TRACKSIDE 2010: WET Snow and lots of rain for the Women's 30km classic

Driving up the 10km long road access to WOP from Hwy 99, Dirk connects to Jody on their special VANOC-Bell cell phones. Jody had spent the night at WOP sleeping on the overnight cot in the maintenance shed getting up occasionally to check if the rain was turning to snow. If snow, then the grooming team would get a phone call to arrive asap to groom the fresh stuff. That call never came and Dirk was now assured that it was still raining at the top - at 850m above sea level.

This began to change as we arrived. Occasional snow flakes amongst the rain turned to full-on wet snow by 8am. No longer needing to salt, as salting does not work to harden the tracks with new falling snow. The base had set up well, and the tracks just needed to be skied in. Official practice open earlier at 8:30am to help ski in the course while the snow built up.

This allowed the morning shift extra time to complete the volunteer Nordic-Nerd contest. A combo questionnaire with the first part being questions, like: at what Olympic Games did skate ski racing get introduced, and who won the first skate medal, what is Becky Scott's son's name, who is the most medal-ed xc athlete, what TV station is Pierre Harvey commentating for......
And the second part had us collect items to bring in: A country pin that is not Cdn, a WOP lunch ticket, picture of you with a spectator in front of the Olympic rings, ......

We put our heads together and presented our findings to Audra Aubuckle in the Race management office. Our award - an Olympic XC Ski Race Bib of our very own ! Something I plan to get signed by as many superstars tomorrow and then post it up in our Ski clubs chalet at Nakkertok.

Now it was time to get out on the course as a marshal. First time to build up the waterproofing. We all dawned gorgeous clear plastic ponchos to keep us marginally dry. At first it was the wet snow, and then by race start - 11:15 am the snow changed back to rain.