DC Mountain Lab
Coordinates: 40°45′18.75″N 111°32′18.56″W / 40.7552083°N 111.5384889°W The DC Mountain Lab was a private snowboard park in Park City, Utah, known as a research and development center. As of 2011, the property is being put up for sale. The property is taken up mostly by the snowboard park, but there is also a house there. It was owned and operated by DC president and co founder Ken Block. The 22 acres (89,000 m2) are home to kickers, boxes, butters and rails galore. The Lab has its own snowcat for building jumps and grooming the park. It also has 8 snowmobiles and a handful of dirt bikes. The Mountain Lab was the location of the snowboard video MTN. Lab and MTN. Lab 1.5. It also serves as a second home for DC co-owner and founder Ken Block and his family.
The Mountain Lab features many possible activities. The snowboard park that composes the front yard is the main feature, but house guests can also try their hand at skeet shooting, ping-pong, DJing, and playing video games on the custom Mountain Lab Xbox, and admiring Ken Block’s vintage snowboard collection. The collection features snowboards from all eras of snowboarding, spanning from the very start to the present cutting-edge boards. The snowboarders don’t have to ride only park if they don’t want to, they can take some of the snowmobiles into the backcountry and ride powder, or ride powder in the parts of the Mountain Lab that haven’t been, or can’t be, groomed.
As of 2008, as part of an agreement with the Ranches at The Preserve homeowners association, where the property is located, all man made obstacles, birms, rails, and other obstacles have been removed, and the property has been mostly returned to its previous condition before the building of the park. All that remains is the single rope tow.
Features
The Mountain Lab has many custom-made features that were made specifically for the Mountain Lab by Chris “Gunny” Gunnarson and the Snow Park team, a renowned team of snowboard park designers. Signature features include a box that runs through the living room of the house, a wallride at the end of the run, a staircase complete with handrails, a large pink disarmed missile, and two road gaps set up in a line. More traditional features include a down rail, a down flat down rail, a large C rail, a hollow trailer that houses a jump, various flat boxes, a tabletop jump, and a hip transfer.
Location
The Mountain Lab is located in The Ranches @ the Preserve, a private gated community in the Wasatch mountains, near Park City, Utah. The annual snowfall is 355 inches (skiparkcity.net).
Visiting Possibilities
As the property is being sold, visiting the mountain Lab is only for guests of Ken Block, until it is sold.
The Video: MTN. Lab
MTN. Lab was filmed on location primarily in Park City, Utah, at the DC Mountain Lab, during the winter of 2005. Other locations that were filmed at are Park City ski resort, Twin Bridges, California, at Northstar-at-Tahoe ski resort, Colorado at Breckenridge ski resort, and Mammoth Lakes, California, at Mammoth Mountain ski resort. It features the riding of Travis Parker, Simon Chamberlain, Eddie Wall, Travis Rice, DC's co-founder Ken Block, Renee Renee, Priscilla Levac, Bjorn Leines, Todd Richards, Devun Walsh, Drew Fuller, Chad Otterstrom, and Jake Welch. DC sponsors all riders except for Renee Renee and Chad Otterstrom, but Jake Welch and Drew Fuller are DC amateurs. The video features songs performed by Frou Frou, The Faint, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra, The Wannadies, American Analog Set, Big Country, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Chemical Brothers, Renee Renee, Metric, and Technotronic.
The movie "DC Mtn Lab" was filmed, directed and edited by Pierre Wikberg. Wikberg previously made three movies with the collective known as "Robot Food".
Highlights
Travis Parker
Highlights range from backside 180's onto rails and creative jibbing through unorthodox obstacles.
Todd Richards
Highlights from Todd’s section include multiple 540s on the road gaps, frontside 360 disaster on a wall ride feature, and a method grab. Todd also rides Travis Parker as a snowboard down the Adult Swim park at Park City later describing it on Twitter as "sweet flex pattern."
Bjorn Leines
Highlights in Bjorn’s section include a 360 on a stepdown in the backcountry, a method grab, and a frontslide on the large C-rail.
Devun Walsh
Highlights from Devun’s section include a very-slow-motion 180 tail grab and a switch frontside 360. Devun's segment is shorter than most due to his speciality in snowboarding is backcountry jumps and riding through powder.
Travis Rice
Highlights from Travis’ section include a tailpress or (5-0 grind in skateboarding) to nollie frontflip on the box going through the house, a 180 stall to 180 out on the wallride, and a whole line on the double road gap, hip transfer, and the wall ride. He did a switch frontside 540 on the first road gap, a method grab on the second road gap, a crail grab on the hip transfer, and a 180 stall to 180 out on the wallride.
Road Trips
Highlights include Travis Parker in Montana hitting jumps through trees and performing his signature fully extended backflips, Todd Richards fooling around in Breckenridge's park, Justin Benne doing a 50-50 nollie out performed on a rainbow rail in which the nollie at the very top cleared the rest of the rail, Travis riding a set of tabletops and stepdowns at Northstar at Tahoe, and Todd Richards and Travis Parker riding tandem in the halfpipe in colorful full-body snowsuits deemed "ray-ray suits" in reference to artist Renee Renee. The segment finishes at Mammoth Mountain. Simon Chamberlain is shown hitting lines of rail features as well as doing a shifty tail butter to shoulder roll, switch 360 over a rope, and spinning a 720 off the side of a kicker. Team riders tail bonk a tree root in a large train with Eddie Wall leading with a mega-phone in hand. Travis Parker does a straight air over a tabletop only to tail butter down the landing. Eddie Wall is featured absorbing the kicker of the same tabletop doing a switch 180 to the deck and popping off the knuckle doing a BS 540.
Simon Chamberlain
Simon Chamberlain has an outstanding section in Mountain Lab, in terms of technical ability and visible ease in the performing of the said tricks. The opening shots of his section are possibly the highlights of his section. He does a nosepress to tail-tap out, a 360 nosepress, a 180 to nosepress to 180 out, a boardslide to 270 out, and a noseslide in which he 180’s and lands in a tailslide back on the box. He does all these tricks on a single flat box. He also does a fronside tailslide to 270 out on the stair feature and a frontside tailslide to switch backside tailslide on a long flat bar. The segment finishes with Simon talking about and going out to a rail jam, where Eddie Walls segment begins.
Eddie Wall
Eddie's part opens with him winning a rail contest and going back to the Mtn. Lab. He starts off with an assorment of 180 and 270 spins in and out on a dismantled missile. He then does a backside 270, switch frontside 270, and a backside 270 to 270 out on the stair feature. He brings the 270 in and out onto the dragon box and also does a switch frontside tailslide (and kind of turns to a nose press) to 270 out and a switch nose press and frontside boardslide. He is then featured with Renee Renee hitting the shoulder kink tree jib. Eddie then closes the segment and film with him walking out of the house and strapping into his board to ride down the "obstacle course." Eddie's run is him nose pressing up a bench, bs 180 in and out on a table, skeet shooting, fs 270 onto a table, roller over a snowmobile, rides through the snowmobile tailer to fronside boardslide to fakie out on the other side, switch frontside lipslide, rides through two hoops, frontside boardslide, switch fs 270 onto the dragon box, nose bonks a small rainbow rail, and slides into the Afterbang express.
Sources
All information regarding the Mountain Lab was taken from the video MTN. Lab, and from http://www.skiparkcity.net. and http://www.arkademag.com/en/categoryblog/278-rip-dc-mountain-lab.html