RCL volunteers put in hundreds of hours (typically more than 400) to prepare the area and flood, shovel, and maintain the ice. If you’d like to join the rink crew and help with snow removal, we can add you to our list. We wait until all the flakes fall from a snow event before we start pushing snow.
The Ritchie Community League Rink is a volunteer run and operated rink. The city does not provide staff or equipment to prepare or maintain the ice surfaces.
Occasionally we will provide an honorarium for our rink crew leads for flooding and all round ice maintenance.
Open and close the rink
For the start of 2023-2024, we will be looking for volunteers to help with our scheduled opening and closing of the rink. Part of the opening is to ensure the ice is safe for the day. Orientations start in October.
Snow removal
It's not expected that everyone on the rink crew goes out when it has snowed to remove the snow but it would be nice to have 4-6 volunteers to help after a major snow event. Assist as you can, when you can.
Generally speaking the gate will be open to remove snow after the snow stops.
If the snow stops at 8 pm, the gate will remain closed that night and removal will begin the next morning starting at 10am or whenever a rink crew lead can open the gate.
Snow removal starts with outer area, rink last. Yes, this is by design.
Rink remains closed until all the snow is removed.
All are welcome to push and shovel - tools are provided. How to?
In the rink, snow needs to be pushed to the north side into mini burb line, then we use the snowthrower to throw the burb over the boards. If there are enough volunteers, this can be done by hand.
Those who have been orientated to operate the snow thrower will do so to assist taking snow off the rink.
For outer rink area, snow needs to be pushed towards the fence, again into a burb line so snow thrower can throw the pile through fence.
Currently, we use a Basecamp message to let volunteers know when the gate is open and snow work has began. For 2023-2024 we will be looking at a text notification as well.
There are scrappers for our volunteers to use. When snow is moved into a line in the rink (as seen below) or into a line in the outer rink area, the snowthrower comes out and moves it off the surface.
A scraper then cleans up after the snowthower (the wheels like snow) and shovels used to remove the last little bits.
Creating a mini burb line for the snowthrower.
A good little workout.
Scraping after skating
Ice scraping is for anyone who is using the rink and there late at night. It generally happens in the evening after skating is done for the day. Those of you who skate know how important this is.
Ideally two to four people, every other night or when needed.
No need to sign up, just pitch in.
If your scraping the rink, please do the entire rink and then remove the snow with the shovels.
This is critical so that snow piles are not left to fuse to the ice surface.
If we leave those piles, we loose the ‘best community rink’ status :)
Rink flooding
The Rink is flooded (resurfaced) weekly, every Friday before the weekend. The outer area is flooded (resurfaced) as needed, anywhere from weekly to bi-weekly.
Before flooding, the surface needs to be cleaned (scraping). Ideally 4 people come out at 8:30pm to help prep the surface and help set-up flooding equipment.
Pre-season prep
Before we can build ice we need a crew to help prep the area. In October, a call will go out for volunteers to help. The list includes: tennis courts are taken down, entire surface is removed of debris and leaves, and rink benches are put in place.\
It takes a couple snow falls so snow burbs cab be built (for court area), and then flooding can begin.
To make the ice foundation, it takes rink crew leads a good three nights in a row when temperatures are -10 and there's no wind or snow. That window can be small which is why there is never really a firm start date. We will be looking for volunteers to help with equipment set-up and storing.