Lowtide 2023 – Park For The People

Landscape shot of the frontside of Bogus Basin during Lowtide 2023 - Photo by Mark Oliver

What is Lowtide?

How did Lowtide 2023 come to be? In the fall months, you can find freestyle snowboarders and skiers of most mountain communities anywhere there is snow – moving around pieces of PVC pipes, scrap metal, traffic cones, and jersey barriers, building their own DIY terrain parks to get their pre-season fix. Birthed out of the idea of doing the most with the least, Snowboy Productions conceived Lowtide, where Krush Kulesza and his team of builders dreamed of traveling to US mountains that serve their local terrain park community as early as possible with any and all of their available resources. The goal was to lean into that energetic passion of the early season park rider, installing creative terrain parks during the late fall/early winter months regardless of the snow conditions – hence the name Lowtide.

The inaugural Lowtide event in November of 2021 took place at Trollhaugen in Dresser, Wisconsin, and it really lived up to its name, as they had to shuttle Zamboni shavings from a local ice rink to pull off the event due to poor snowmaking conditions and no natural snowfall. In mid-November of 2022, Lowtide made its second debut at its final resting place along the shores of Bogus Basin’s Explorer Terrain Park. Mother Nature was more than favorable during the early season of 2022, enabling us to build a full-sized terrain park.

The Community Lowtide Impacts

This year, the riders’ list was stacked for Lowtide 2023 at Bogus Basin. The essence of Lowtide 2023 comes in the form of the public day, which takes place on the Saturday following two private preview days. In anticipation of the weekend, park riders from the Treasure Valley watch a combination of pro riders and select Treasure Valley athletes stack clips and pics on their home mountain setup – knowing that come Saturday they get the chance to do the same with the riders they’ve been watching through their phone screens.

Lowtide Public Day 2023, Saturday, November 18th, was a huge success. Bogus Basin offered free access to the community for the opening day of the winter 2023/24 season. Over 250 riders piled into our little slice of paradise to claim their first hits of the season and celebrate the opening of the first mountain in Idaho and much of the western region. In addition to the professional riders from the two preview days, we invited two ski crews to join, the J skis team and OnSlaught crew. There was no shortage of smiles, high-fives, and cheering from everyone!

The Explorer Terrain Park – Lowtide 2023 Setup

Located right at the edge of the main base area at Bogus Basin, The Explorer Terrain Park is a relatively new feature on the mountain. In 2017, Bogus Basin opened our first early-season terrain park, then dubbed “the hike park”. Since then the space has evolved, changed names, and is now served by a conveyor lift for faster lapping and less hiking! While this is only our 2nd annual Lowtide of many more to come, preseason 2023 marked the 7th season in a row that Bogus Basin has offered a terrain park to the public in mid-November – Most notably opening on October 31st, 2020

Overhead Shot Of Snowboy Production's Lowtide 2023 In The Explorer Terrain Park At Bogus Basin

The Lowtide 2023 setup was quite different than last year’s (2022), but so were the snow conditions. As we have come to learn, park rats have fun on whatever they can get their hands on, and they did just that! The Bogus Basin Terrain Parks crew, led by Corey McDonald and Taylir Symons, made the most of what they had to work with, setting up 12 fun-sized features. From simple hits to combination features, this setup had it all. As expected, one of the most sessioned rails was the Morning Star Lift Tower Tube. However, riders like Scott Stevens and Phil Hansen made more than a day out of no-footed tricks on the double jersey barriers!

Feature List:

  • Flat Box to Shotgun Rail Combo
  • Rainbow Box
  • Horizontal Half-Shell Tube Close-In Burried Slappy Tube Combo
  • Punk Wall with Transition on Both Sides
  • Skullcandy Bump Tube to Blind Slappy Tube
  • Bleacher Box Flat Box Combo
  • Morning Star Lift Tower Tube
  • Double Downtown Throwdown Jersey Barrier Combo
  • Half-Shell Flat Tube
  • Double Wide Downtown Throwdown Quarter Pipe with Coping
  • Single Wide Downtown Throwdown Quarter Pipe with Hitching Post
  • Free Floating Corrugated Half-Shell Tubes for DIY Fun

Mountains Are For Community – Not For Profit

Bogus Basin’s 2nd annual Lowtide is a prime example of our continued commitment to serving locals any chance we get. While most mountains are busy crunching numbers to see if it makes financial sense to attempt to operate early season, Bogus Basin is committed to offering even the smallest on-snow experience as early as possible for our loyal non-profit recreation supporters.

Attendess
617
Donated
$13k+
Donated Tickets
432

Lowtide 2023 Photographer Galleries

@photogrind (Mark Oliver)

@halfway_to_unusual (Ryan Bethel)

@cassidy.dy (Cassidy Carter)

@floyd_photos (Michael Floyd)