Here’s the concept: a 20-story mountain for skiing and snowboarding, surrounded by a pseudo-Alpine village. Gondolas carry skiers from the mountain to a ski lodge.
Skiers and snowboarders would slide down the mountain on a slippery carpeted surface called Snowflex, which imitates the properties of snow. A misting system embedded in the carpet surface maintains its slipperiness.
Snowflex is a multilayered hydrogenated (yes, hydrogenated) white mat developed in Great Britain. Think Astroturf for snowboards. The park
. . . would also feature ice skating on a synthetic surface that requires no refrigeration, luge rides on a synthetic-ice surface and a field of manmade snow for playing.
Mist-blowing fans would cool the area by about 20 degrees.
Sounds pretty exciting, huh? Well, we were just kidding about the Astrodome part. This thing isn’t headed for Houston at all. It’s called the Coolzone Winterplex, and it’s proposed for Fort Worth, on about 150 acres of yet-to-be-determined prairie: “the world’s first year-round, indoor-outdoor winter sports theme park.”
With all those compound-adjective qualifiers, you can guess there are probably already several indoor or outdoor or partial-season parks like this somewhere.
- Group pitches outdoor synthetic ski mountain in Fort Worth. [Dallas Morning News]
- Developers Hope Ski Theme Park Will Lure Crowds (video) [CBS11TV]
