PORT ANGELES – The Winter Ice Village in downtown Port Angeles is coming together fast in preparation for Friday’s grand opening. The ice rink is bigger than last year and the ice has already set up since the water went in over the weekend.

“It’s going great. We have a ton of people down here working and making a lot of progress, and tomorrow we’re doing Zamboni training in the afternoon. Yeah, our volunteer Rink Managers will be getting trained on the Zamboni.”

That’s Chamber Director Marc Abshire, not hiding his excitement to see the project expanding in just its second season. We reminded him that last year, when the idea was first floated, not everyone thought it would be a success.

“You know, I kind of expected it to be okay. We wouldn’t have dived into it like we did without, kind of, really taking a close look at whether it was possible or not. We decided it was possible. So we kind of expected it to at least do okay. We were hoping that it would do really well, and that’s what it did. We’re kind of expecting the same this year, actually. We’re also expecting a lot of people to come to Port Angeles from outside of Clallam County this year because the words getting out there.”

One thing that won’t hurt in getting the word out is the “skate cam” that’s already up and running at skatecam.org, where folks can watch friends and relatives on the ice in real time.

The Winter Ice Village opens Friday at 9:00am, and the Grand Opening Celebration is at 5:00pm.