Pond skating comes at a cost during balmy winters in Okanagan, Kamloops

It’s a quintessential Canadian experience to strap on some skates and take to the local frozen pond, but you may never get on the ice in the Thompson-Okanagan region if you’re waiting for Mother Nature.

The only outdoor rinks in Kamloops, Kelowna, Vernon and Penticton take hours of maintenance and intricate machinery to keep running throughout the winter — as long as it stays under 8 Celsius.

“Around here, this year especially, we haven’t had the weather to have many outdoor ponds that have frozen, so (Stuart Park) has been limited to the only surface anyone can use,” City of Kelowna recreation facilities supervisor Stephen Hebden said.

Kelowna’s Stuart Park rink is a hit throughout the winter with families circling the ice each day and occassional hockey players sneaking a game in the evening. In the warm Okanagan winter, it’s no simple task to keep a clean frozen sheet beside the lake.

The region sees an annual influx of new residents, many coming from the prairie provinces or Ontario where outdoor rinks are a standard neighbourhood feature. As the cold sets in, they might be managed by a neighbourhood volunteer, who regularly waters it with a hose and keeps kids from stepping on before it’s frozen.

An outdoor rink in the Thompson-Okanagan region needs a little more dedication and more investment, especially amid this unseasonably warm winter.

Kelowna built its Stuart Park ice sheet in 2010, and its construction is not dissimilar to a typical modern indoor rink.

Instead of the ammonia-cooled brine lines used at an indoor facility, its glycol lines are cooled with the city hall air conditioner across the street. Those pipes travel below Water Street to the waterfront concrete pad, where they keep water below freezing temperature up to around 8 C.

The glycol fluid pulls heat from above and away from the ice, taking it back to the air conditioner to be cooled again.

It’s not perfect. The warm winds from the lake and direct sunlight can risk thawing the ice, but it still means Kelowna families can skate when the valley bottom has little to no snow for an entire season.

“We’re always keeping an eye on the weather and staying on the side of safety,” Hebden said. “This year there have been some more challenges.”

Speaking to iNFOnews.ca at the end of January, he said the rink had been closed at least three days so far. Since then, it’s been closed at least once more as the region faces a warm spell in early February.

The 8 C marker is a guideline, but they can sometimes withstand temperatures that climb a bit higher, helped by lower temperatures overnight.

The city’s parks department manages the ice throughout the season, with crews periodically using the Zamboni to clear the ice throughout the day and each evening. Among Kelowna’s rinks, Stuart Park is a favourite for maintenance staff, met with a crowd of families eager to get back on.

“All the guys in the rinks, we’ll give them a go. Certain days of the year, they love to come down,” Hebden said. “All the kids are out, they love it and give them a cheer.”

The new Kamloops rink follows a similar design to Stuart Park’s, and it was a rapid success when the city opened it last month.

City of Kamloops project manager Adam Gordon said the crowds even exceeded expectations when it opened last month, and it was heartening for staff working on the project to see how quickly the community took to the ice.

“Building whatever construction projects we have around here, it’s not a fulfillment you get to see when you finish a road project. Everyone’s just satisfied you’re out of the way,” he said. “So, things like this are definitely the fun part of the job.”

It cost $7 million to build and runs off its own chiller nearby, also using glycol lines to cool the concrete sheet below the ice. The skating loop through the trees at Riverside Park was a long-awaited project, bringing life to the sprawling downtown green space in the winter.

Neither the Kamloops nor Kelowna rinks allow hockey, but Gordon said Riverside Park will free up public skating time at indoor rinks, so hockey teams and figure skaters, for example, have more times to pick from.

Penticton’s outdoor rink does allow for hockey on a daily alternating basis, though it hasn’t come without friction between casual skaters and hockey players. Vernon’s also allows for hockey based on pre-scheduled times.