Industry News
Burning Man is held every year from August 27 through September 4 in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada and creates a temporary city that promotes art, self-expression, and self-reliance. The temporary city is named Black Rock City, with the festival’s mission being to guide, nurture and protect the more permanent community created by its culture. It all started in 1986 at Baker Beach, California, with a population of 35, and today boasts a population of over 70,000 people.
The Black Rock City’s (BRC) Snow Club is planning on introducing the first 14-foot tall and 62-foot-long-portable-dry-ski slope this year at Burning Man. The first test of the BRC Snow Club’s portable dry-ski-slope was a success and happened this past Saturday according to the founder of the BRC’s Snow Club, Dylan Hogan.
“We only got half of it built, there was terrible-uneven ground at the event, but we will have the whole thing up at Burning Man,” Hogan said.
Transporting and moving a portable ski slope that weighs approximately 7,000 pounds is not easy, but constructing it can be just as challenging. Hogan said it took his team about 5 1/2 hours to assemble half of the ski slope and the scaffolding went up in less than an hour. The team had issues with the uneven ground at the event at Point San Pablo Harbor, California, and had to reposition the scaffolding 90 degrees. Hogan was confident that once at the Playa at Burning Man later this month his team will be better off. “We’ll be able to build the whole structure in that time (five and a half hours) at Burning Man,” said Hogan.
The BRC Snow Club will be headed down to the desert in Nevada within the next two weeks to attend Burning Man and assemble the full-portable-ski slope.ย The temperatures in the desert will be in the 100s and the pressure will also be high on the BRC Snow Club to make sure they fully construct the slope.
“There’s definitely pressure to perform and we have a lot of eyes on us this year, but we’re confident that all the hours spent on design, planning, and pre-Playa work will pay off when we’re out there,” Hogan said.
