No Snow, No Problem- Icer Air Chills Out the Streets of Frisco

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Fillmore & Vallejo

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It was hard to say which was more exotic, a stifling hot day in San Francisco or snow on Fillmore Street.

The two extremes converged Thursday in Pacific Heights for Icer Air 2005, as thousands of people in shorts, tank tops and sandals cheered Olympic skier Jonny Moseley and 20 other professional skiers and snowboarders as they cruised down the Fillmore Street hill, flew off a jump at Vallejo Street and landed in a pile of slush near Green Street.

With temperatures hovering around 80, the promotional event sponsored by a Nevada spray-on ski-wax company went mostly smoothly after weeks of permit hearings, community meetings and complaints by neighbors frustrated over safety issues.

There were, however, some problems. At one point in the show, a snowboarder skidded off the landing strip and flew into the crowd. Two people were treated at a hospital for minor injuries as a result.

One of the injured was an Icer volunteer who was hit by the errant snowboarder.

"I'm just banged up a bit. I didn't get out of the way in time. It's not a big deal," said the woman, who was bleeding from the head as she waited to be treated by paramedics.

There were also concerns about the weather and the hill's steepness.

The heat made the snow so soggy that many of the competitors did not clear the jump area and wiped out at Vallejo Street.

"The hill's not steep enough," said snowboarder John Jackson of Mammoth (Mono County), who competed in the event. "It's really hard to get speed, so you don't make the landing. That's how you blow out your knees."

Jackson's friend, Lane Knaack, a skier from Mammoth who did not compete Thursday, agreed.

"They should've done it on a steeper hill,'' he said. "They didn't put too much thought into it."

Despite the setbacks, many of the thousands who found excuses to take off four hours in the middle of a weekday were thrilled at the novelty of snow on a San Francisco street.

Against a stunning backdrop of San Francisco Bay, the skiers and snowboarders did midair twists and turns -- reproducing a scene from Tahoe in February on one of the hottest days of the year in San Francisco.