By Tim Hauserman
In an age of mega ski resorts with mega budgets, Tahoe’s cross-country ski areas tend to be
much smaller operations, focusing primarily on providing a top notch groomed cross-country
skiing experience. One example is the only groomed cross-country ski area in the State of
Nevada, Nevada Nordic. It provides 19 kilometers of trail atop the Mt. Rose Highway at over
8500 feet in elevation. At that elevation the trails are often both the first and last to open in the
region, and they are cut through massive amounts of snow. But oh, the views of Lake Tahoe
from the top!
Nevada Nordic’s trails come to us via a non-profit with a hardworking group of volunteers who
provide a donation based skiing experience. But all that snow has been tough on the old used
groomer they used to groom the trails, so the organization, which had over 600 people donate
to the cause last year, took on the hefty goal of purchasing a brand new grooming machine.
Tahoe folk tend to be willing to work really hard and dig into their pockets deep in order to
provide a fun place to play in the snow, and skiers will benefit this winter by skiing on trails
created by the new machine.
One method used to come up with the lot of dough needed to purchase the machine was a
sweepstakes campaign to name the new snowcat, and the winner is Clearapathra. Next step is
for the white flakes to fly to put that baby to work.
“Our terrain at Nevada Nordic is challenging to groom,” said Meghan Pry, Nevada Nordic’s
Board Secretary. “The trails work with the landscape-winding through the forest hugging around
trees and up and over hills. We are so excited to be able to provide our grooming team with the
powerful and nimble equipment they need to provide the best results. Our groomers can’t wait
to get Clearapathra out on the trails!”
Go to http://nevadanordic.org to find out more about the trails, check out the daily grooming
reports, and donate to keep the grooming machine running.