Join us for a fun ski loppet on Sunday, Feb 5. All skiers are welcome.

The club will be holding the Ptarmigan Loppet this Sunday at 11:00am at the cabin (conveniently before the Superbowl…). Loppets are fun races intended to be more of a time trial than a competitive race against others.

There will be categories for both skate skiing and classic skiing. The distances planned are a 6km easy course on the flats for any beginners who would like to participate. For those looking for a bigger challenge we will have 8km/16km/24km distances consisting of both hills and flats. There will be a water station set up at the cabin for those doing the longer distances.

Registration starts at 10:00am and close at 10:40am. We will be opening up the equipment room for anyone who would like to participate but does not have equipment.

We encourage everyone to come out and participate. Again I would like to emphasize that this is not a competitive event, it is meant to be fun and encourage people to get out on the trails.

Join us after the loppet for snacks and hot chocolate.

Where: Doug Barnes Cabin & Birchwood Trails

When: Sunday, Feb 5

Time: 11am start

Registration: starts at 10am

Cost: FREE!

Distances: 5km, 10km, 20km

PNSC members can borrow club equipment for the loppet.

If you would like to volunteer to help out during this event please let us know!

The trails are in great shape after the snow we got earlier in the week. The forecast looks great for the weekend so the skiing should be awesome.

The trail map has been updated and a big thank you goes out to Suncor Energy for printing off new brochures for us. These copies can be picked up at the cabin.

Youth lessons resume this Saturday at 11:00am as scheduled. Be sure to dress warmly in layers if the weather is still cold

Adult lessons take place on Saturdays at 2pm. The equipment room and registration start at 1pm. Please arrive before 2pm if you need to borrow equipment or register.

Wednesday night skis continue starting at 7pm at the cabin. We will lend out equipment to anyone who would like to come out and ski on Wednesday starting at 6:45pm. We will stop lending out equipment and lock the door to the garage at 7pm sharp as our volunteers who take care of our equipment are also avid skiers and enjoy being out on the trails too. We have groups for all speeds and abilities so everyone is welcome.

Although the issue of vehicles on the trails has not been as bad lately compared to past seasons, we are still finding sections of trails damaged by unauthorized vehicles in the trails. These damaged sections require a lot of time from our grooming team to repair in order to erase the damage. The club encourages all of its members to contact municipal by-law at 780-788-4200 should you come across any unauthorized vehicles on the trails while out skiing. Please provide as much information as possible when calling in including the type of vehicle, colour, number of occupants, license plate numbers, location of incident. If possible and avoiding a confrontation, taking photos with your cell phone also helps. Municipal by-law takes this issue very seriously and will follow-up with all complaints.

The fine folks out at Gregoire Lake Provincial Park (located about 15 minute south of town on highway 881) wanted to let you know that they will be grooming some ski trails out there this winter for anyone interested. Here is the information that they provided:

The trails are approximately 8 KM's in length and run in a "Figure 8" pattern. The trail itself has some great views of the Park's mature forest along with excellent views of Gregoire Lake. The trailhead starts just up from the boat launch parking lot. When approaching the boat launch…you will notice the entrance to the ski trails on your left hand side. Skiers are welcome to park in the boat launch parking lot and make the short walk to the trailhead just up the access road. Alberta Parks has entered into a agreement with Park's Volunteer Jon Gibbs, who does a excellent job of grooming the trails. He uses a snowmobile for this and will be identified by his Volunteer High Visibility Jacket. The grooming of the trails should start very soon

As always the club is always looking for new volunteers to help out with all of the activities that we have going on.  If you are interested in helping out in any way, please contact any member of the executive team or email .  Being a volunteer run club, any contribution is greatly appreciated, big or small.

The ski club now has a page on Facebook at
www.facebook.com/ptarmigannordic .

Starting this season we will also be providing club info through the facebook page so log in and like us for the latest updates. For those not so tech savy, we will also continue sending out the weekly e-mail and updating this site.