Charles Beckinsale

From a teenager on the rake at Thredbo to building jumps for the best in the business, Charles Beckinsale has shaped a career path as steep and impressive as the features he builds.

Published June 2026 words Mandy Lamont cover photo Andrew Fawcett

As a young park rat, Charles would ride in the cat alongside Shane McLeod aka Stegsy, explaining exactly how he wanted the jumps to look. After taking over the park program with mate Sammy Towers together at 18. By 19, encouraged by Stegsy, he was behind the controls himself. From there he never looked back and was able to build his own ideas. “It’s an art form”, Charles tells me over coffee at Birchwood. “To be good at park building, you have to come from a rider’s background. Understanding transitions, building a jump, knowing how a feature should feel isn’t something you can teach a groomer.”

A professional snowboarder from the age of 16, primarily a video part and backcountry rider. Charles would sketch his tricks frame by frame before trying them on snow. When he moved into park building, that same visual thinking translated directly. He could now show resort management exactly what he wanted to build. “The clearer a park builder can communicate to Resort Management, the more they can get across the line,”

Charles had been building parks for 17 years of back-to-back winters. He was working at Perisher and Whistler when Vail acquired both resorts. That’s when everything changed for Charles. At Perisher, more than a typical terrain park manager, Charles was across it all. Between the crews, building and welding features, running and training crews. In addition to that he was building relationships and managing rider partnerships with the likes of Torstein Horgmo, Mark McMorris and Bobby Brown. Drawing the global freestyle industry to train in Australia instead of New Zealand. Hosting athlete photoshoots, and putting Perisher firmly on the world map. It was a big moment for the sport locally, and Charles was in the thick of it.

After a decade as lead builder at Whistler, with the resort promising ongoing visa support. When Vail took over, that promise evaporated. Visas for terrain park builders simply weren’t part of their model. “After ten years working as a lead guy, I was chucked out, over policy.” He lasted another year at Perisher before the sour taste became too much. In hindsight though, “It was honestly the best thing that ever happened to me. I was just too scared to take the leap myself.”

A seed for Stomping Grounds had been planted before Charles left the resorts. Brands like Monster and Red Bull were reaching out, wanting him to build features and photo shoot setups. Charles was driving these opportunities into the resorts. The marketing teams loved it, and Charles had as much overtime as he wanted. He would build for two weeks at a time, project-manage, and make a little extra each month. Then he started to realise that he could partner with the resorts. He could host these events, lease the cats, coordinate the project, build the features and bring in the people he wanted to work with. But his bigger vision was for a performance camp.

Inadvertently, Vail created a gap in the market. Across their resorts, 22-foot pipes disappeared, big jump lines were scaled back, and high-end freestyle facilities vanished. But the demand from elite athletes didn’t. Charles had been watching Prime Park operate a pay-to-ride performance camp on the Stubai glacier in Austria. Built around competition-size features, he was getting ideas. With a network of the best people in the industry and a clear vision for an uncompromised, athlete-first operation, he began exploring glaciers in Europe.

Swiss friend Fabia Grüebler was relentless in pushing him to pursue it. She eventually secured meetings with the CEOs of both Zermatt and Saas-Fee. Saas-Fee had a struggling park on the brink of closure. If Charles could make it work privately, it was his. He put his $50k life savings in, rebuilt the park from scratch, and launched Stomping Grounds. The Canadian and Norwegian national snowboard teams signed up in the first year. They were the two most successful in the world at the time. “We ended up making a small profit that year, and every year after that it went from strength to strength.” The second year the camp expanded to include a 22ft pipe and on snow airbag setup.

Eleven years in, the clearest measure of Stomping Grounds’ relevance, is Mark McMorris showing up every year. Mark is arguably the best slopestyle snowboarder in history. “He’s at the top of the game and for him to show up every year, is validation for us.”

Charles’ calendar typically kicks off in September with Saas-Fee, and runs more or less non-stop through until the end of May, with short windows at home in between. It’s a pace that’s been relentless in recent years.

Wife Amy and nine-year-old son Cole regularly join Charles on the road. This year they were in Aspen for six weeks over the school holidays. Charles was working on the Grand Prix and X Games and structured his days around them. He could snowboard with Amy and Cole every morning, and join them for dinner. “It’s like a family holiday,” he says. Last year it was Utah and Jackson Hole, where Charles ran back-to-back jobs for Monster and Red Bull while the family came along for the ride. They have a three-week rule. If Charles is going to be away any longer, he’ll stack jobs into a bigger block. That way Amy and Cole can fly in for part of it.

