Out of the fire and into the chiller

Retired racer Wendy Wagner learning to map snow surfaces for Olympic competitions.

By Brian Maffly
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 05/12/2008 12:28:21 AM MDT

Wendy Wagner can't get enough Olympic snow. After retiring from elite competition in 2006, the two-time Olympic cross-country ski racer from Park City began studying snow as a graduate student in the University of Utah's meteorology department.
   Now she's part of a team of U. meteorologists hired by Canadian weather officials to help Vancouver Olympic organizers map snow surface temperatures and other characteristics on their new cross-country ski racing courses.
   "After I retired from racing, I asked myself, 'What do I want to do?' I really wanted to use my brain," Wagner said. "The two things that interest me most are snow science and mountain weather. The U. is cutting edge in mountain weather."
   The Utah team is led by meteorology professor John Horel, who helped conceive the idea of mapping the surface of competition snow at the 2002 Winter Games. The goal: providing coaches and technicians with crucial information for selecting and applying wax to skis.
   Horel's idea was to haul a sensor off the side of a snowmobile, taking measurements every meter, then enter the data into a special computer program. The program creates course maps that model predicted temperatures and other snow surface characteristics that can help teams choose waxes that maximize skis' ability to glide on snow.
   At the Salt Lake Games, Horel demonstrated that such mapping could be done at international ski competitions, which bar equipment from race courses before races. The U. shared the findings with Torino organizers for the 2006 Winter Games, where snow surface predictions proved valuable for Olympic teams, particularly those that couldn't hire crews to analyze snow surfaces every day. Vancouver Olympic officials hope to improve on the snow-mapping services for 2010 to boost the level of Nordic competition.
   "Everyone has increased chance to get the wax right," Wagner said. "Some teams don't have the resources and they are guessing and when you're guessing, the window for error is bigger."
   The wrong wax, however artfully applied, can mean the difference between victory and back of the pack.
   With the Winter Games heading back to North America, Canadian officials offered the job of helping map Nordic-venue snow to Utah snow wonks without even putting the project out to bid.
   "We are going to the world leaders in this specialized field of sports weather," said Environment Canada's Chris Doyle, the chief meteorologist for the 2010 Winter Games. Doyle's agency is the Canadian counterpart to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
   The Utah scientists' job is to train the Vancouver forecasters. Wagner has already visited the new venue at Callaghan Valley, which will host six World Cup events next year and will be the busiest Olympic venue, where the winners of a third of the medals will be decided in 2010.
   John Aalberg, another retired skier from Park City, designed the new Olympic venue, as well as the one at Soldier Hollow, the Nordic venue outside Heber City used for the 2002 Olympics. Aalberg's looping trail configurations at these courses share some similarities, but the two venues could not be more different.
   Callaghan is at a lower elevation, between 2,766 and 3,045 feet, and near the Pacific, so the climate is much wetter and warmer and the landscape is heavily timbered with nonpine conifers, notably yellow cedar and hemlock that shade parts of the course. Soldier Hollow, was high elevation and dry, timbered with patches of scrub oak on its north-facing aspects.
   Despite its low elevation, frequent winter rain and proximity to the ocean, Callaghan receives abundant snowfall. Average February snow depths are nearly eight feet. "They've never had a snow-free year in 30 years of data collecting," Doyle said.
   bmaffly@sltrib.com