Fall 2023 Newsletter from the Seeley Lake Nordic Ski Club |
|
|
It’s been a big year for the Seeley Lake Nordic Ski Club with some substantial change in our work and our plans for the future. We’ve always been a low-key organization, dependent on a handful of volunteers, generous donors and our agency partners that helped keep skiing in Seeley alive. As we grow and work to enhance Nordic skiing, that dependency has become even more clear. To help keep all our supporters in the loop, we thought a newsletter might be useful. So, here’s the first ever view from Seeley Lake Nordic: |
|
|
Over the previous ten years we’ve struggled to get three good months of skiing per season. This last year, thanks to the weather and our groomers (including a “never say die” PistenBully operator), we had four full months of great Nordic skiing on the Seeley Creek Nordic Ski Trails (SCNST)—with some of the best conditions at the very end of the season. |
|
|
The addition of a PistenBully 100 has changed our grooming capacity substantially over the last 2 years |
|
|
Snow machine grooming continues to be a key part of the work and offers other advantages as well |
|
|
All that translated to approximately 6,500 skier visits and a very successful race series. OSCR had one of the three largest registrations in its 41-year history, and we had to cap the registration for our Biathlon for the first time. And, once again, the Seeley Lake Elementary School Skiesta drew kids from around the region, blowing us away with just how good they are and giving us all some incentive to keep the Nordic opportunity alive. |
|
|
Our volunteers, as well as our collaboration with the Forest Service, are key reasons all of this works. Over this past season our volunteers logged more than 580 hours in grooming, equipment maintenance and trail work as well as uncounted hours by our race directors and race volunteers, ski clinic instructors, bloggers and grant writers, and coaches for the kids' program. We logged more than 285 machine hours for snowmobiles and 137 hours in the PistenBully. Our major expenses are in the cost of the machines and related equipment, fuel, maintenance and replacement costs, race materials and all the miscellaneous items any organization uses. The Forest Service covered some of the expense and provided critical support on trail work and safety training, as well as additional people power. A recently funded grant from the MT Fish Wildlife and Parks Recreational Trails Program will help with some of the grooming and maintenance costs for the 2023-2024 season. Donations, club memberships, and race registration fees, however, continue to provide the lion’s share of critical operating funds. |
|
|
Of course, the end of an incredible ski season is not the end of the work we need and hope to do. Great grooming and skiing require continued trail maintenance to eliminate obstructions and hazards for skiers and equipment. Summer is the time for dirt work, and we’ve been busy! |
|
|
Seeley Lake Nordic received grant funding from the Missoula County Rural Grant program to enable needed safety and compliance improvements to the Biathlon Range at SCNST. This included adding side berms and fortifying and increasing overall height of the target backstop, while correcting the existing height differential between the range firing line and targets to be USBA-compliant. |
|
|
With our cost share funding through the Forest Service, volunteer time and some dedicated funding, we addressed some key challenges on the trails for both skiers and groomers, like... downhill corners! Larch Knob, Mountain View, and other trails have some fast downhill corners, as you may know. Previously, many of those corners had outslope rather than the desired inslope. That has been improved in several locations, making for safer descents. Upper Bear Tree had a steep breakover that resulted in being a location for early loss of snow. Spruce Alley, with its off-camber trail sections and tight corners, earned its nickname "The Adventure Trail". Both difficult to groom and ski, some improvements were easy to imagine. |
|
|
To accommodate the PistenBully as part of our regular grooming program, we are working with the Forest Service to plan and construct a new, larger grooming shed, complete with power. That will allow maintenance of all our machines in the relative comfort of a heated and well lit work space (Hopefully, there will be no more listening to Lynn Carey cursing his flashlight and skinned knuckles under a machine on the floor of a dark and sub-freezing grooming shed). We received a $40,000 grant from the MT FWP Trail Stewardship Program to install the electrical service and lighting for the parking area and yurt access as the first phase of this project. We are working closely with our partners at the Forest Service to move planning and permitting for the next phases to completion in the next year or two. Look for more on this over the next year. |
|
|
To help fund projects like this, we are taking a more active approach to grant writing AND we are working to transition SLNSC from a 501(c)(4) to a 501(c)(3) full non-profit status so that our donors receive some benefits as well. There is always more to do and room to improve the way we do it... With some luck and continued work we’ll keep moving on that track. |
|
|
Our purpose at Seeley Lake Nordic is to provide exceptional skiing on great terrain for skiers of all abilities—free of charge. We have some of the best Nordic ski terrain in the region, and with our grooming team and equipment we have the ability to produce world class skiing. But, note that we also take that “free” piece very seriously. Seeley Lake is not a wealthy community, and it is important to us that every kid and every family here has the chance to ski. All of that has been possible with the support of folks who can afford to donate the time and money that make it go. THANK YOU TO ALL WHO DID!
Bruce Rieman, President SLNSC Chris Lorentz, Vice President and Biathlon Director Laurie Shammel, Treasurer Brie Guilmette, Secretary Lynn Carey and Doug Edgerton, Trails and Maintenance Mike McGrew, Ski Clinics and Website Kim Grover, OSCR Race Director |
|
|
|
|
