Welcome to Cypress mountain!

I finally arrived in Vancouver Ecke Georgia and Denman. We got free accomodation here with Vanoc. They sqeezed us a hidden little hotel called "Buckman Hotel". The whole place looks like a haunted house, scary as! Each room got massive closets but no washrooms. So come that there are two common washrooms and two common showers to share for the whole corridor. SCORE!
But whatever as the thing is still for free.

We officially work for Vanoc / the Olympics now on Cypress Mountain. Our misson is all the On-Snow-Transport with a couple of Cypress guys. All transports happen on snowmobiles and later on maschines called Sherpa. The Sherpas are made in Italy and look like a oversized Sled (Snowmobile). They have two Tracks, weight 1400 pounds, run 4-Strokes and are extremly powerfull. A Sherpa can transport up to 10 persons with a trailer. Their only problem is the can only ride on hardpacked groomed trails otherwise the will get stuck. And this is a big problem in Cypress as the have average temperatures above zero since mid December. Cypress hasnt been able to make snow since beginning of January so the have a real snowissue on their venue. In those temperatures snow converts slowly into billions of tiny little ice balls which dont stick together anymore. This happened on all the snow streets wich we use for our transportation operations. So everywhere where we ride the sleds is approximately 3-4 feet of slush. That stuff is pretty challanging to ride on. So come there are rolled sleds everyday and a bid of a crazy atmosphere. Its just awesome!
I will try to get a couple good shots of a few of the gnarly areas.

We work 10 hour shifts but therfore we have to commute from Vancouver to Cypress wich takes about 1,5 hours each trip. So when iam in for a shift starting a 7:00 am i have to get up at 4:30 am which sucks balls! Vanoc supplies us with lunch and dinner everyday we are working on the venue.

Whatelse is there to say? The actual Games start on Feb,12 so iam stoked for that and this will prob be another story for Badischebotschaft.blogspot.com ;)
(Helene Countdown: 18 Tage)