter that we’ve had, it was pretty easy to just go, yeah, we’ve got a lot of our terrain open, let’s try to go for it.”
The halfpipe has always been associated with Seven Springs as one of the few ski resorts in the East that has one. Skiers and riders who may not have been willing or intimidated by a larger halfpipe will now have the opportunity to learn on a smaller one. It is a logical progression of training and gaining the skills, experience, and confidence needed to improve.
Seven Springs has multiple terrain parks on the mountain, and each one of them is designed with progression in mind. There are parks for beginner, intermediate, and advanced skiers and snowboarders. “It allows kids who are coming up in the terrain parks to learn a new discipline within the parks,” Gillin said. “It makes sense for people to come up through the terrain parks and be able to continue to expand their experiences.”
I had the opportunity to ride-along with Gillin in a snowcat while he was building the halfpipe and see what it takes to put it all together. Four snowcats were working on the halfpipe at the same time and would take about five to six days to complete. Making the halfpipe takes a lot of snow. So much snow that Gillan couldn’t give me a specific quantity. However, he did say that Seven Springs only started blowing snow on the terrain park for two weeks to get the needed amount of snow to build it.
Gillin said that there are only about 10 to 12 professional halfpipe builders in the country, and there is no manual on how to do it. Building a halfpipe requires having a very specific skill set that takes a lot of time and effort to master. He’s been doing it for over 12 years, and he’s taking the time building this pipe to pass on his knowledge and experience to other groomers at Seven Springs. “It’s not one of those things that’s written down in a book,” Gillin said. “You kind of just learn from everybody around you.”
Constructing the halfpipe starts off as one big pile of snow that snowcats eventually cut out. The snow grooming team will push snow to where the half pipe will be and start forming the two walls. It is important to make sure the groomer processes all the snow, which means to literally keep running it over and breaking down the snow and making it smaller. This step is important because it ensures that when the pipe starts getting cut out, there are not a bunch of holes in the walls like mini boulders falling from inside the wall.
The two walls of the halfpipe are built differently with regard to how wide they are. On the inside of the halfpipe, the walls are the same height and angle. There is a “sun” wall and an “ice” wall. The wall that receives the most sunlight is clearly the “sun” wall and is built wider than the “ice” wall. This is done to ensure the “sun” wall will last throughout the season due to snowmelt.
The snowcats work together as a team. The morning I was there, Gillin and I were in a snowcat at the bottom of one wall, while there was another snowcat on top of the wall. Gillin would push snow to the top of the wall in huge piles, and then the top snowcat would spread out the snow and grade it as close to the correct pitch as they could. The snowcats have gauges on a display screen to allow the operator to know if the wall is at the right pitch. I was surprised by how fast and how much snow Gillin was feeding the top snowcat. The size of the snow pile needed to make just one wall was incredible, and that was just one of the walls.
After the walls are built, the inside of the halfpipe, where skiers and snowboarders traverse the pipe, is cut. The groomers use a Zaugg Pipe Monster to do this, which gives the halfpipe its shape and almost acts as a snowblower as it cuts away the snow. “It looks just like a snowblower and operates kind of like a snowblower, but it just has a shape that you need to cut a pipe successfully and easily,” Gillin said. The Pipe Monster is used for the preparation of professional half-pipes and is the crème de la crème of pipe cutters. “They came up with a really good design, and it works, and that’s what they used for the Olympics,” Gillin added.
Building a halfpipe isn’t a specific science that has exact measurements and rules. It takes a lot of little things a halfpipe builder must know to make it work. It’s almost like balancing two weights on a scale. “Everything has an equal or opposite reaction,” Gillin said. “So if you were making adjustments, you have to kind of fight with it almost.”
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There is another halfpipe in the East at Okemo Mountain Resort as well that opened last week. It is larger than Seven Springs’ halfpipe with 18-foot walls, 50 feet wide, 200 feet long, with a 17-degree pitch. It won Best Feature in the SAM 2025 terrain park contest. The halfpipe took 10 days to build using two snowcats and a winch cat with a Zaugg pipe cutter. The Okemo halfpipe would be a perfect progression from going from the Seven Springs halfpipe for skiers and snowboarders to progress and try something bigger.
The overall reaction to skiers and snowboarders finding out the halfpipe was coming back to Seven Springs was overwhelmingly positive. It has long been associated with one of the only places in the East that has an Olympic-sized halfpipe. Although this halfpipe is not as big, it is back, and it is more usable and practical for skiers and snowboarders. Not everyone is an Olympic or professional skier or snowboarder. So, making the halfpipe smaller allows more people to use it. This classic 13‑foot halfpipe is where countless skiers and riders can learn fundamentals, sharpen their style, and find their confidence. “Under new ownership, you know, proof of concept that we can still do it,” Gillin said. “We can still make it work, and we can still open it to the public, and have this kind of feature available.”
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