Visibility under partly cloudy skies was unlimited from the slopes of Cypress Mountain yesterday, the site of the 2010 snowboarding and freestyle skiing competitions.
The temperature was just above freezing; no snow had fallen in the past 24 hours.
But despite the unseasonably warm weather, the Olympic venue 30 minutes away from downtown Vancouver was quickly taking shape. The courses were improving daily with snow made by machine and trucked in from higher altitudes, mountain staff said.
"Everyone on Cypress Mountain is optimistic about the conditions and we look forward to the arrival of Olympic athletes from around the world," said their website.
The warm weather has fuelled speculation that organizers will decide in the coming days to move the events to Whistler (90 minutes north of Vancouver) or Sun Peaks (400 kilometres east of the city.) The Vancouver Olympic organizing committee, VANOC, is to hold a news conference this morning at which it is expected to squelch the rumours with photos and video of the sites.
Earlier this week, Premier Gordon Campbell said he saw "impressive amounts of snow" at higher elevations during a helicopter tour of the mountain.
VANOC spokesman Renee Smith-Valade said yesterday the group is working flat out to prepare the venues. "We're full steam ahead with preparing Cypress as the Olympic venue for snowboard and freestyle athletes. It's going to be a spectacular venue for the competitions," she wrote in an e-mail response to The Globe and Mail.
Preparations on the slopes have been continuing around the clock. Workers are pushing snow from higher altitudes down to a staging site, where it is trucked to the freestyle finish area and then pushed up to supplement snow on the Moguls course. Also, helicopters are flying large hay bales to areas along the sky-and-snowboard cross course to help shape backing for the large banked corners. Meanwhile, the snowmaking team is producing machine-made snow for the Olympic courses.
Conditions may remain unchanged in the days leading up to the events. Brett Anderson, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com, cautioned that predicting weather accurately for more than five days was difficult. But he detected some trends.
"We do not see any real cold weather between now and the Olympic games. That doesn't mean it can't snow - but the pattern does not support any Arctic air coming down."