course challenges beyond the naked eye

Three stories today...
1- Women's 10km individual race
2- Men's 15km individual start race
3- The Course conditions.

I'm going to start with the third, as I am privy to some insider knowledge.

I hope you are as incredibly impressed with modern grooming, ski & snow techniques and technology as I am after hearing what I've learned.

First it is important to set the stage. You've all heard that this has been the 100-year record for the warmest winter in BC. Even though the Callaghan Valley does not lack snow, it is quite interesting the how and why of its existence. For the 2009/10 winter, the temperature has never dipped below zero Celsius at any time during this winters snow fall. How is this possible I asked with naive surprise...Jody Johnson, who works fultime here at WOP and on the Haig glacier in the summer time grooming for the National and Provincial Teams, shared what a climatologist had explained to their grooming team earlier this winter : that the pressure here is strong enough to change the falling rain into snow at these 0 to +2 degree temperatures. They call it 'heavy' or 'hard' snow.

Second, the ground has never frozen up. Thus the ground is wet and warm, with the + degree air temperatures makes a mushy SNOW sandwich. This is a large sandwich, as there are 3-4ms of compacted snow here at WOP. Unique to this winter, and never before have these conditions occurred in Canada, even-though they are quite used to 'wet' snow here in the Whistler corridor.

Third, the Callaghan Valley has not received any significant amount of new snow since December. This makes for deteriorating snow when groomed daily. The molecular structure begins to break down and turn into what we call 'sugar'. Unless new natural snow mixes in to this 'old' snow, it is almost impossible to have it firm up. Salting helps in the short run, but increases the breakdown of snow molecules over time.

Last nights grooming started early around 5pm, as the temperature dropped. Bente Skari herself went out on the back of Dirk's snowmobile after the Jury meeting to observe how the classic track was put in. Was I jealous - you bet ! but not that Dirk was out on a date with a 'hot' xc ski woman...instead, that it wasn't me, that got to work along side a Cross Country skiing legend - a perfectionist in classic technique, someone to learn so much from. Classic tracks were laid down on the downhill portions of the Free technique race course.

These are the conditions our grooming team has to deal with. They are a vast group of very knowledgeable men (one women) that have over 200 years of collective knowledge from coast to coast. I would like to share with you that George Lefebvre, Canada's most famous groomer who has groomed at every Olympic Games starting in Calgary is also here...but, working with me as a course marshal with his wife Irene.

The temperatures dropped to -2/-3 degrees for most of the night, thus allowing the snow to firm up. The crew is very careful not to over til, or til too deeply - cause we all know we need it for a full two weeks.

With yesterdays torrential rain, the snow would become rock hard if not carefully orchestrated when to groom and how much. In the end, the grooming team was pleased their expectations came true...they knew that the 5km and 7.5km race courses needed to hold up for over 350 racers (2 laps ) even before adding in the number of warm-up laps. For this reason the warm-up time slot on the race courses was shortened, and restricted to the upper red course and outside passes on both the up, and final down into the stadium. Preserving the 'salted' inside corners for race time.

The final verdict for today - that the courses held up extremely well. Only the corners broke down which is to be expected, yet hard to improve upon. Yet, the plan for tomorrow has already been molded...a constant steep learning curve.
Some snow is predicted for tonight/tomorrow - a total of 4-8cms. Yahoo ! Let's hope it drops below zero...wouldn't that be a golden moment !