Sometimes, it's good to have a bully close by.

Fern Thibault, owner of Tabor Mountain Ski Resort, will agree wholeheartedly with that statement.

Last month, a Kassbohrer PistenBully groomer arrived at Tabor. The mega-machine -- also known as a Park Bully -- was trucked in from Calgary and was assembled almost immediately by Thibault and some of his Tabor staff members.

The highly-specialized PistenBully is designed to build terrain parks for skiers and snowboarders, and just such a park now exists at Tabor.

"People are going nuts over it," Thibault said. "The reaction has been extremely positive. Everybody is excited about what the future is going to bring to Tabor Mountain. We're going to have a park here that's never been seen before in northern B.C. and we'll have one that will compete with all the larger parks in B.C."

The current park measures about five acres and it will likely double in size as early as next season.

Within the park is a slope-style course -- a series of boxes and rails and jumps that skiers and snowboarders navigate on their way down the hill. Slope-style will be on the snowboarding and freestyle skiing menu during the 2015 Canada Winter Games.

"You have a series of three boxes and rails, and then you have a series of three jumps," Thibault said. "[Competitors] start at the top and they go through and they're judged on what they do for tricks and for style."

The huge rails and boxes are heavy -- 500 pounds or more -- and are therefore difficult to move into place. But, the PistenBully manipulates them with ease and is able to do the proper grooming around them.

"The blade lifts twice as high as a standard groomer, the tiller lifts twice as high as a standard groomer," Thibault said. "It has way more functions in the blade and in the tiller than a regular groomer does. They are very specialized to build jumps and do things for craziness."

The price of a PistenBully varies by model and age, but $450,000 is common. Because a PistenBully was a necessity in order to host Canada Winter Games events at Tabor, Thibault and the Games society have come to a financial arrangement to cover the cost of the machine.

"We are working out sort of a lease agreement between the two of us," he said. "We'll have it here as a legacy after [the Games] so we can continue to build what we're building for the Games."

Video footage of the terrain park in use can be found on the Tabor Mountain website: tabormountain.com.