The ice is nice, but you'd better not delay.
With above-freezing temperatures and maybe some rain forecast for next week, the outdoor ice oval at Exhibition Park might not be open in the short term beyond this weekend.
After weeks of manual labour by volunteers and to flood and scrape the ice, the 400-metre outdoor oval opens for the season today at 11 a.m. Hot chocolate will be served from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. (bring your own mug). The oval will serve as the venue for long track speed skating during the Canada Winter Games, Feb. 13-March 1.
"It's still in the developmental stages because we've had to flood it by hand only using hoses because the water truck [axle] broke," said Outdoor Ice Oval Society president Kathy Lewis. "It's a lot of work, basically two people per hose and we try to run two hoses at once, so we don't have quite as much water down as we would if the water truck had been going. But with that we've been flooding a lot with a group of hardworking volunteers and the ice is in pretty good shape"
The fee for drop-in day admission to the oval is $2 per person or $5 for families. Season passes will also be on sale today at $25 per person and $60 per family.
Construction is underway on a permanent building on the west side of the oval which will serve as a heated storage area for the water truck, bobcat loaders and the ice resurfacing machine owned by the society. Jointly funded by the Canada Winter Games Society and Prince George Construction Association, which is supplying materials and labour, the project began last month and should be ready just before the Games begin. The building will also house timing equipment used for races and an office for technical staff with window viewpoints.
"The building will make the lives of our volunteers so much easier and we're really excited about that," said Lewis. "It's a super legacy for us."
The ice is now about three inches thick and Lewis said it will need to be double that before they paint the racing line and start/finish line which will be used for the Games races.
City staff worked over the summer to replace the gravel subsurface of the oval with less permeable dirt, and grass was planted to stabilize the track. That should help alleviate problems with water draining away and creating holes during warm weather conditions.
Last season featured a cold winter which limited the season to 66 days and about 5,700 skaters used the oval. That was down considerably from past years when the ice had more than 8,000 skate-visits in one season.
