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2021/2022 Club Report
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SCOTIA XC SKI CLUB 2021-2022 REPORT

External Funding

SCOTIA XC was successful in obtaining significant funding from external grants for the 21/22 year.  We would like to thank all of the governing bodies for their support of the ski club.

CCNS awarded us grants on 4 separate occasions.

The Government of Nova Scotia awarded us grants through the Department of Community, Culture and Heritage on 3 separate occasions.

Membership

SCOTIA XC held steady with its significant membership numbers.  Although we saw an overall decrease in membership we were pleased to retain a significant number of the new members we attracted during the 1st COVID winter.  We also saw nearly 100 new members from the Valley Region with our expansion projects.  Our biggest area of loss was individual adult males, which may be partially attributed to the seasonal closure of our Dollar Lake Location this year.

Total Membership: 749 people (415 Female:334 Male)

Family Memberships : 106

Adult Memberships: 375

Youth Memberships: 36

Brunello Pass: 93 Adults and 29 Families took advantage of having access to our human-made snowbowl area.

Member retention will be a goal for the 2022-2023 year.

Expansion of Grooming Locations

We started the season with disappointing news that 3 of our venues were being affected by construction projects that were ongoing or behind schedule.  

Dollar Lake- After determining there was no safe way to combine the heavy construction traffic and skiing it was determined that the park would remain ungroomed this year.  The park is constructing a new Comfort Station in the campground that we are hopeful we may have some access to in upcoming winters.

Paragon XC-  Due to an unfortunate delay in the golf club’s redoing of their irrigation system, it became clear that it would be unsafe for skiing on the property with unmarked, open trenches.  

Graves-Oakley- Due to the ongoing construction of the new Rugby Field House at the Graves-Oakley site it became clear we would only be able to use the upper loop of the fields from grooming.  Fortunately that is the larger of the areas and resulted in a very serviceable loop being available.

Our remaining locations were business as usual.

Brunello XC- Our partnership with Brunello remains a key one.  Brunello is the site where we are able to make snow in our Snow Bowl.  We were once again impeded by the weather this winter which delayed the making of human-made snow.  2 factors worked against us this winter; the lack of the 72 hour cold spells that are required for the process and several extremely heavy rainfalls in the peak of our winter season.  We were able to have the bowl functional for a short time and our groomers took extra care with it during that time.  

The Snow Bowl area is now a construction site at Brunello and our snow-making operation will be moved to the Driving Range for next season.  We are hopeful that the move will provide more consistent artificial snow, as it is a low-snow location.

Brunello also remains a key partner in offering on-site ski rentals which allows our membership to encourage others to try out our sport.

Oakfield XC- Normally within a snowbelt, Oakfield had a disappointing year this year with all of the heavy rainstorms.  When there was snow the skiing was fantastic and the onsite grooming team learned quickly how to make the most of the conditions.  

Mcdonald Sports Park-  On several occasions we were able to groom Mcdonald Sports Park.  Due to the nature of the trail this is a location that requires a high snow fall for it to be groomable.  As this is also a shared trail with walkers we always encourage anyone who wishes to ski there to do so ASAP after grooming.

Our greatest success this year was the expansion of 3 new sites: Dill Farm in Windsor, Kentville XC and Greenwood XC.

Dill Farm- This location was made available through a generous private landowner partnership with Howard Dill Farms.  Dill Farm turned out to be a great new location particularly given the proximity to HRM.  45 minutes from the city and you arrived at a 3k loop of rolling terrain that was wide enough to have a separate classic lane for significant parts of it.  Being within a municipality was also fantastic for getting new skiers out to enjoy the winter.

Kentville XC-  This location was made available through a generous private landowner partnership with Aberdeen Paving Ltd.  This location turned out to be another source of significant growth for the club.  Located within the Municipality of Kentville we were able to attract significant club growth from the area.  The snowfall was much more consistent in this region and the skiing was excellent on the 2k loop at Kentville XC.  The terrain at this location was also excellent for beginners.

Greenwood XC-

Our final expansion of the season was to Greenwood XC.  This location, through a partnership with CFB Greenwood truely provided a destination ski location. Those in the area and those who made the drive from HRM were not disappointed when they arrived to the beautiful grooming of 8-12k of trails.  This area received the highest amount of snow and almost none of the rain and that resulted in the best ski conditions of all of our locations.  

Equipment

The boost in membership over the last 2 years has put us ahead of schedule by several years in terms of the capital investments in Grooming Equipment.  We took advantage of extremely high resale value on used Sleds to sell off 3 of our sleds and with the increased revenue and grants have acquired a total of 6 tracked ATVs, 2 sleds, the required rollers/groomers/track setters and storage cans for all.

Ski Season

Our ski season opened on Dec 9th with a couple of skiable days before the holidays.  At our HRM locations we provided groom skiing for 21 days.  At our new Valley locations we provided groomed skiing for 35 days.  The season concluded on March 7th.

