Groomer’s trail care makes him races’ unsung hero

FORT KENT – Virtually everyone this week in Fort Kent is talking about the weather and what it means for competition at the 2004 Biathlon World Cup.

And while he can’t do anything about the weather, Mike Paradis is the World Cup’s go-to guy for trail conditions.

Paradis is the chief trail groomer at the 10th Mountain Division Center in Fort Kent, the site this week of the World Cup event.

Every day after the competition, after the athletes are done training and after the media, officials and dignitaries have packed up their cameras, microphones and clipboards, the trails belong to Paradis.

“During the day no one but the World Cup athletes are allowed on the trails,” Paradis said during a short break Friday morning. “After 2 in the afternoon, no one at all is allowed on.”

As a result, much of what Paradis does to help make the World Cup races possible goes unseen by spectators and many of the athletes.

Unseen, but certainly not unappreciated.

On Friday officials inspected Paradis’ grooming handiwork and gave it a rating of excellent.

“We have been getting ratings of ‘very good’ every other day this week,” Paradis said. “This just makes my smile bigger.”

The goal, Paradis said, is to get the trails back to a flat surface after a day’s worth of competition traffic.

With daytime temperatures rising above the freezing mark early in the week causing snow to melt and refreeze during the cooler evenings, the trails also had to be specially conditioned.

To do that Paradis attaches a special groomer behind his snowmobile. The groomer has dozens of small, circular knives on springs which chop up the surface of the snow. Paradis can then pass a second groomer over the trail, smoothing out the now “softer” snow.

“Cross-country skis do not have edges like downhill skis,” he said. “They need the softer snow to be able to dig in for the turns.”

The freeze-thaw conditions this week have been a challenge for Paradis, but he said he and his crew are able to keep on top of it.

A forecast of up to 6 inches of new snow Friday night, possibly changing to rain Saturday, is just one more variable for the groomers.

One of the ways they have kept up with changing conditions is by working some long hours.

“Up until last night the most sleep I have gotten in a night since the weekend was four hours,” Paradis said.

One night, after grooming trails until 1 a.m. and needing to be back at the lodge for a 5 a.m. meeting, Paradis unrolled a mattress and caught a few winks in a small electronics room at the lodge.

“Mike has the most important job here and he is doing a super job,” Jeff Dubis, chief of the biathlon course, said Friday morning. “He knows what areas need those extra touches and when the right time is to get out there to do them.”

Paradis meets daily with Dubis and the coaches to present the grooming plan for the next day.

“They can either accept or reject my plan,” he said. “So far, they have accepted every one.”

Paradis has a volunteer crew of 15 people on call and said a lot of their work took place before the event even began, thanks to the lack of snow this winter.

“We had to bring in snow on trailers and then shovel it onto the trails,” he said. “Then I had to run the groomer over that.”

No stranger to Aroostook County skiing, Paradis was on his high school ski team in Fort Kent and was county champion in 1988. He picked up his grooming skills working as the head groomer at a ski resort in Cresta Butte, Colo., for eight years before coming on board at the Fort Kent facility four years ago.

“He’s perfect for this job,” Dubis said. “I just hope he does not get any job offers anywhere else.”