Crews await stretch of cold weather to make ice at rinks

“We’ll go nuts when it’s cold enough”

It takes cold temperatures—consecutively cold temperatures—to bring local sheets of ice to fruition.
So far, we haven’t had that.
Therefore, we haven’t got any ice.

It’s been a tough stretch of weather for making ice on the local rinks, with nighttime temperatures barely optimal and daytime temperatures well above the freezing level.
“We’re just waiting for temperatures,” says Crested Butte parks supervisor Pete Curvin. “We like single digits to low teens at night.”
Curvin has been making ice at Big Mine Ice Arena for the past nine years and this isn’t the first time the opening of the rink has been hampered by an uncooperative Mother Nature.
“We’ve seen it before,” says Curvin of the weather. “It really just takes a week of really cold temps.”
While cold temperatures have hit the valley in the past month, Curvin points out that recent temperatures would have destroyed what ice they had made.
“The bottom layer gets rotten and you get hollow spots and it just messes up the sheet,” says Curvin. “You need the bottom layers to be the strongest. Anything we had done would have been erased.”
Meanwhile, Curvin and his crew are patiently waiting for a nice cold window and are ready when it happens.
“I’m checking temps all night long,” says Curvin. “We’re ready, all we have to do is pour water. We’ll go nuts when it’s cold enough.”
But Curvin admits that if the weather remains uncooperative, he may start pushing the envelope in an effort to start getting layers down.
“If it doesn’t get any better, we’ll start forcing the issue,” says Curvin.
What does this mean for hockey?
Well, while town league isn’t scheduled to start until after the New Year, kids games are scheduled for Big Mine Ice Arena starting on Tuesday, December 16.
Crested Butte director of Parks and Recreation Jake Jones is skeptical they will be able to host the game but he does have a back-up plan, the indoor rink in Gunnison.
“Right now it looks like it will be hard to pull off,” says Jones. “But we’re working closely with the city of Gunnison.”
Meanwhile, Chris Behan, manager for the Crested Butte South Property Owners Association, took a chance and managed to get just over two inches down prior to the recent two-day heat wave and will continue his aggressive campaign.
“We’re still working on it,” says Behan.
Behan says he hopes to have his rink going by the end of the week.
“We’re shooting for the 15th,” says Behan. “It’s ambitious.”