Westminster College Students Show Skills in First-Ever Rail Jam

FOX 13 News
12:08 PM MST, January 7, 2010


Westminster College students showed off their snowboarding and skiing skills in the first-ever rail jam on Thursday. The rail jam officially started around noon and Fox 13 was there to show the stunts of several talented skiiers and snowboarders.

"We're a really big skiing and snowboarding school," said Allyson Vander Steen, Westminster College activities coordinator. "A lot of students come here for the mountains and when we campaigned last year and ran for elections, a lot of people asked for a rail jam."

If you can’t go to the mountain, bring the mountain, or at least the rail down, to the city. Right in the middle of this beautiful urban campus here at Westminster College, final preparations are being made for this first-ever Rail Jam at Westminster College. Joining us live to talk about how this whole thing started is the person kind of responsible for all this, Alyson Vandersteen, What’s going on here?

VANDERSTEEN: Right now we’re just doing final prep. We have some students out here along with Galvanic Designs building the final rails and getting the snow in line.

This thing officially starts in about an hour, but already some folks are gathering. We’ll see hopefully some tricks starting here in our next live hit. How did this thing come about and why?

VANDERSTEEN: We’re a really big ski and snowboard school— a lot of students come here for the mountains. And when we campaigned last year and ran for elections, a lot of what people asked for was a rail jam. So as activities coordinator, I wanted to give the students what they asked for…

How did you pull this off? This is pretty amazing. When you think of Westminster, it’s kind of like Utah’s Ivy League, almost.

VANDERSTEEN: Well Galvanic Designs, they’re the guys that are out here, they’re an Oregon based company. They helped us a ton. They walked us through each step. They were really, really great. And the students support behind us. We went ahead and just kept trekking through, and administration helped us out. We just everything we could, fundraising, to get this going.

http://www.fox13now.com/news/kstu-westminster-rail-jam,0,6496313.story