Halfpipe Construction
Rules of Thumb

There are many variables to building a halfpipe, so here are some of our basic rules of thumb for halfpipe construction.

Site Selection
Choosing the site for your halfpipe is the most important step. This will be a reoccurring factor right from the beginning.

Pitch:
If the site is too steep machines like the Pipe Dragon may have trouble climbing in softer conditions, which is too bad due to the fact that the pipe can be easily shaped when it is soft. SnowPark Management can help you maximize rideabilty and maintainability by selecting a halfpipe site with the proper percent grade to meet your goals.

Width:
Ideally the halfpipe should be built where it can be worked from all sides. Many times this is not possible so the pipe is built along a tree line or snowmaking line.

Snowmaking/Farming
The most consistent halfpipe surface is made from snow that was pushed in. When snow is made on site with portable snowmaking equipment the piles come back to haunt you. What happens is the machines clip off the tops of the piles to fill the valley to the next pile. This continues to some extent throughout the construction. The snow never gets fully worked; therefore the snow below is still leaching and wet.

As the Pipe Dragon cuts for maintenance it exposes a cross cut of a snowmaking pile. Soft here solid there, kinked here, that kind of thing. This is even more relevant when snow is made on top of an existing halfpipe. The whales can hang on the lip of the old pipe and cause a cavern to form between the old wall and the new snow. Usually this will not even be noticed until maintenance of the pipe turns it up.

There are other alternatives to farming your halfpipe snow. One is the use of tower guns. It is our experience that the HKD tower guns can produce a consistent and durable halfpipe surface. The tower guns can be mounted along your pipe site and out of the way of the machines. So running a snowmaking shift on the pipe then shutting them down, pushing and repeating this process until construction is complete.

These are all things to think about your site. Maybe there is a perfect site with no snowmaking, if farming is possible.

Shaping
Once the snow is made either above your pipe site or in your site it is time to rough shape. A few sets of hands will be needed to give some kind of layout to your pipe. A few tools are recommended. Bamboo, a drill, a clinometer (a handy tool to determine a desired pitch), 300ft tape measure, line level and line, and some marking paint.

Having one or two people make the decisions from start to finish can save a lot of headaches.

The end result should be a consistent grade with both walls matching. The inside face of the wall should have a consistent and straight lip with up to six feet of vert with steps to the flat bottom.

By shaping in this fashion it will be easier for the Pipe Dragon to shape the wall by cutting instead of building. What ends up happening if your wall is stepped out from top to bottom the excess snow starts to build up and instead of cutting back the wall, the Pipe Dragon ends up building a new face. The result can be summed up in three words: "wasted machine time." With proper rough shaping you can shape a pipe in a few passes instead of all night grinding.