Olympics - Snow finally falls on bare Cypress

Published>Thu, Feb 11 10 03:28 AM

Vancouver Olympics organisers breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday as Mother Nature finally cooperated and snow began to fall on the barren hills of Cypress Mountain three days before moguls competition begins.

"It's snowing quite well right now," said Stephen Bourdeau, spokesman at the Cypress Mountain Olympic venue. "We've had a nice little dumping that's covering the trees. We expect more of this in the next couple of days."

Temperatures hovered just below freezing so the rain that was falling in Vancouver had turned to snow on Cypress, a mountain on the outskirts of the city.

"It's just cold enough," Bourdeau said. "We're very happy -- we've been waiting for this for a long time."

Once the weather failed to provide enough of a snow blanket on Cypress for the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events, Vancouver organisers had to bring snow to the mountain.

After the warmest ever January in Vancouver organisers started moving snow from other areas of Cypress to the competition site and had to resort to trucking snow in from another mountain nearly three hours drive away.

Helicopters were also called into service, flying overhead in constant sorties and filling the air with the loud chop-chop sound of the rotors as they delivered snow to the higher parts of the courses.

Trucks were moving snow 24 hours a day and the helicopters were operating constantly during daylight hours, except when skiers were training.

Dick Vollet, vice president for mountain operations, said that all contingency budgets for the mountain venues had been reallocated to Cypress to ensure there was enough money to pay for the snow transportation.

Of the C$1.7 billion ($1.6 billion) operating budget, the Vancouver Organising Committee set aside $100 million for contingencies.

ATHLETES SATISFIED

The athletes have trained for two days on the moguls course, where competition begins on Saturday for the women's medal event.

Most had positive things to say about the snow, which has a grainy, slushy appearance and feels more like spring skiing snow than the hard snow often found in February.

"The course is in beautiful shape," said 2002 Olympics moguls silver medallist Shannon Bahrke, who is used to this type of snow from growing up in California. "As soon as it gets a little more skier traffic it's going to be perfect."

Some skiers said the course had improved by Tuesday after colder weather helped harden the snow pack.

Now organisers just have to hope the temperature stays below freezing so the rain forecast for the next couple of days will come down as snow at Cypress.

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