Taking The Rake at Trollhaugen
It was well below zero outside the small town of Dresser, WI, and frost-covered eyelashes and bundled-up silhouettes scattered the icy slopes of Trollhaugen. Iconic blue and yellow rails lay on their side, while veteran snowcat operator Paula Moore warmed up the PistenBully. Now in its fourth year, 11 women gathered here for “Take the Rake”—an event created to reimagine Valhalla, the Midwest’s most recognizable terrain park, and to grow female equity in park building.
Mountain operations remain a male-dominated space. Many women here are the only ones on their park crew back home. This lack of representation makes it hard to be heard, collaborate, bring dream features to fruition—or to lead at all.
Take the Rake, a weeklong park-building summit held in early December, aims to bridge this gap by offering hands-on workshops in welding and park feature refurbishing, as well as granting participants full control over the planning, design and execution of the world’s only female-built terrain park.
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