Jim Thielen – December 8th, 2020

ICE, CERAMIC AND NATURALLY COOLED SNOW IN-RUNS

There has been a significant amount of innovation introduced in the sport of ski jumping. It’s evidenced in the sophistication of design that is applied to ski jumping facilities today. One simply needs to read the FIS Construction Norms(November 2018) to understand the complexity of today’s competition hill design.

As the largest ski jumping facility in North America, Pine Mountain was and continues to be a premier event on the competitive calendar. The Kiwanis Ski Club is well organized and led by a group that understands the importance of their event to the ski jumping community and significances of their event during the competitive season. The road to selection of the best ski jumpers in the United States runs through Pine Mountain. They have been conducting world-class ski jumping tournaments since 1939. The Kiwanis Club is currently in the process of updating their scaffolding in preparation for a Continental Cup event in February 2021 (https://www.fis-ski.com/ski-jumping/ski-jumping-news-multimedia/news/2020-21/ski-jumping-hill-in-iron-mountain-is-renovated).

When watching events on social media that are being conducted in Europe, a number of them have engineered in-run tracks. Before the innovation of engineered in-runs, there was Thursday at Pine Mountain.

Attached is a picture of the Pine Mountain scaffolding from the event program in 1970. The crew that snowed-in the Pine Mountain ski jump was always very good.  They knew that a hard surface was necessary for a successful event.  At that time, the profile of the scaffolding was a design from when skiers would be launched into the air and had not been modified to the current profile with a take-off that was six to eight degrees below level. To compensate for the old underlying design of the scaffolding, the snow in the transition of the in-run had to be built up to allow for the desired slope of the take-off. Water was applied to successive layers of snow to compact the layers of snow to create the desired transition and sturdy enough to withstand the weekend of competition rides. The resulting compressed snow, which was effectively ice, would be as much as three feet deep to compensate for the old scaffold transition.

Opportunities to get in some practice on a big hill were limited. Skiers would begin to arrive on Thursday to get two days of practice before competition on Saturday and Sunday. There was always the possibility that winds may blow-out a day of practice so arriving early was important. The snow in the transition was so hard that there would be no track worn into the transition despite many rides taken on Thursday.  For those of you that may have ridden a hill the size of Pine Mountain and given the take-off speeds, you knew that if you weren’t on top of the speed in the transition you could find yourself going sideways on the in-run. Thursday at Pine Mountain was always an interesting day of skiing. Failure to be on top of your speed on the in-run may result in potential consequences.

Congratulations to the Kiwanis Ski Club, community leaders and sponsors of Pine Mountain for changes that they are making to the facility. As part of the update, a ceramic in-run is being installed along with other world-class amenities. It will ensure the continued premier status of both the event and its rich legacy.