Nordic Club Calendar
01/02/2012
HEY the Frost Bite Fudnraiser is this week on Thursday (Feb 2) Please come to the OK Theater and support all of our winter sport clubs! There will be great movies and really great prizes and raffle items. See you there!
XC skiing at SCS has been really good but we still need a little more snow on the Fergi Nordic loops - however the Canal Road itself is very good skiing right now!
01/01/2012
A message from the President…
Well, some more time has gone by and our first meeting of the season again went well. Much thanks to Dana for taking notes and membership dues!
Annual Reminder… Did I mention?
You can pay your membership dues by contacting Dana Nave at 426-5746 or myself (Jerry) at 432-0366.
It is still $7.00 for an individual and $10.00 for a family/household.
And please purchase your snow park pass – that is the only thing paying for plowing to the SCS snow park!
About the Web-page:
New-year’s resolution… I hope and intend to update this page more than once every two years, starting in 2012… We’ll see… it’s my only one… hope I did not set the bar too high…
Let’s cut to the chase and get to the most important information on this site…
This year Ken and Clare Bronec will be our Redmont shelter Reservation Managers – ( 541-432-3281 541-432-3281). Contact them to reserve hut time. Sometime soon I will get the days that are already reserved on the website calendar but not likely till the first week in January…Remember to tip your reservation manager…
Access to the SCS Beacon Basin training facility. This year we have the control box housed on site in a large green steel container at the edge of the practice course just north of the Salt Creek Summit (SCS) building. There is a combination lock on the container. The combination is 1-9-6-2. Please turn off all switches and lock the door when you are through. All of the sponsors will have the combination to give out for its use.
See the Wallowa Avalanche Center website for snowpack information, road conditions, and related weather information - http://wallowaavalanchecenter.org/.
General Club Information:
We successfully updated our annual operating plan and our Special Use Permit. We presented to the FS a draft proposal to re-cover the super structure roof at the Redmont Shelter. Upon further review by the FS we will submit a formal plan with the intent to start implementation during 2012. Now we need to raise just a little more funding to cover material costs.
Dana has been doing a great job at treasuring and taking notes. She gave a treasurers report at the last meeting and this is captured in the notes. For now the notes are archived and I have no idea if we are going to post them or not. It’s probably good to just have some more meetings and discuss it there… if you would like more meetings? Our treasure is doing OK, with the only expenditures this year going to miscellaneous maintenance supplies for the Redmont shelter & BCA Beacon Basin, and to pay the County for Dawn’s GIS support for a new ski and snowmobile map. Still, we’ll need some more cash in order to do the new roof and be able to purchase a club chainsaw and other trail work tools. And in the long run I still have this fantasy of acquiring a small tracked ATV and lightweight grooming equipment for SCS & Fergi.
The club will again donate to the Wallowa Avalanche Center. This is going to be a great resource for our skiing safety and pleasure. Check it out on the web!
The club will again be helping with this year’s Frost Bite Film Festival – February 2nd 2012 @ 6pm. This is the fundraising event for our (and the others) club for the year, so give me a call if you want to volunteer!
It would also be great to get some more Nordic Club volunteers to help with the start of the 2012 Eagle Cap Extreme Sled Dog race!!! So give me a call!!
Work Done and Upcoming Work Needs:
Hey all, just Keep patrolling and clearing and putting up more Blue Diamonds…
Wing Ridge Ski Tours and employees (Thank you Mr Hatch!), under the new Management of WAH, has re-adopted the Wagon Road trail to Big Sheep and has done a great job of clean-up after that fall storms.
Dana and Troy adopted the Devils View trail.
Jerry and Mary Ellen have adopted the Summit – Divide trail and have been working hard to improve diamond coverage and signage and clearing and such. It’s been good skiing there so far this year.
Ken has been doing his perennial great job on the BC access trails at SCS and leading work crews clearing the Redmont shelter trial. Thanks too to all those that have helped us with all the trail work!
Paul and Paul have been doing a great job with replacing and improving the blue diamond coverage along the Redmont Nordic/Mt Bike trail.
Ken and I revisited and refreshed the Nordic trail at Fergi this fall – so should be better than last year once we get some snow.
The Mountain view trail is missing most of its diamonds and is very difficult to follow. It is not in the best location for today’s weather and we plan to reconfigure it next summer. For not ski it at your own risk.
There are currently no scheduled work days in the near future –stay tuned…
Other Nordic Developments:
Sometime this winter we will have a new Nordic Club Ski map available to the public. It will have updated trail information and now there will be trail junction numbers on the map that match the new numbered diamonds going up on the Devils View and Summit – Divide trails! We got this map started this past season while working with the Wallowa County Gamblers Snowmobile Club and Wallowa County to produce a new Snowmobiling map for that club. They now have a great map produced that also shows Nordic ski trails and other winter recreation features.
We had a great crew rounded up to install the SCS BCA Beacon Basin transceiver use training park. It is all ready for snow… The control box for the training equipment had some electrical problems but was quickly fixed by BCA and is now back in action – see note above.
The control box is housed in a large green steel container at SCS just north of the building. It has 8 switches to turn on 8 different beacons buried in the snow in various scenarios. There is a combination lock on the container to secure the equipment. Please make sure and turn off all 8 switches when you are done. Leave the batteries in the unit, and lock the door to the container. See the Wallowa Avalanche Center’s web site for training opportunities.
We have given a proposal to the FS to develop a small skate ski loop at SCS and are in negotiations with the snow mobile club to groom it if we get it created. They would likely do that if we provide some cash for Diesel. This all is still a ways off.
I’d still like to develop some snow shoe specific routes one of these days… Anyone interested in contributing to that effort give me a call.
The FS is proposing a couple of projects in the SCS vicinity that have the potential to have significant impacts to both winter and summer trail facilities around SCS and northward toward Fergi. It is very important that the Nordic Club and its members be very involved in commenting on these proposals and in helping the FS understand the importance of preserving and enhancing the functional and aesthetic qualities of the trail network we help to maintain. You need to give Ranger Ken Gebhardt a call ( 541-426-5546 541-426-5546) a call and ask him about the Cold Canal Vegetation Management project and the Divide Allotment Pasture Boundary fence project.
That seems like enough for now…,
Jerry Hustafa
