Steamboat Uses Stockman Dirt to Build PyeongChang-Style Halfpipe

Steamboat Springs —"We landed on the design from Korea."

Jake Ingle said it flat. No fanfare, just a decision made after twelve different designs were proposed and discarded. The Bashor Bowl halfpipe at Steamboat Resort is getting a major upgrade this offseason, and the blueprint comes straight from the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.

The Post Independent reported that the project is a collaboration between Alterra Corp., Steamboat Resort, and Marquee Development. It’s a three-way handshake that saves everyone money and effort.

Here is the short version: The Stockman, a nine-story, $550 million luxury residential development at the ski area base, is under construction. Native Excavating won the bid to move the dirt for that project. They had 40,000-plus cubic yards of earth on their hands. Instead of hauling it off-site and paying for disposal, they asked Ingle if he could use it.

He said yes.

Ingle is the Slope Maintenance director at Steamboat Resort. He’s not just a local guy with a shovel. He has built superpipes and boardercross venues for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard team. He’s built Olympic qualifying and Grand Prix venues at Mammoth, Park City, Copper, Killington, Snowmass, Mt. Hood, Mt. Bachelor, and Breckenridge. He’s had a hand in 50 World Cup venues across Japan, Austria, and New Zealand. He won the Anne McIntyre Citation from U.S. Ski and Snowboard, an award given to the person who has contributed most to the advancement of snowboarding each year.

Now, he’s using that expertise to fix a problem in Bashor Bowl.

The old halfpipe required 1.4 million cubic feet of snow to build every year. That’s a lot of water, significant energy use, and considerable time for the slope maintenance crew. The new design changes that math entirely. Ingle expects the upgraded halfpipe to need only 750,000 cubic feet of snow.

"We could use less snow, even vary the length of the pipe, and make sure it always has the right pitch," Ingle told the Post Independent. "It adds to the idea of increased sustainability, and takes down the time required to make snow for the halfpipe."

The new pipe isn't just smaller. It’s longer and steeper. The team settled on an 18.5-degree slope with a length around 550 feet. To get that grade right, they had to engineer the infrastructure carefully. Ingle noted they needed to hit a minimum 17-degree mark for a standard 22-foot halfpipe, but they pushed the design further to create an elite-level feature.

Why Bashor Bowl? Ingle explained that the area is on resort property. "It would make permitting with the city easier," he said.

The construction is well underway. Heavy equipment was moving earth near the top of the project site as recently as Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026. The dirt from the Stockman and Auberge development is being hauled up to Bashor Bowl to form the base of the new structure.

Make no mistake, this is a competitive facility. Ingle built it to fill a void at the resort: a halfpipe suitable for major competitions. The PyeongChang design is a proven standard. It held up under the scrutiny of the Olympic stage. Now it’s holding up in Colorado dirt.

The Stockman is a $550 million luxury development. It’s changing the base area of Steamboat Resort. The halfpipe upgrade is a direct byproduct of that construction boom. The dirt that would have gone to a landfill or a distant site is instead becoming a high-performance feature for riders.

Ingle’s team started with the dirt work plans and went through several redesigns to get the geometry right. The result is a pipe that requires less snow, takes less time to build, and offers a steeper, longer ride.

The project is nearing completion. The earthwork is done. Now the resort has to wait for cold weather and enough water pressure to make the snow that caps the dirt.

The Stockman is a luxury residential development. It’s expensive. It’s new. It’s changing the skyline at the base of Steamboat Resort. The halfpipe is a practical, functional feature that benefits the resort’s operations and its riders. It doesn’t cost the resort much in new materials, just labor and time to integrate the dirt from a neighbor’s construction site.

Ingle has built pipes all over the world. He knows what works. He chose a design that worked in Korea. Now it’s working here, on the slope above the village.

The question isn't whether the halfpipe will be ready for winter. It’s whether the snow will come when they need it to make up that 750,000 cubic feet.