For someone whose commute involves glaciers in Switzerland and contests in Aspen, Jindabyne is an unlikely home base. But Charles wouldn’t have it any other way. Married to a Jindabyne local, he doesn’t have much say. But “I can’t think of a better place to call home, he laughs. Even though the FIFO commute to work is pretty aggressive.” With most of his work overseas, when he is home, he can enjoy the winter and snowboard with Cole.  Stomping Grounds at Thredbo kicks off mid-season and with a park crew, it doesn’t consume him. He also lends a hand at Thredbo if they need help with an event or a mini-pipe build.

“I love being home. The more you travel the more you appreciate it.” And Jindabyne is a different town to the one Charles first discovered at 13. There’s a lot of fresh faces and you can get a little lost in the crowd, which Charles likes. And for all his travels, he’s clear-eyed about what’s on his doorstep. “What we have on our doorstep here, I think a lot of people take for granted.” Both Thredbo and Perisher are running world class park programs. And International riders are still making the trip out, which helps build a healthy pool of young local talent. “It’s rad to see.”

“Jindabyne kids that ski and snowboard have always benefited from that cross pollination. Making friends with international seasonal staff, or athletes that make them curious to explore the world. And gives them contacts to do so. There are not many places that open your mind in the same way. With the new skate park, the airbag and acro facility at NSTC and the new public school. Jindabyne has far over delivered on my expectations of what I thought it could become. Can’t think of a better place to raise a family.

With more work opportunities coming up, Charles is in the fortunate position of being able to pick and choose. The next chapter for Stomping Grounds is Japan. Charles has visited resorts and is currently in discussions with Shigekogen. Leveraging his existing partnership with Icon Resorts, who back the Thredbo camp. But this one would be different in scope. Where Saas-Fee and Thredbo are both aimed at world cup competition-level athletes. The Japan camp would target the development tier, a gap Charles sees clearly in the market.

The model would pair five days on the Quest airbag facility before heading up to a purpose-built development park. 20 to 50 foot jumps, a standalone big air, and crucially, an 18 foot halfpipe. Rather than the Olympic standard 22. “To go from a 13 foot to a 22 is a big step,” Charles says. “The 18 is the sweet spot. Big enough to be meaningful. Accessible enough to build confidence, get first McTwists and Cripplers dialled, and give riders a genuine bridge towards competition-level pipe”. It reflects a broader shift in how the sport is progressing. With dry-slope and airbag training now driving progression globally before athletes ever hit snow. When it comes together, Stomping Grounds will span three camps across three continents, Switzerland, Thredbo and Japan,

At nine years old, Charles’ son Cole is already ripping, he’s fast and solid on his edges, and Charles is very careful to nurture his snowboarding. Having watched development camp kids pushed toward world cup dreams that are incredibly hard to reach, parents spending upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a year chasing the podium, it’s an intense world. But Charles wants something different for Cole. “I’m not pushing him to do all the big tricks or trying to live my dreams through him.” His goal is simpler: a lifelong passion they can share, not a pursuit that turns into resentment if it doesn’t pan out. “I’ve come to view snowboarding as more of a lifestyle than a sport for us.”

“There’s a lot to be said for having a childhood where you’re snowboarding and exploring the mountain. Not stuck on an endless park lap with goals being pushed on you. Your whole life as an adult is about goals, being a kid, riding around Thredbo, exploring new trails or runs through the trees, finding natural hits. That magic gets lost in you as an adult, to see it through your kid’s eyes, reinvigorates the way you look at things and how you enjoy your time on the snowboard.”

With Charles winding down from the bigger tricks, Cole is coming up to meet him. We love riding powder together and ripping around the resort. “I just want to be a really confident, fun riding partner and dad, more so than his coach.”

Amy, a Jindabyne local, whose been on skis since she was three has been solidly behind him the whole way. “She used to ask where all this is heading”, Charles says, “and I always told her it’d work out, I just didn’t know exactly how. She put a lot of trust in me”

Looking back, the forced exit from Whistler was the push he needed. “It’s amazing what happens when you have to make things work and find a new way.” Going out on your own is a risk, and it doesn’t always pay off, but for Charles, it worked out better than he could have imagined, “I’m incredibly lucky.”

Working with the best in the business. It’s a long way from the teenager on the rake at Thredbo. Yet he remains humble “I still love the work, the people and the places, I’m just very lucky. It’s been an incredible ride, but also a lot of work.”

stompinggroundsprojects.com