Volunteers have been working day and night to get the Prince George Ice Oval ready for the upcoming season.
The facility is coming off its shortest season ever last year due to several warm spells.
Ice Oval Committee President, Kathy Lewis told MyPGNow.com it’s been a busy time.
“We started flooding on Sunday and we have been running four floods a day starting at eight in the morning and ending at eight at night. If the weather holds, we are hoping we could be possibly skating by the weekend but certainly by early next week.”
“We need it to be quite a bit below zero during the day in order to be flooding very much. We also had a problem with our track, which had some very serious ruts in it because of some heavy equipment that drove on it in the summer when it was a bit too wet.”
Lewis and company are keeping their fingers crossed Mother Nature will be a lot more cooperative than last winter.
“Hopefully it’s better than last year, which was our shortest season ever. If we can avoid the mid-season thaws that really helps us because every time we have the ice melt we have to rebuild it depending on how bad it melts.”
The Ice Oval will follow similar protocols to last year where the Canfor House will remain off-limits while a decision on skate rentals is still being determined.