By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — While some people may be growing weary of having to remove snow from their vehicles, driveways and roofs, Jane Towle, event director of the upcoming 2014 IBU World Youth/Junior Biathlon Championships, couldn’t be happier with the recent snow. “This is a gift … an enormous gift for us,” said Towle. “We have training camps going on right now at the Nordic Heritage Center with several of the countries that are arriving early, and when you have good, hard, fast skiers skiing on the courses over and over and over again, it uses up the snow so much. It churns it up just like a blender, so we need a lot of snow in order to sustain not only the pre-event here with the skiers training, but during the event, as well.
“We’re going to have seven days of 300-plus skiers, which is an enormous strain on the trails and the snow,” she said. “With the recent snowstorms, we are now well positioned.”
According to the National Weather Service in Caribou, the Feb. 13-14 storm dropped 11.4 inches of snow in the Star City, while 5.5-6 inches of snow fell Feb. 15-16.
With the unpredictability of the weather, biathlon officials have been stockpiling the snow when the parking lot at the Nordic Heritage Center has been plowed this winter.
“That snow is available, but we won’t need it now,” Towle said. “As we’re looking into the long-range forecast, there’s an inch here and an inch there right up until the event, so we’re going to have a healthy amount of snow on the trails, but anything that we have stockpiled could be used just to bank corners here and there if we need to make some adjustments to some of the trails.”
Had there not been a sufficient amount of snow for the biathlon, officials had a back-up plan in mind — they would have used Bigrock Mountain’s “snow guns” and made snow.
“It’s extraordinarily expensive to do that — about $30,000 — because there’s so much trucking, labor and fuel associated with making snow and delivering it,” said Towle. “We don’t just blow it up on the hill like they can do at ski mountains and leave it in place; we have to truck it.
“We’re very grateful that we had about a foot-and-a-half of snow fall last week,” she said. “It’s a big bonus for our budget. That’s $30,000 that we don’t have to spend making snow, plus the quality does not compare. Natural, God-made snow is just beautiful compared to man-made snow.”
Towle said the Nordic Heritage Center has two groomers onsite that are used to make the trails ideal for the biathletes.
“The trails have to be groomed constantly,” she said, “so we have a groomer onsite, but we have to have a back-up groomer, as well, in case the first one breaks down — that’s how critical it is to be grooming all the time.”
The 2014 IBU World Youth/Junior Biathlon Championships will be held Feb. 28-March 7 at the Nordic Heritage Center.
