Its hard to imagine how different our experience in Muonio, Finland has been since we were here last year. Normally cold snowy weather has been replaced by warm temperatures and steady rain. Despite the unseasonable weather, the grooming staff at Olos has done well to provide great skiing for the numerous national and club skiers frequenting the 3k loop. Today the track was closed to skiing as the workers frantically reallocated precious snowpack from one of the out-back sections to shore up the racecourse for the coming competitions on the weekend.
Perfect trails awaiting us the first day
Reserve snow-pack opposite the biathlon stadium last year
This years pile… The groomers said they stockpiled more snow for upcoming season than ever before but a warm rainy September resulted unprecedented melt
Workers at Olos uncovering the last bit of snow summered over in the half pipe by the alpine area. The excavator breaks up and removes the frozen wood chips that cover the snow-pack and the front end loader moves the 6 month old snow
Saving 3k worth of snow over the summer neccesitates a huge amount of woodchips
And foot tracks this year (Photo: Ethan D)
High noon, 11-10-10
11-7-11 (Photo Ethan D)
The white ribbon below (Photo: Ethan D)
Got wind? (Photo: Ethan D)
Moving snow (Photo: Ethan D)
Patching up the race loop (Photo: Ethan D)
Although the weather seems to be conspiring against us, the skiing has remained solid. Its seems we are past the worst of the rain and the mercury is finally dropping after 2 pretty nasty weeks. Big thanks to the workers at Olos for all of their hard work keeping the tracks open and several hundred people on snow. The races this weekend should certainly prove interesting with large competitive fields tearing around the shortened race loop. Might look a bit like this…
Trainin' in the train
