We just completed one of the coolest jobs ever!
The Park City Chamber of Commerce called us in January and put me in touch with Katherine with Warner Media. She told me what they wanted to do and I said “that is easy.”
I ordered three brand new snow tubes from Idaho Sewing for Sports, Inc. They were able to make us a red one, a white one and a blue one (NBA colors) and print the Kia America logo in record time.
Noah and I spent the week in Salt Lake City and hired Vick Byer Construction from Park City to haul the snow. He brought down 8 side dumper truck loads of good clean Park City area snow. That is roughly 200 yards of snow in 2.5 days.
Warner Media provided us with a Bobcat tracked skid loader from Sunbelt Rentals. Even though a skid loader won’t groom snow as nicely as a snowcat, it did the job pretty well.
The Complex site is one of three sites for the NBA All Star Game. The amount of crews to put together all aspects of this event is just amazing. They brought in several semi trucks of equipment and within four days they pretty much had everything ready to go.
The Park City area snow AKA “The Greatest Snow on Earth” wasn’t the best for building up the snow tubing hill or the four giant snowmen, so we had to add a lot of water with a garden hose to get the snow to set up firm. Rusty and his snow sculpting crew were able to get the snow just right for carving the four guys by adding water as they packed the snow into the forms.
The day of the event, the producer decided they needed two more snow tubes to put in the back of the Kia Telluride. The crew at World of Woodward let me borrow two snow tubes for the Telluride photo shoot. The white Kia tube was on top. BTW the Telluride is a really nice ride.
Originally, Shaq – Shaquille O’ Neal, Chuck, Kenny Smith, and EJ were going to snow tube, but on the day, only Kenny and EJ tubed. When they came out and went to the top of the tube hill, the crowd tried to encourage Shaq to tube. Let’s just say he took one look at the hill and changed his mind. That little hill feels tall when you’re standing on top! The cool thing is that fans won the chance to tube the hill and try to make a basket from the tube. No one did officially (Kia was going to make a donation for each basket) but one of the staff made an over the shoulder blind basket from the tube later. I will post the video in the comments.
Noah and I shoveled more snow in three days than we have the last few years. We are tired but our sense of accomplishment makes it all worth while.
Watch Shaq and Chuck give Ernie and Kenny a push down the tubing hill here:
