24.02.10
Ricker is an inventive member of the Whistler Weasel Workers , a volunteer catalogue dating to the 1970s that prepares courses for international ski races here. No estimate has been bigger than the day-and-night preparation for the Winter Olympics.
On Monday at the Weasel Household, the popular after-work beer tent, Ricker wore an designation badge that showed he had worked all 22 days of the month on the movement including last Tuesday, when Maëlle Ricker won the gold medal in snowboard furious .
“I was trying to keep people from crossing the course where the winch-cats were working,” Ricker said of the time his daughter won, about 90 minutes away at Cypress Mountain . Someone told him over a walkie-talkie.
Yes, the Weasel Workers are a dedicated batch, about 400 people strong who have expanded their friendly brotherliness to about 1,200 for the Olympics. They are people who can take a few weeks off and do not mind traipsing up and down the courses (one men’s and one women’s) at all hours shoveling snow, erecting fences, fixing gates and so on. They do the anonymous grunt business.
Source: New York Times