Be Prepared
Tonight marks the start of Rossland’s annual Winter Carnival. For me the best part of the carnival is the bobsled races (click for shots of last year’s) that shoot down the street out back of the house here. To prepare the course city work crews block off the street the night before, groom the surface then spray it with water. I though for certain this years would be cancelled as there was no snow left on the street. We are having an unusually warm and rainy winter. I was wrong! The ingenuity of the city work crew knows no bounds! When we do get snow and they clean the roads they blow it into large piles all along the road edge. Perfect material for making a track.
January has been a bad month for snow. In the images below the yellow building is our town skating and curling rink. By this time of year the snow is usually about 80% of the way to the roof . This year it’s barely 25% of the way. But of course there’s no global warming.
click here for a larger picture
click here for a larger picture
Once they have pulled it off the roadsides and somewhat flattened it down with the big cat and the grater they bring in the groomer. You can see from the picture above some of the hill the bobsleds come down at the top of the picture where it curves off to the left it gets much steeper.
click here for a larger picture
click here for a larger picture
click here for a larger picture
The groomer pictured above is normally used for setting the cross country ski trails the city maintains which accounts for some of the weird looking stuff on the back. When used on the ski trails it levels the snow, packs it and then inserts two parallel ski tracks a few inches deep into the snow so that skiers do not have to break trail. Just past where the groomer is the road drops and becomes extremely steep for the final part of the run. Good sleds often get up to 60 or 70 Kmph on this track. All told the run is over a 1/4 mile long from top to bottom.
I’ll see if I can get some good pics of the action tomorrow. Hopefully it freezes well overnight so the surface gets good and slick.
