If you go to the Boundary County Fairgrounds anytime soon, you might notice something different about the basketball court: it is now a community ice skating rink. Local skaters can thank Boundary County Parks and Recreation, as well as a handful of volunteers, for setting up a rink for everyone in the community to enjoy.

Brandon Glaza, who is on the Boundary County Parks and Recreation board, helped to organize the project, but he gives a majority of the credit to volunteers who are willing to work out in the cold to make the rink a reality. According to Glaza, “The Boundary County Parks and Rec bought all the materials and things like that, but its mostly volunteers that help set it up.”

Glaza says that the project could not have been completed without help from the Cossalman family and Steve Petesch.

Petesch is also working on organizing a local recreational hockey league.

Glaza says that although the county used to have an ice skating rink in years past, it wasn’t until recently, maybe four or five years ago, that Petesch had the idea to bring it back: “[Petesch] got the material donated from Idaho Forest Group for the boards, and the county chipped in for other materials like the tarps.” It was then up to the volunteers to do the manual labor. They will also be in charge of maintaining the surface, which means sweeping and refilling it throughout the winter months.

Glaza reminds the community that while the rink is for everyone’s use, it will only be open when weather permits.

“That’s the trickiest part with this,” Glaza says. “You really need to have temperatures in the 20’s to maintain good ice, so although there’s no set time [that it will be open], there’s a handful of us that monitor it. So it’ll just be open when the skating’s good, but if it gets soft or we’re trying to build up the ice, we lock it.”

Glaza realizes that people don’t want to drive down to the rink with their skates only to see the gate locked, so he is currently working with Pam Copeland, another member of the Parks and Rec board, in order to set up a Facebook group to notify the community of the rink’s status.

As long as conditions allow it, the rink will be open to the public during the nighttime as well. The interior light switch, which is located near the southwest corner of the slab (the corner closest to the fairgrounds buildings), features a timer that can be set for five or 10 hours.

Because the weather plays such an important factor, and winters in Boundary County can be somewhat fickle, Glaza says that some years they are able to get the rink set up, but it is hardly ever open. “Last winter, we set it up and it was pretty much a puddle from Christmas all the way through the end of the season.” He went on to say that four of five weeks of skating is probably the most they’ve had over the past few winters.

People that don’t own a pair of ice skates can still enjoy the rink, now that Far North Outfitters in Bonners Ferry is renting skates to the public. A pair of ice skates costs $6 per day, and they can be picked up anytime during regular business hours but must be returned by noon the next day.