A guide to the snow making and course building in Vancouver

Olympic Snow Making & Course Building

The task of making and shaping snow into the best competition courses for the world’s elite winter athletes is no easy task.

To face the challenges of changing weather conditions and extreme mountain terrain The Vancouver 2010 Olympic and

Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) will bring the world’s top course builders and groomers to make, shape and transform

Cypress Mountain, Whistler Olympic Park and Whistler Creekside for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. These specialists will

work alongside Mother Nature to construct and maintain outdoor courses for Freestyle Skiing, Snowboarding, Nordic

Combined, Ski Jumping, Alpine, Cross Country and Biathlon.

Cypress Mountain

Sport: Snowboard & Freestyle Skiing

To prepare for a variety of weather conditions, Cypress

Mountain has a snowmaking reservoir of more than 5

million gallons and the terrain has been shaped to

accommodate the construction of Freestyle Skiing and

Snowboard event courses with the minimum amount of

snow.

The courses:

Aerials

The aerial course, which includes an inrun, table, jumps,

landing area and finish corral, requires a base of

approximately 150 centimetres of compacted snow.

The inrun, table and landing are completed and snow-

covered first; then jumps are designed on the table.

Snowcats are used to move snow and the course is

completed with final shaping by hand.

• The inrun is 85 metres long with the first 55 metres

at a 26 degree angle and the next 30 metres at 25

degrees.

• The table where jumps are made is a flat 25 metres

while the landing area is 30 metres at 38 degrees.

• At the end of the course is a 30 metre finish corral.

Moguls

The mogul course is located next to aerials and requires a

minimum base of approximately one metre.

To ensure an average angle of 27 degrees throughout

the 250 metre long course, the hill is groomed flat with

snowcats. Then the moguls are added again using

snowcats, pushing snow up the hill and piling it in

designated locations. Once the piles of snow are in place,

the moguls are shaped by hand using shovels and skiers

to smooth out each mogul.

Crews build and shape the two jump sections using

shovels and snowblowers.

Snowboard Halfpipe

Construction begins with a dirt in-ground structure. When

weather is cold enough, snow is packed onto the dirt.

A laser level and display screen help to push and pack

snow onto the halfpipe to the correct specifications,

building it 160 metres long, 19.5 to 20.5 metres wide, lip

to lip, with an 18 degree slope and 6.5 metre high walls as

set by FIS standards.

Once all snow is pushed onto the course, the walls are

built up with snowcats; trimming the face of the pipe wall

to get a rough shape. The surface of the halfpipe is

finished using a Zaugg, an implement attached to the

front of a snowcat and cuts the exact radius into the pipe

walls.

Once machine work is done, hand shaping crews come in

with rakes and shovels to do the finishing touches.

Snowboard & Ski Cross

The snowboard cross event will run February 15 & 16 and

ski cross on February 23 & 25. Between the two events

modifications will be made to the 1.1 kilometre course.

• Some ski cross banks will be filled in so they are less

steep.

• Some jumps will be lengthened and the second

corner will be pushed out five to eight feet to

accommodate the faster speeds of ski cross racers.

• Some technical start features will be removed to

accommodate long skis and other course features

will be modified to meet FIS specifications.

• Both the snowboard cross and ski cross course will

include seven corners, three hip jumps (that may act

as corners) and approximately 18 jumps. The highest

jump is approximately 25 feet from lip to landing.

The course is constructed with snowcats moving snow

into the field of play and the areas where snow is needed

for features, such as jumps, starting from the top of the

course to bottom.

Forms made of lumber are used to construct the base of

features and conserve snow.

After the snowcats create the rough form of the course,

fine shaping is done using hand tools such as shovels and

rakes. The start gate is installed at the top and safety

nets are installed along the course.

The upper section of the course is on steeper terrain and

requires more snow in order to correct the angles while

the lower section is on a less steep pitch and requires less

snow to construct.

The course is cleared of new snowfall to maintain the

original, firm running surface. During racing, grooming is

done by hand or side-slippers. After competition or

training the course is groomed with snowcats.

Parallel Giant Slalom

The 527 metre PGS course intersects with the

Snowboard and Ski Cross course in two locations. After

ski cross events finish on February 25, the areas that

intersect will be cleared of all features and the snow will

be moved off the course to leave the hard packed snow

base clean and open.

The best conditions for PGS are very hard packed snow.

The course is 45 metres wide with a vertical drop of more

than 170 metres.

Whistler Creekside

Sport: Alpine Skiing

The Whistler Creekside venue will host Downhill, Super G,

Giant Slalom, Slalom and Super Combined Alpine Skiing

events. The men’s races will take place on the Dave

Murray run, with a vertical drop of more than 850 metres

and length of 3158 metres and the ladies races will be on

Franz’s run which is just over 2870 metres long with a

vertical drop of 770 metres.

The course: The perfect alpine race track is almost, but not quite, ice.

Crews start as soon as temperatures go below -1° C to

make wet, dense snow and establish a firm foundation. As

natural snow falls it is mixed in with man made snow to

maintain a hard base.

Dry powder snow is around 10 per cent water, normal

hardpack recreational trails are around 45 per cent water,

ski race courses aim for between 55 and 65 per cent.

