Woodward Peace Park Championships draw snowboarding elite to Mt. Bachelor

'It's going to be an awesome show."

(Update: Adding video, comment from athletes, organizers)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- After a three-year hiatus, the Woodward Peace Park Championships return this week.

Some of snowboarding's elite will take on a custom-built course at Mt. Bachelor.

Peace Park Co-Creator Danny Davis told NewsChannel 21 Wednesday: “Oh, man!. Bachelor was a place I came when I was about 15 years old, to one of my first Grand Prix contests set in a half-pipe contest right behind us. So it's always been a place that I've been coming to since I was a really young kid.”

It’s that familiarity that makes the Woodward Peace Park championships at Bachelor special for the former U.S. Snowboard Olympic team member.

 “The whole mountain is basically a snowboard park,” Davis said. “There's wind lips everywhere. We could have came here and built nothing and had a blast.”

Davis designed the course and co-created Woodward’s Peace Park in 2011.

Woodward President Chris Gunnarson said,“It initially started with a competition that was all pro-level riders experimenting with a whole different type, of course.” 

Woodward is Bachelor parent Powdr’s extreme sports brand and runs all the of the terrain parks at the mountain. Gunnarson said over the past decade, the Peace Park brand has seen a lot of change.

“We've now expanded to having regional peace parks at five different locations around the country,” Gunnarson said. “And it all culminates in this end-of-season event called the Peace Parks Championship.”

Several snowboarders from Bend, including brothers Ben and Gabe Ferguson and Mason Lemery, will join top talent from around the world like Davis, Olympic gold medalist Red Gerrard and Mark McMorris. Not competing in the event, but there to support his friends, is Bend rider Austin Smith.

 “All the best snowboarders from all over the world have come to Mt. Bachelor for the week, and it's going to be an awesome show,” Smith said.

The 3-day, peer judged competition returns for the first time since 2019, when it was held at Boreal Mountain Resort in California.

For the last several weeks, Mt. Bachelor and Woodward crews have been using snowcats and pushing all the snow around to make the park at the top of the Flying Dutchman run off the Cloudchaser lift. The area for the competition has been closed since April 9 and will stay closed until April 24.

Davis says the competition is different than a traditional snowboard event.

“Our judging criteria is pretty much judged by the riders, for the riders,” Davis said.

And for this year, the competition course will open to the public on Sunday, allowing everyone to try out what’s normally a more low-key event. The access is part of the final day of the RendezVan Festival, going on concurrently this weekend.