Volunteer Day 10 - Hurry up and wait

As you all know by now, Downhill was postponed, hopefully will run on Monday Feb 15. We were up at 3:30, at breakfast for 4 AM, then were told race was postponed. Weather was not the issue today, but snow conditions were. It snowed 20 cm or so on upper 2/3, rain on bottom 1/3. I learned some more about snow science. As temperatures were warm and bottom 1/3 quite mushy, too dangerous to race. However, new snow that fell there has melded well with base, so once temperature falls, all should be OK. At top 1/3, snow was soft enough that it could be shoveled off, leaving previously formed hard surface. However, in middle 1/3, snow was sticky, it was groomed and packed, but did not "fuse" with underlying surface, making poor race conditions. The solution likelyn will be to inject water into this snow, with subsequent melting and then freezing of snow allowing it to fuse with underlying hard surface.

No race Feb 14 as more snow predicted for overnight Feb 13 to 14. Hopefully it will then get cold enough for all to refreeze and to have hard surface. Also schedule needs to take into accout other events, especially the popular ones so nooveralp in live TV coverage.

After waiting around, we uploaded at 6:30 AM, main jobs todey were to get rid of snow that had fallen, and to make sure all security netting was cleaned of all snow, not just on the netting, but poles needed to be pulled up and all loose snow beneath /behind / in front of netting removed. Reason for raising the poles is each has an etched line circumferentially about 8-12 inches from tip. This needs to be right at surface of snow, so if racer hits fence, the pole will snap at this "breakpoint. If breakpoint is under surface of snow, netting system performance changes and is less secure.

Tomorrow I get to be section chief for a day, hopefully all will go well. And only a noon start!! Today we were done all work before noon (still 5-6 hrs of work), then I actually got to ski !! With poles and everything!! Had a couple of nice powder runs (albeit a bit cruddy, and poor visibility, but no complaints).

On men's track, long lines of course workers foot packing snow near the B-nets. Also note shovels when needed. After packing, someone checks to make sure breaking point of poles are at snow surface.

Shoveling snow from backside of A-Net, necessary since if snow builds up, base of A-Net loses "give" so if racer hits fence, it does not "absorb" the impact.

View from gondola of women's track. Long lines of course worker's, on skis, stepping down the hill one step at a time to pack the snow in as best as possible.