BETHEL – Easy come, easy go.

After record snowfall in December seemingly gave area high school skiing teams the hope of a rare full season wrapped under their Christmas trees, Mother Nature played the role of Grinch in the opening week of January.

Sixty-degree temperatures and heavy rain melted most of that white wonder in a matter of days. On Thursday, in fact, this year’s Telstar Relays appeared headed in the same direction as the 2006 and 2007 races – cancelled, or at least postponed due to a lack of ski-able terrain at Telstar High School.

“Right here at the start-finish line (an open area shared by Telstar’s field hockey and softball fields), you couldn’t have skied it on Thursday,” said meet director Bob Remington. “All the warm weather rotted out the snow underneath. It was scary.”

Skiers and coaches learned that day on the Maine High School Skiing web site that the meet was in jeopardy. Friday’s ice-to-rain mix and temperatures in the mid-30s seemed to spell doom for the popular but star-crossed race.

And it should have, if not for the generosity and time investment of three men: Mike Cooper of Bethel Inn and Country Club, Gould Academy ski coach Jeremy Nellis, and usual Telstar High trail groomer Gary Wight.

“They brought over a machine with a drag attached to it,” Remington said of Cooper and Nellis, “and they made something like 14 or 15 passes with it. And Gary was out here in the driving rain clearing brush and doing a bunch of other things until well after dark. They were all back here at 5 o’clock (Saturday) morning. They got their reward when they saw how it looked.”

Boys, girls and mixed relay races went off without a hitch on a 3.8-kilometer course that competitors pronounced lightning-fast and miraculously in mid-winter shape.

“If you didn’t have a large automobile, you could have driven over it this morning,” Remington said.