Repeated grooming of the track with snowcats with

tillers beats up the snow to remove air while melting

some of the ice crystals which then refreezes after they

have been groomed. If this still does not bring the target

hardness, then water can be injected into the top 20

centimetres of the snow surface.

Whistler Creekside Olympic courses will have a snow

maintenance crew of 40 staff operating 24 hours a day

with a fleet of 20 snowcats during the Games.

Olympic course groomers will work to keep the alpine

courses clear of natural snowfall over 15 centimetres to

prevent the warming-up of the top layer of dense icy

snow needed for an elite ski race. Sometimes this means

pushing snow off into the trees.

The Whistler Creekside snowmaking system has the

capacity to make 5600 gallons per minute; the equivalent

of a gravel truck full of snow produced every minute.

For the Olympic Games the courses have been modified

and upgraded;

• The Timing Flats were widened from 40 to 75

metres to create a larger finish area for spectators

and broadcast media.

• The Men’s course added a new section from the

Coaches Corner down to Powerline in order to make

room for two finish areas.

• The Ladies course was modified to combine Jimmy’s

Joker and Wild Card to run onto Franz Run in the

middle and over to the previous Men’s course at the

bottom.

Whistler Olympic Park

Sport: Biathlon, Cross-Country, Nordic

Combined & Ski Jumping

Situated in the Callaghan Valley, the Whistler Olympic Park

typically receives large amounts of snowfall annually. In

combination with the fact that Cross-Country and

Biathlon courses require shallow snow bases and lower snow densities, the result is that very little snowmaking is needed at

this venue. The only snowmaking system at Whistler

Olympic Park will be for the ski jump landing hill.

Whistler Olympic Park sits an elevation range between

840 and 930 metres and in recent years, the month of

February has posted average daily temperatures between

+3°C and -4°C and received an average of more than 190

centimetres of snow on the ground.

The courses: Ski Jumping

Each of the ski jump inruns has a built in refrigeration

system, automated inrun covering system and an

integrated winch/track setting machine. These features

allow staff to build the inrun early in the year and

maintain it throughout the season with minimal

maintenance.

The refrigeration system

keeps the inrun frozen, the

covering system protects it

from rain and snow, and

the winch/track setter

prepares a high quality ice

track for the athletes to ski

down.

The main source of snow

for the ski jump landing hills

and outruns is through

snowmaking. The ski jump

snowmaking system can provide appropriate coverage for

the landing hills and outruns of both ski jumps with

approximately 100 hours of snowmaking at -3.5 C.

The snow used on ski jumps must be very dense with

approximately 60-70 per cent water to provide a hard

landing surface. To create the correct density a variety of

techniques will be used including snowcats, manual boot

packing, and adding water to the snow.

The depth of snow on the landing hills is approximately

45 centimetres.

The landing hill is initially prepared by a winchcat because

the slope is at a 35 degree angle and it is only possible to

groom the landing hill while tethered on a winch system.

The final landing hill preparation is completed by hand

with rakes and skis so the finished product is within 2

centimetres of the design parameters of the ski jump.

Cross-Country and Biathlon

Whistler Olympic Park will consist of two separate five-

kilometre cross-country skiing competition courses, a

four-kilometre biathlon competition course and a 3.75-

kilometre Paralympic sit-ski competition course.

The cross-country course meets FIS standards and the

biathlon course meets IBU technical rules with

strategically placed uphill, downhill and flat sections to

provide course which are tough but fair for all

competitors.

The width of the cross-country trails ranges between 6

and 12 metres with the widest parts mainly on the uphill

sections to allow passing. Biathlon course width ranges

from 6 to 9 metres.

Cross-country events take place with a groomed packed

base of approximately 45 centimetres of snow that is

prepared with a large snowcat after every snowfall to

beat the air out of the snow and mix new snow with old

as much possible to provide a consistent base. Final

preparations help to create a very smooth and consistent

surface.

During Olympic and Paralympic cross-country

competitions fresh snow will be worked and tilled to

provide the surface needed and in rare cases large

amounts of fresh snow falling at the last minute may be

removed from the course to expose a harder base layer.

In the biathlon stadium a range of 30 to 60 centimetres

of firmly packed snow provides

ideal conditions while on the

courses, a range of 50

centimetres to several meters

of snow is ideal. Fresh snow is

tilled and packed to create a

firm consistent surface for all

competitors.

Ideal snow densities are

approximately 40 to 45 per

cent water, but cross-country

and biathlon competitions can

still be run at lower densities if

necessary.

With shallow snow bases and lower snow densities

snowmaking is not needed for the cross country and

biathlon courses.

The cross-country stadium will have five snowcats and

biathlon will have four snowcats and the three

snowmobile rollers available to provide 24 hour grooming

coverage.

In addition to the Olympic biathlon and cross-country

trails, there will be warm-up trails and several cutover

trails for the shorter competition distances (two, 2.5,

three, 3.3 and 3.75 kilometre) and 40 to 45 kilometres of

easier recreational trails, including flat parts that will be

used for the Paralympic sit-ski competitions.