Russian Officials Visit Pitztal To See All Weather Snowmaking
Russian Officials Visit Pitztal To See All Weather Snowmaking
Published : 10-Aug-2010 08:25
Senior members of the Russian Olympic Organising Committee were in Austria last month to witness a demonstration of the IDE all weather snow-making system.The Russians are looking at ways to prevent any danger of a repeat of the issues faced by Cypress Mountain in British Columbia last winter when the ski area struggled to provide enough snow to build terrain features for freestyle event during an unusually warm spell of weather when conventional snowmaking equipment could not operate.
The IDE system is capable of creating large volumes of snow at positive temperatures and has been installed on the glaciers of Zermatt in Switzerland and Pitztal in Austria – the highest ski areas in their respective countries – primarily to ensure snow cover in the autumn when natural snowfall is not guaranteed but both areas want to guarantee they can open.
The Russian delegation which included the president of the Russian Ski Federation, senior members of the country's Olympic Organising Committee and members of the international ski federation (FIS) as well as delegates from the Russian Freestyle ski, Cross country ski and Biathlon federations and senior staff from the key Rusian si resorts where the olympucs will actually be staged near Sochi.
With temperatures peaking at +25C IDE and Pitztal created a 200m long area of snow for testing at Pitztal, which is currently closed to the general public until its long season begins in September. Several pro racers gave the snow, which was 20 metres wide and 60cm (two feet) deep a try.
Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc
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