THUNDER BAY — Warm weather and rain are putting a damper on skiing at Kamview Nordic Centre this weekend.
Environment Canada forecasted a mix of rain and snow for Saturday, with mainly rain expected as temperatures hover close to 0⁰C.
This weather has led to low snow conditions, temporarily delaying the end of this year’s skiing season.
Dave Suttie, the general manager of Kamview Nordic Centre, shut down his facility on Saturday due to the pouring rain. He said the weather conditions are definitely affecting the trails ‘quite a bit right now.’
“We’re hoping that the rain will stop either today or tomorrow and the weather will start to get a little bit colder so we can try and do something with the snow that we’ve got, but it is definitely affecting us,” said Suttie.
“We can’t have anybody skiing on the trails now. They’ll just sink in out of sight and it’ll be icy and not the greatest skiing conditions.”
It is not uncommon for the centre to shut down in these poor conditions.
“From last year to this year, we are definitely way ahead. Last year at this time, we had absolutely no snow on the ground. We didn’t start skiing until, I think, about the first of January when we had something going,” said Suttie.
“We have been skiing here now, fortunately, for, I think, about a month and a bit. We have had to shut down once already for rain. We’ll shut down again. I still have snow, so that’s definitely a plus. So, we’re definitely still ahead of next year.”
Suttie explained if they have lots of snow, it’s not usually a big problem to deal with afterward because they have a large snow grooming machine that they can bring out to bring the snow up from down below and mix it in.
However, with the low snow conditions, he added, it’s a 'little bit more difficult to deal with.'
“I’m only dealing with maybe about five to six centimetres of snow here. So, when things do freeze up, I’ll probably have to get out the big pistenbully and do some grooming with that — carefully. And we probably won’t have classic tracks right away. It’ll be skating, but time will tell. I’ll have to see what happens. When all this weather stops and starts to freeze up — what we can do,” said Suttie.
He said it would be a little tough going, but with some hard work and some luck, they should have some stuff going again at the centre soon.
“Hopefully, Mother Nature will start to help out a bit so we can get back to the super choice conditions we’re used to,” said Suttie.
Suttie estimated the soonest he can get the centre going is Monday, but, he explained, it could be a little later since he is ‘at the mercy of the weather.’
“I’m thinking by looking at today’s weather and tomorrow’s weather, the weather over tonight looks like it’s going to go below zero, but it may or may not. It’s going to be above zero again tomorrow,” said Suttie. "There’s a lot of moisture in the snow that has to freeze up and dry out."
Despite this less-than-good weather, Suttie said there is still a couple of months of winter left and he is pretty optimistic that everyone is 'going to definitely have a good season.’
“We’ve got lots of season left. It’s the end of December. We still have January, February and March. So it’s going to snow. It has to snow. It can’t be like last year. It won’t take a lot of snow to get things a lot better here, but I definitely got my fingers, toes, anything I can cross, cross for some snow. So as long as we get some more snow, it should be awesome,” said Suttie.
