Despite mild winter, Winter Games staying in PG

Despite how mild our winter has been, the Canada Winter Games will go off in Prince George without a hitch.

That from Phil Beaulieu Director of Sport and Venues, who says the games team has several backup plans in case snow levels aren’t high enough.

He says ski mountain courses were created in the earth with a lack of snow in mind, and more can be made from a snow machine.

The Canada Winter Games has “Multiple back-up plans,” according to Beaulieu. “For the most part, our courses are made out of Earth Works, so we need very little snow to hold the events,” he explains. “With the melts that we’ve had, we are okay to go on our Tabor Mountain venues, we have one challenge with the moguls course which requires us to have a lot of snow to hold an event.”

The closure of the PG ice oval prompted concern the games would have to move skating events to the next-nearest outdoor ice oval in Fort Saint John.

However Beaulieu says skating events will still be staying in Prince George.

“It’s a venue that can turn around very quickly,” he says. “We’ve actually had excellent ice making conditions the last two days as well. As long as it’s dropping down -5 to -10 at night we can make really good ice because the hot water we put on melts and we get a really thick cohesive layer.”

Beaulieu says all of their work is still within their capital budget, saying “That was all planned for, works that were completed over the last couple of summers to make sure that if we got in this situation, we were ready for it.”

“The snow making piece isn’t really an added cost, because we always have a contingency budget,” he says.

He says they looked at Vancouver’s approach during their slushy and expensive Olympics and went for a “toned down” plan.