A master plan to con a bunch of riders into shredding a new hill for no good reason.
THE PLAN
Private jams are awesome if you’re in them. If you’re not invited, it’s kind of a bummer, but the nice thing is we can pimp that attitude out.
Now, last year’s private jam was tough to get riders to drive out to Brainerd in their precious few last days of snow.
This time, MSG wanted to see it bigger, and with more long-lasting results, so we hatched an A-Team plan.
Ever travel to an open jam at a small hill, with a couple tents, nobody you know, and no prizes? Neither has anyone else.
How do you make people come to a small event? We had a small hill, with a couple brands, lots of strangers, no prizes… but it was INVITE ONLY. And you probably knew someone that was invited. Yes sir, FOMO is a real thing that you can abuse.
We worked with the resort to whittle a giant list down to 75 riders. A few from every area that had friends that would want to go, and we slapped up some funny posters that made us laugh.
The response banged hard – hundreds of DM’s every day asking for invites, guilting for invites, and plenty of complaints. We conned them all. The FBI was on the phone.
THE BUILD
The build started Friday morning. Over a dozen of family and friends helped out, pushing snow and shaping a flowy set throughout a slushy spring day.
We promised our open rainbow rail and one new rail for this jam, so we started a 41′ quad kink at 6pm (because everybody has a 40′ rail).
10 hours later, at 4am, we dipped. Shower. Sleep. Tbell. Hill. Plant the new quad at 9am, gates opened at 10.
THE JAM
We’re known for shooting photo/video for a shared dropbox that riders can pull from. We had 8 photographers on the hill, and riders jumped from feature to feature mobbing the cameras.
Hive Apparel, Armada, and Colab popped garage sale tents with deals on merch, MSG supplied food and drinks, and 85 riders (oops) shredded, parents watched. It’s only going to get bigger.
And now, pics are worth more than 1000 more badly-grammared words!
Photos are a mix from Erik Gaffron, Steph Keenan, Kael Luberts, and me.
