Snow Job: Enough White Stuff?

Posted on 05. Feb, 2010 by Kerry Banks in Featured, Living

OLYMPICS UPDATE

It’s always wise to contemplate the big picture – i.e., the history books – when bemoaning the latest Olympic “crisis”

by Kerry Banks

Can you have a Winter Olympics without snow? A lot of people in the Lower Mainland are starting to wonder. After all, this has been one of the mildest winters in recent memory and the snow that fell on the local mountains in November appears to have been completely washed away by persistent rains. Recent news reports have suggested that Olympic organizers were considering moving the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events from Cypress Mountain to another location. However, Olympic officials deny that is not the case, and insist that everything is under control. “We have no intention of moving from the site,” declared Tim Gayda, VANOC’s vice-president of sport.

Gayda also surprised reporters by advising, ‘There really is no snow shortage. Cypress has an exorbitant amount of natural snow at higher elevations. It’s free, it’s available and it’s getting used.’

Gayda also surprised reporters by advising, “There really is no snow shortage. Cypress has an exorbitant amount of natural snow at higher elevations. It’s free, it’s available and it’s getting used.” By “getting used,” he means that snow is being transported in from higher elevations and from Manning Park to ensure there’s enough snow cover so that the six skiing and snowboarding events scheduled for the mountain will proceed as planned. If necessary, straw bales and wood forms will be used as foundations for the snowboarding halfpipe and other jumps and obstacles in some of the skier and boardercross courses.

Meanwhile, 35 snow guns continue to blast artificial snow over the mountainsides, producing a frozen, winter-white effect for spectators and what high-performance athletes will recognize as a good base for sliding. Man-made snow is evidently “more resilient” than real snow because it lasts longer. Since November, Cypress has converted almost 100 million litres of water into fake snow.

It may not be an ideal situation, but then climatic conditions are often problematic during the Winter Olympics. At the 1928 Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, the opening ccremonies were held in a howling blizzard, but shortly afterwards the weather turned so mild that organizers considered cancelling the games outright. In fact, the final of the 10,000-metre speedskating race was terminated, because the outdoor rink turned to slush, though the 50-kilometre cross-country ski race went ahead even though the temperature was a balmy 25 degrees Celsius.

Warm winds, rain and a lack of snow caused a similar crisis at the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria. Things were so bad that the government called in the Austrian army to save the day. Soliders carved out 20,000 ice bricks from a mountaintop and transported them to the bobsled and luge runs. They also carried 40,000 cubic metres of snow to the alpine venues and then packed the white stuff onto the slopes by hand and foot.

In 1988, Calgary’s Olympic organizers ignored their own consultants’ advice not to build facilities in exposed areas, and paid for it when snow-eating Chinook winds blew in.

In 1988, Calgary’s Olympic organizers ignored their own consultants’ advice not to build facilities in exposed areas, and paid for it when snow-eating Chinook winds blew in. The windy weather cost the 1988 Winter Games more than $1 million in ticket refunds. Because there was so little snow, tons of white silica sand was trucked in from B.C. to make the surface of McMahon Stadium look snow-covered for the opening ceremonies. The Chinooks destroyed the inflatable Rocky Mountains used during those same ceremonies, raised temperatures and made scheduling a monumental headache. The 90-metre ski jump alone was cancelled seven times. The initials of Canada Olympic Park (COP), the wind-lashed site of the ski jump, bobsled and luge, came to stand for “Cancelled or Postponed.” All of the alpine events took place on artificial snow, and the gusting winds sent a ski jumper flying into a camera tower.

In 1998, at Nagano, Japan, a combination of fog, driving rain and snowstorms wreaked havoc with its alpine skiing programme, with the showpiece men’s downhill event on the opening Sunday having to be postponed three times. The storms also caused scheduling nightmares, epic traffic jams and, no doubt, innumerable sleepless nights for Olympic organizers.

But all of those Olympics continued to the finish, which is exactly what will happen here, even if it requires a lot of improvising, extra work and only a bronze medal for VANOC from the David Suzuki Foundation for its sustainability efforts (raking in snow by helicopter not being the most sophisticated environmental option). After all, this week, ever-optimistic Olympic officials vowed that all of the Games’ snow venues will be “pristine,” “white” and “magical” – despite meteorologists insisting there is little hope for much new snow.

Tags: 2010 Winter Olympic Games & Paralympics, David Suzuki Foundation, Olympics and snowfall, VANOC