On the west side of Sapporo is the Maruyama-koen Park, a versatile nature area visited by visitors throughout the year. In the spring, the park's 226 meter high hill revives the breathtakingly beautiful blooms of its more than 1,700 wild cherry trees, while in the autumn the many maple trees turn their leaves into a cavalcade of red and gold. Even winter has its own beauty when heavy snowfall turns the park into a playground for winter sports enthusiasts. The focus this season is the nearby Okurayama Ski Jumping Stadium, which was built for the 1972 Winter Olympics and is still regularly used as a venue for ski races, as well as the hauskurayama Crystal House with its shops and restaurants and the Winter Sports Museum, an interesting museum about the Olympic Games Winter games and related sports. The park also has a small zoo, the Maruyama Zoo, with a variety of native and exotic animals.