The Morice Mountain Nordic Ski club’s first annual Corduroy Cup concluded last week on Mar. 15.
The event that featured seven different routes, ran from January to Mar. 15 this year. There were a total of 25 participants of which 18 were female participants.
“It was great to see our age spread - from under 10 to over 70,” said Dee McRae of the club, in an email to Houston Today.
The event was COVID-compatible, outdoor-friendly and involved self-reporting instead of actual monitoring or racing. It also charged a nominal entry fee of $20 for adults and $10 for kids. The club also held Jackrabbits and a coaching clinic this year.
The ski club had started work on the trails early on last year hoping to make the trails user-friendly for year-round usage. To utilize the full potential of the area, the club had also announced a running challenge last year however that was also turned into a virtual, socially-distant event due to COVID.
The Corduroy Cup was a first of its kind event this year, due to COVID. Of the total participants, 20 skiers reported skiing each route at least once and some of them even multiple times. According to McRae, all these skiers skied every main trail in our network and cumulatively “we skied 2,128 kilometres in January with 19 skiers reporting for an average 112 kilometres each”.
In February, the club saw 1,718 kilometres skied with 18 skiers reporting for an average of 95 kilometres each. The cumulative grand total of the participants for the months of January and February was 4,521 kilometres.
“Our top recording individual skied 840 kilometres in Jan. and Feb. A couple of runners up were at 400 plus kilometres. Several were over the 200 kilometres mark for the two months,” said McRae. “Our top night skier racked up 95 kilometres by headlamp and the runner up at 56 kilometres.”
McRae also said that several new club members commented that the event was a great way to learn the trails while the old timers at the club said that it was like “old dogs learning new routes”.
While the participants’ enthusiasm was certainly great for the events, McRae recognized the efforts by the groomers Greg, Doug and Henry “without whom the Corduroy Cup would be the bush cup.” She also mentioned that Miake at Pawesome Adventures’ sponsorship with registration, toque disbursal and for the prizes made the event a success.
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Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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