The grooming hours required for the season, including the preparatory and closing work approached 400 volunteer hours this season.

Our volunteer grooming leads;  Lorenzo Caterini, Tom Beazley and Roland Daigle both groom and coordinate the remaining grooming efforts of our dozen groomers across our sites.  Their exceptional grooming is the backbone of our club.  

Events

Despite a second winter of COVID restrictions we were able to hold some club events.  Unfortunately just as the restrictions were lifted that would have enabled us to host a loppet, the snow was gone.  Nevertheless, it was still an active club year and increasing shared experiences will be a focus for next season.  

November- 4 week GOAL (Get Outside and Active Lifestyle) Program starts

November 20th- Ski Swap at The Trail Shop

December- Draw Prizes- Hubcycle and The Trail Shop

November- December- Youth Seasonal Rental Program Pick Up Dates (60 families participate)

December 6th- Brunello Staff Training session with SCOTIA XC Coach Kat

December 9th- 1st Skiable day- GO and Brunello

January 8th- Opening of Dill Farm location

Jan 11th- Snow Guns fired up

January 11th- Opening of Kentville XC location

Jan 18th- Adult Programming Started

January 21st- Youth Programming starts with Dryland Training

January 21st- Opening of Greenwood XC

Feb 6th-  Club Ski day at Dill Farms

Feb 12th- Moonlight Ski and Snowshoe at Greenwood XC

Feb 16th- Free Pop-Up Mini Lesson with Coach Kat

Feb 16th- Moonlight Ski at Dill Farm with Member Steve

Feb 15th- Kings County School visit to Kentville XC

March 5th- Free Pop-Up Lessons with Coach Jack

March 7th- Last Skiable Day

April 25th- Start of Youth Roller Ski Program (6 weeks.)

Communications

With the new name change, a new website was created to provide members with the information that they need on Trails, Programming and our Sponsors.

www.scotiaxc.ca

The website received 23,168 views from 5,777 visitors last season.  

Next season, the plan will be to update the website with daily trail conditions, in addition to the social media posts, as this was highly requested by members.  

We will also put a request out for another communications volunteer to help improve our SEO.

We also created an Instagram Page, which has 245 followers.

Our Twitter account grew to 663 followers.

Our FB page remains an active site with 2,689 followers and is a frequent place for discussion.  We have also been encouraging members to self report trail conditions at both our sites and beyond on the group page we manage,  NS Skiers searching for Skiable Snow.

We cross post all information across the platforms.  

With the work required to maintain the socials, the newsletter has not been used as often.  Should we be able to find a volunteer to maintain that we would happily create more content.  

Programming

It was a mixed year for programming based on which day of the week the program fell.  

Youth Programming

Our Saturday morning programming was the program that was the least successful this year.  Out of 8 lessons, we were only able to hold 2 on snow with an additional 2 dryland sessions.  

Fortunately due to the enthusiasm of our coaches and the very low programming costs,  participants' families were very understanding.

We have identified a clear deficiency in coaching at the Track Attack and above level and are hoping to actively recruit for those ages, particularly targeting former NS Ski Team members.  We will also be decreasing the number of lessons we provide in a season as it is clear 8 is not a realistic number given our climate.

Bunny Rabbits- 11 participants

JackRabbits- 20 participants

Track Attack- 16 participants

On a positive note, the last session of the season was an exceptional day.  

Our Monday afternoon (7 participants) and evening (8 participants) youth programs were very successful holding all 6 scheduled lessons and with Coach Grace being voted Coach of the Year.

We can also count all 8 members of the NS Ski Team as current members of the club and coaches Kris and Eric utilized several of our sites from the Bowl, to Dill Farm, to Greenwood XC to provide training opportunities for those athletes.  

Our volunteer youth coaches are the backbone of our programming and we are extremely appreciative of their efforts.

Adult Programming

Our adult coaches took incredible ownership of their groups and showed exceptional flexibility in terms of changing time, date and location to provide the best on snow experiences they could for their learners.  The learners were often up for any and all suggestions.

Sundays- Classic Skiing Open- 10 participants

Mondays- New-to-Skiing Classic- 16 participants

Tuesdays- Intermediate Skate Skiing- 18 participants

Wednesdays- Beginner Skate Skiing- 21 participants

We held some planning sessions, to be revisited in the fall, in terms of revamping the lessons experience. Again we will be looking at decreasing the number of weeks we hope to deliver, possibly moving to more of a Pop-Up model or some combination of options.  It is clear again this year that the demand for lessons, particularly for beginners, is larger than our volunteer coaching capacity.  We will continue to look for coaches in our areas of expansion as well.  

 

Board of Directors

President and Communications- Melanie MacDermid

Grooming Leads- Lorenzo Caterini, Tom Beazley, Roland Daigle

Treasurer- Dave Keefe

Recording Secretary- Brian Norman

Members-at-Large- Dave Hubley, Andrew  Hill