October 2023 news and events

Hey ski friends! The fall rains seem to have settled in…so instead of complaining, we are saving our energy to gear up for a great ski season! The snow hasn’t fallen yet, but ski club elves (i.e. volunteers) are readying the lodge and trails and rental shed for the start of our winter recreation wonderland out at Onion Lake Ski Trails. We have three things officially on our calendar for the fall, and then the newsy other bits of information will follow.

First thing on the calendar: memberships!

Exciting news from Pat, our membership director:

It's that time of the year again when we start to dust off our skis, register for SVNSC season passes and start thinking snow! Registration opened October 12th and can be done online or by mailing the printable form. As always, our Early Birds get lots of chances to win some cool prizes, including a free membership for the 2024-25 season. Be sure to register by December 1st (at midnight) to get in on the fun! Starting December 2nd, the rates will increase and there are no more draw prizes to be won.

Once you have registered as a ski club member, your passes will be mailed out on December 8th.

Also….. We are looking to the membership for some draw prizes for our Early Bird draws.

Goods, services, arts/crafts, food items...anything is appreciated! Please contact svnscmembership@gmail.com if you have something that you would like to donate.

Second thing on the calendar: ski swap!

46th Annual Ski Swap on Nov. 4th at Kitsumkalum Hall

If you are looking for used Nordic gear, or have Nordic gear you might want to sell at this event, the details for shopping and for consignment are on the poster.

Bart and his crew at Shames Mountain Ski Patrol organize this event every year and even our cross country club benefits from their expertise and first aid equipment.

SVNSC will have a table at the ski swap, so stop in to say hi, and enter our draw for a package of stroopwafels.

We are also looking for volunteers to sit at the table for a few hours, to talk with the people, and to answer questions about Nordic gear. If this is something you would like to do, email snowvalleynordic@gmail.com

Third thing on the calendar:

In case you think you’ve missed out on a fall work party, you haven’t!

Sunday, November 5th, starting at 10 a.m., meet at the lodge.

Dean has a few projects he’s dreamed up, including the construction of a small covered wood storage structure near the new shelter on the Moose Highway, and some trail pruning, and the perpetual need for bucking, hauling, and splitting wood for our lodge, shelters, and fire pits. We will provide lunch.

On that note, are there any volunteers for making soup or sweets?

Email Cathy: snowvalleynordic@gmail.com

NEW TROLLS COMING SOON TO THE TROLL TRAIL FOREST! Twenty-four wood troll heads are being prepped to have faces painted on them. After completion, the troll faces will be mounted in the trees for skiers to find. If you are aged 11 to 100, and interested in painting a troll face, this is a chance to display your artistic talent! If the Jackrabbit and Track Attack programs gave you your start in skiing, this is an opportunity to help encourage the next generation of young kids to ski. If you would like to participate, please email Colleen at colleensports@citywest.ca. The exact date for painting faces this fall is still to be determined.

Calling all coaches:

Lesley and Dara are looking for more coaches to help with the Jack Rabbit program this winter. If you already are a coach and haven’t been in touch with Lesley, please email her. If you aren’t a coach yet but would be interested in becoming a coach (we provide training), please email Lesley: lesley.snowvalley@gmail.com

You won’t regret helping out with these keen little skiers! To quote one of our young skiers who was interviewed for a local news broadcast a few years ago, “I can feel the energy!” Come out and feel that energy! The Jack Rabbits program runs 10 weeks on Saturday mornings, January-March.

Many of you have benefited from cross country ski lessons. Over the years, volunteers from the club have stepped forward to learn how to teach cross country skiing to beginner skiers, taking the courses offered by the Canadian Association of Nordic Ski Instructors (CANSI). Would this interest you?

We are offering, once again, the CANSI XC Level I course, at Onion Lake Ski Trails, February 16-18, 2024. It’s a three-day course for those new to XC ski instruction. It will give you the skills and resources to teach classic and skate technique to beginner skiers using CANSI’s teaching methodology with a focus on safety and skill progression.

Participants will have to pay the course fees, but the club will reimburse half the amount if you try out your new teaching skills in this ski season, and the other half will be reimbursed if you instruct in the 2024-2025 ski season. (You will always be paired with a more experienced instructor as a beginner instructor.) For information on prerequisites and the skiing standards that participants should have, and to sign up for the course, here is the link.

And for further information, Cheryl and Julie are the ones to talk to!

And for all of you already-certified instructors, most of you are due to attend a refresher course, which will be held on Monday, February 19, 2024, at Onion Lake Ski Trails. This is free, but you need to sign up. There are 10 spots available.

See you on the trails!

Pre-season update, plus a bike race on Sept 16!

Hey ski friends! The pace is starting to pick up again for everything that will make the upcoming cross country ski season successful! Some clubs in the province have started their membership drive already. But not us, so relax; the membership director (Pat) says the online and paper registration forms will be live for mid-October. (Watch Facebook posts, emails, and website updates for membership information.) Meanwhile, we’ve been busy during the summer fixing things and mowing trails and painting outhouses. Dean and Doug have put in many many hours out at Onion Lake fixing machines and then working those machines, and Dean’s getting a bit whiny about the lack of cookies. Just saying! This is a difficult subject to bring up. I know we are all busy, over-committed, over-extended, on other Boards, looking after kids or parents or neighbors, etc., etc. Our ski club depends on volunteers 100%, and our programs and events will suffer greatly if we can’t get people from the membership to help out. There will be requests for volunteers over the course of the ski season for specific events or programs. Evaluate within yourselves how much the ski club, and access to the trails, mean to you, and what you can do to help the executive and key volunteers make an exciting and eventful season. Looking ahead to this winter, there will be no Women’s Ski Fest or Tour de Soup unless we can pull more volunteers into these events. The rental shed will have limited hours. Dean needs a few more groomers, to keep the trails open all season. We will need a school group coordinator and school group coaches or we can’t welcome the kids from the various schools onto the trails. All of these programs and events are the pulse of the club, and we’re really suffering from lack of people enthusiastically helping it all happen. The volunteers who go out there and give of their time and talents are happy, hard-working, and lots of fun to be around—who wouldn’t want to join us?

