General

Each year the City of West Kelowna – Council carefully consider ‘Grant-in-Aid’ funding requests from not-for-profit groups that provide valuable social and community services to West Kelowna residents. Telemark would like to thank the City of West Kelowna for awarding $3500 to the Telemark Nordic Club this year.  The funds  will be used to purchase equipment to enhance the Club’s Youth Programs.

The City of West Kelowna is a valuable partner for the Telemark Nordic Club and helps the Club in many ways.

Come on out to the Telemark Nordic Centre on Family Day for  some family fun in the snow. The ski and snowshoe conditions are the best they have been all year and the weather is warm and beautiful.

Telemark is offering free trail passes and rentals for all kids (18-under) on  Monday Feb 17th in celebration of Family day.

 

 

The Mary Irwin Theatre at the Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna was packed to the rafters with local athletes, coaches and parents…brothers and sisters in Sport for an evening of award presentations, funny anecdotes,  inspirational speakers and an introduction of Athletes attending the BC Winter Games.  Telemark was well represented at the Gala.  Our Team Telemark Biathlon delegation brought along their loud cheers and even cow bells to ring in the award recipients, two of whom were Telemark Club members. Telemark was also well represented at the BC Winter Games athlete announcement.

Sport Hero Award Recipients included:
Devin Rubadeau – Sailing, Marc Bowles – Multisport, Celeste Bazzana and Barbara Dieno – Bocce, Ron Koch – BMX racing, Phil von Unruh – Ice Hockey and Special Olympics, Guy Posella – Baseball, Leana Marton – Rugby, Darcy Rysz – Baseball, Cathie Pavlik – Field Hockey and Multisport…and Telemark’s Murray Carlson. Yay! Go Murray!

Athletic Excellence Awards went to:
Emma Cannan – Athletics, Ashley McMillan – Swimming, Logan Leach – Para Alpine Skiing, Brayden Kuroda – Freestyle Skiing, Brock Hoel – Triathlon, Anne Cherkowski – Ice Hockey, Reece Howden – Ski Cross, Hanna Hartwick – Brazilian Jiu Jitsu…and Telemark’s own Kira Friesen. Way to go Kira!

The BC Winter Games… will kick off in Fort St John from Feb 20-23. The Okanagan (Zone 2) athletes were called up on the stage for a presentation.   Telemark athletes were represented on stage by 13 year old Evan Edwards. Telemark qualified the largest number of athletes ever from our Club. Athletes from Telemark Nordic Club who will be competing at the BC Winter Games are:

Telemark Biathlon: Catherine Robinson, Camille Hanry and Timur McNern. John McNern is the Biathlon Zone 2 Rep and Coach.
Telemark XC: Finn Redman, Nathan Achtem, Evan Edwards, Justin Siever, Jacob Miller, Alessia Galvagno and Sofie Steinruck. Michele Wolfe is the Zone 2 Rep and Kyle Hawes is Assistant Coach.

GO TEAM!!!

The Telemark Nordic Club would like to welcome Integrated Power Systems (IPS for short) as a new Club sponsor. Lars Jensen and Sonia Sorensen of IPS are avid cross-country skiers and Telemark Nordic Club members.  They thought this sponsorship support would be a great way to become more involved with the Club.  You may have noticed their logo on our Trail Conditions webpage. Try clicking the IPS link the next time you see it to learn more about them.

Integrated Power Systems has been specializing in Solar Grid-Tie, Off Grid Solar and Back-up Power Systems in Western Canada since 1993.  Whether you are looking to save money by reducing your utility bills, increase the value of your home or property or provide power to a remote location IPS has the equipment and services you need at affordable prices. If you are looking for a solar or alternative energy system please call IPS.

 

 

 

Interested in Sponsoring the Telemark Nordic Club?  Check out our Sponsorship Package or go to our Sponsorship webpage

Fresh snow,  perfect temperatures and BBQ hot dogs. It doesn’t get any better!

Join us for a great day of XC skiing and snowshoeing at Telemark and bring your appetite for our Race Team BBQ Fundraiser – Hot dog and a juice for only $5 starting at 11:30am and going until the hot dogs are gone.

We will be hosting a BBQ each Saturday in February.

See you there!

Please join us for Thursday evenings filled with friends, fun and cross-country skiing followed by an aprés-ski BYO social in the Telemark lodge – Meet at 6:00pm  every Thursday.  Feel free to bring classic or skate skis, guests, a sense of adventure and snacks for afterwards! Hope to see you  there!

 

 

 

You may have noticed a silver dog-bone-shaped sticker on the back of your season pass this year.  It is an RFID tag in support of a pilot project we are running at Telemark this year.  It allows us to automatically detect when a season pass moves past the lodge, permitting us to gather anonymous visit statistics.  We don’t know specifically who the tag belongs to — we will NEVER track people at Telemark without your permission!  But we can tell when “someone” arrives and how long they stay on the property each time that “someone” visits.  From this data we can compile, for example:

• Usage by hour/day/week/month/season
• How many super-keeners come nearly every day
• How many people come at least once per week, and which days they come

This is just a pilot project, to see what we can learn that will help us manage and improve the club.  Some thoughts about how the club might benefit:

• lodge staffing
• grooming schedule
• grants and corporate sponsors, because we will have exact numbers rather than dubious generic “industry standards”
• marketing
• affiliations with other local partners such as the Westbank Chamber of Commerce

 

But we really have no idea what we might discover.  To our knowledge, this is the first time this technology has been deployed in a Nordic club in North America.  (If you know of others, please drop us a note because we would love to chat with them!)

Thanks to the 2 Engineering / Computer Science UBC recent grads who donated their time to design and write the software for this project.  The equipment was provided on loan from Canmore-based Zone 4.  The RFID expertise was provided by Dallas-based Codesource LLC.