It's that time of year again, when longblade ice skaters start to get antsy.
They see the work Lyle Dickieson and his team of about 10 volunteers have been putting in over the past week, clearing and flooding the 400-metre outdoor ice oval at Exhibition Park behind CN Centre and they just want to skate.
The ice is still a bit too thin, but Dickieson says give it another week and it should be smooth sailing. By next Wednesday, depending on the weather, he hopes to be able to lay down at least 10 more floods on the oval, giving his crews a thick enough base to work with for the rest of the season.
"It's too tight to open this weekend but for sure next weekend and maybe even by mid-week," said Dickieson. "We still have to get picnic tables and outhouses in, but the ice is looking really good. We packed a really good base in there and if all things stay as they are we should have some dynamite ice.
"If we open too soon it's hard to build ice on top of it because you're shaving it right down after everybody's skating digs right in, so we have make sure we have enough ice before we open it up to public skating."
Last year, about 85 loads of water were needed to produce skateable ice because the surface of the oval was not level. A survey crew confirmed that over the summer when it found sections of the dirt track were as much as 35 centimetres from being level. The unlevel surface created a lot of additional work for the volunteers, who had to gradually build up the low spots with thin layers of ice until it was smooth.
The Ice Oval Society hired a city crew to regrade the entire oval surface and that has reduced by half the number of layers of ice needed to open the facility. The one downfall of that project from the society's perspective is it now has to pay the bill for the grader work. The only way to recoup that cost is for users of the oval to pay the $2 admission fee by dropping their money in a locked box right near the oval's picnic tables.
"There have been lots of people coming by asking when it's going to open and most of them don't realize it's all volunteers doing the work," said Dickieson. "The amazing thing is we charge a toonie to get in there and only half the people pay. It's tough times so everybody should buck up and pitch in."
The oval is used by thousands of recreational skaters annually and will be one of the venues for the 26th annual Prince George Iceman on Feb. 10, 2013. The Prince George Blizzards speed skating club also uses the oval for training purposes.
