'World-class' moguls course built at Crabbe Mountain for Canada Games open to public

Skiers at the Canada Winter Games got to test their skills on a recently-built moguls course at Crabbe Mountain northwest of Fredericton during the competition last week — and now anyone can try the course for themselves.

Jordan Cheney, Crabbe Mountain's general manager, said now that the Games are over, the moguls run will remain open for day-to-day skiing and snowboarding.

"The general public can have some more variety on hill and get to check out what a Canada Games, or a world class mogul course, skis like," said Cheney.

Moguls are freestyle skiing on a downhill slope covered in bumps of snow. The terrain requires skiers to make swift, technical turns down the course.

Brian Spence, chief of competition with Freestyle Skiing Canada, said the average ski time for the 20-metre course is 21 seconds. 

He said the turn score makes up 60 per cent, the time score is 20 per cent and skiers also must do two unique jumps that make up the remainder of the score — with difficulty and execution in mind.

The Canada Games moguls competition took place on Feb. 24 and 25, with Quebec winning gold for the individual and dual competitions and British Columbia taking the top spot for the moguls team mix.

The course that was used for the Games took a lot of work to get ready, said Spence.

He said the area is groomed flat before the bumps are laid out. Then, a winch cat, which is a special type of groomer, will back down the hill pushing little piles of snow into each spot where the mogul is meant to go. The jumps also need to be skied over multiple times after they are created because the machine can only so so much.

The makers of the run also need to manually "chop" below the jumps with pickaxes, said Spence, which is where they will cut