Antler Bike Challenge on Sept 16

We encourage the use of the trails for biking, hiking, and horseback riding in the off-season months. One of our ski club members, Sam, has planned a bike challenge for the Clearwater Trail. See the poster for more details. Come out to take part in the race, or to cheer the bikers on, grab a coffee and a cookie, and meet some new friends.

We also need some volunteers to help out on the trails as controllers, and we need dozens and dozens of cookies! Contact Sam (nwbc.challenge@gmail.com) if you can help out in the controller department and contact Cathy if baking is more your style of contributing to the event.

Work Party

We will probably have a work party this fall. This usually means splitting and stacking lots of firewood, as well as other tasks in and around the stadium area. We will also need to have a large contingent of people to wax and scrape skis for the rental shed. We’ll let you know when this happens. Here are some other opportunities for maintenance of the club facilities and getting ready for the season, which can be done any time:

1. The main lodge and the Moose Hut will need a good clean before the snow flies.

2. You hikers who use the trails for outdoor adventures in the summer and fall, Doug and Dean are always whining about the big rocks that are on the trails. The rocks do damage to the summertime mower and to the wintertime grooming machines, if they are jutting out too far. Please purposefully walk your favorite trail, and toss those rocks deep into the bush. (Bonus: upper body strength training!)

3. Dean and his crew have been replacing the wooden sign posts on the trail system with metal poles this fall. They need to be painted. Any painting lovers out there? It would require the use of a vehicle that can go down the Beaver and wherever else the sign posts are located. Let us know if you can help.

Kal Tire has been sponsoring kids’ skill development programs across the province for many years. We appreciate their commitment to bringing more kids onto trails and into the sport of cross country skiing. The attached coupon is for cross country ski club members only, so if you are looking to get new tires for this winter’s driving out to Onion Lake, this is a great opportunity to save a bit of money and support the company that supports our kids’ programs. The coupon is valid for the Terrace Kal Tire.

Postlude:

This is just “an aside” but is still important. Someone has stolen the toilet paper, paper towels, cans of coffee, cling wrap, aluminum foil, and the boxes of garbage bags that were stored in the kitchen in the lodge. We keep the lodge open all year round, and are very trusting of the patrons that use the lodge facility over the off season months. But stealing toilet paper? garbage bags? yeesh. That’s pretty low. If you’ve read this far into this newsletter, you deserve an extra cookie at our work party or other event this season! Come out and claim your prize.

See you on the trails!

news plus St. Paddy's Day Cookie and Poker Ski

Hi everyone, We’ve certainly had some great skiing in the last few weeks! Sorry this didn’t happen in January, but it’s sure happening now, so please get out there and enjoy the trails, if you haven’t been out there lately. We have over a meter of packed snow almost everywhere; this is good news for spring skiing. The life of a skier in the spring could be this: garden in the morning, ski in the afternoon, and go hiking or kayaking in the evening as the days are getting longer! Who can’t love this? We are still selling half-season memberships at a very good price, if you aren’t a member but still want to get on board to get lots of skiing in over the next month or so. The Jack Rabbits program finished on Saturday, with end-of-lessons activities for all the age groups. The coaches did an amazing job this season, working with the sometimes challenging weather (and sometimes the challenging puddles) to keep the kids on skis, learning, and having fun. The rental shed hours are coming to an end. This weekend the shed will be open Saturday and Sunday, 1-4 p.m. After Sunday, March 19, the rental shed will be closed. We are short of volunteers in this important club outreach, so think about volunteering for next season when you sign up to ski. We’ve had an assortment of school groups (including the Spirit North kids), kids’ groups, and adult groups enjoying the trails this season. Thank you to the groomers and rental shed volunteers and the instructors and coaches who have helped to get these groups on skis! This is a crucial piece of introducing people to the sport and our trails, and a volunteer opportunity if you have time (next season) on weekdays.

St. Paddy’s Day Cookie and Poker Ski on Sunday, March 19

Looking for a social event and a ski event and a cookie event all in the same day? Put on your greenest ski clothes, and join us for a St. Patrick’s Day tour of the Beaver and Clearwater trails, eat some cookies at various stations, and accumulate playing cards to compete for the best poker hand. One of the cookie stations will be at the new shelter that overlooks Onion Lake—come check it out! Registration starts at 1:00 p.m. $5 per person (proceeds going to Moose Hut maintenance project and troll-making for the Troll Trail) (people without season’s passes will have to pay regular day use fees as well) Prizes: —best/most green costume (booklet of 10 ski pass tickets) and child prizes for best dressed too! —best poker hand (free membership next season), prizes for 2nd and 3rd place as well —other random draws for all in attendance

Can you help us run this event? We need volunteers (10 people at the 5 cookie stations, 2-3 people in the kitchen at the lodge, 2 people at the registration table, and 2 poker hand adjudicators). Contact Cathy if you can volunteer on Sunday. We also need lots of cookies, about 1000 of them! Contact Pat if you can bake some cookies, OR drop off at Kim’s (4116 Benner St., Terrace) or Pat’s (37 Duncan St., Kitimat)