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Ski hill pushes opening to Dec. 20 C AROLYN GR ANT
In the end, there was nothing staff at the Kimberley Alpine Resort could do to make opening this Friday possible. The warm temperatures and rain have just proved to be too much. “Mother Nature rules,” said RCR’s Matt Mosteller, who checked out conditions on the mountain Thursday morning. “In the spirit of Kimberley the team has worked extremely hard to try to make this happen but again with every turn Mother Nature has not made it possible right now.” “After having received a good amount of natural snow, and having made piles of man-made snow due to the prior cold wintery temperatures, the powerful low pressure weather system that travelled through British Columbia this week has pushed the resort to now focus on an opening date of Saturday, December 20.” Community Day, when all local residents can ski for free, has been pushed back to January 11, 2015. Mosteller says all season pass holders will continue to be able to ski free of charge at other RCR resorts including Fernie Alpine Resort, Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, and Nakiska Family Resort until Kimberley Alpine Resort opens. Please check the events and band schedule at http://www.skikimberley.com/ Environment Canada forecasts that weather will remain unseasonably warm until Sunday, then cool slightly. There is not much snow in the forecast but cooler temperatures will allow snow-making operations to pick up again.
BARRY COULTER PHOTO
Irénée Rochon (second from right), Bishop of Ottawa and the Archdiocese of Canada and the head of the Orthodox Church in Canada, this week visited one of the smallest parishes in the country — St. Aidan’s in Cranbrook, on his first official tour since being elected by the Church synod. Bishop Rochon was in the company of (from left) Deacon Kevin Wigglesworth from Sparwood, Father Andrew Applegate from Creston, and Archpriest Phillip Eriksson from Calgary. See Page 2 for an interview with Bishop Rochon.
Avalanche dangers drop, but conditions uncertain in region ARNE PE TRYSHEN Townsman Staff
Avalanche dangers look to be on a downward trend this weekend, though they are still be present with the warm, wet and windy conditions turning cooler again. “Over the last few days we’ve had steady rain up to about 2,200 meters,” said Joe Lammers, public avalanche forecaster at the Cana-
dian Avalanche Centre. “Above that, many parts of the Columbia mountains and the South Rockies saw snowfall and strong southwest winds.” Lammers said the rain has saturated and weakened the snowpack, especially at the treeline elevation and below. “With forecast cooling this weekend a crust will likely develop
where the rain soaked snow refreezes adding some strength to the snow pack,” he said, cautioning that the weight of the recent precipitation will add stress to weak layers that exist a meter below the surface. Thought the forecast is calling for less dangerous conditions, there is a warning that the confidence rating for both the South
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Rockies and the Lizard Range and Flathead are poor due to low field observations. “We’ve had very few observations in the last few days,” he said. “There is some uncertainty how the load of this new snow sitting on these deeper buried weak layers is going to behave.”
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