A fan reads a newspaper in the rain and fog at the finish area of the women's snowboard cross event during a weather delay at the Vancouver Winter Olympics Games on Cypress Mountain Tuesday. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

Olympic officials have been forced to cancel an additional 20,000 general admission tickets for six more events at the rain-plagued Cypress Mountain ski and snowboard venue north of Vancouver.

VANOC announced on Tuesday morning it plans to issue refunds for the standing room tickets after rain turned the spectator area into a dangerous mud pit.

On Monday, VANOC cancelled 8,000 tickets for the men's and women's snowboard cross events at the venue, located just north of Vancouver. The new cancellation brings the total number of cancelled tickets to 28,000, worth about $1.5 million.

The cancellations include the general admission category B tickets to:

• Snowboard halfpipe on Wednesday and Thursday.
• Ski cross on Feb. 21 and 23.
• Snowboard parallel giant slalom on Feb. 26 and 27.

The cancellations will not affect:

• Those with the category A grandstand tickets to the events listed above.
• Those with general admission tickets for the freestyle skiing aerials competitions.
• Those with tickets for alpine or Nordic skiing events in Whistler.

Warm winter creates problems

Olympic organizers have been struggling to keep the troubled Cypress Mountain venue open for Olympic competition during one of the mildest winters in more than 100 years for Vancouver.

In addition to the cancelled tickets, fog at Cypress also delayed the start of the women's snowboard cross event on Tuesday morning.

Further north at Whistler, weather has also forced the rescheduling of some alpine ski races, including Tuesday's men's super-combined event because of heavy snow, but no events at that venue have been cancelled.

The 31-day period ending on Feb. 9 was a record-breaking mild spell for Vancouver, according to Environment Canada meteorologist David Jones, who notes it's been at least 114 years since the area has recorded so many warm mid-winter days in a row.

As a result, organizers have been forced to truck and helicopter snow and hay bales to the mountain to build up the course and the spectator areas.

'It just wasn't possible to make the area safe for spectators.' — Clay Denton, VANOC vice-president

But the heavy rain melted the snow covering the hay bales in the spectator area, creating cracks.

VANOC decided to cancel tickets for the area for safety reasons after staff began sinking through up to their knees in the spaces between the bales, said Caley Denton, VANOC's vice-president of ticketing.

"Our senior management and venue team have spent significant time on site to try and find a way to accommodate spectators in the standing room areas for the events. We've exhausted all avenues but it just wasn't possible to make the area safe for spectators," said Denton.