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