Nordic Kids make tracks at Mount Spokane

A parent-driven youth program that’s been teaching kids the lifelong enjoyment of cross country skiing is gearing up for its 25th year at Mount Spokane.

Registration is open for youths ages 5-13 in the Nordic Kids winter sessions that will start Jan. 6 and run almost every Saturday through February.

Dawn Schaaf, the Nordic Kids co-coordinator for the Spokane Nordic Ski Education Foundation, said she’s seen a remarkable transformation in her 9-year-old son’s skiing and independence in the four years he’s been with the program.

“I’ve seen him progress from the snow-eating gang to the take-off-and-go gang,” she said. The Nordic Kids program combines skiing lessons with building a peer group of friends with whom they can enjoy the sport.

Having grown up as a downhill skier, Schaaf prefers the cross country skiing environment for raising kids.

“It’s much more low-key and reasonable compared to the big expense of downhill skiing,” she said. “It’s great exercise, something you can do all your life, and the kids go for it instinctively because it’s also good fun. They love the social part of it.”

Starting in January, The Selkirk Lodge and the groomed 25-kilometer cross country trail system will be flooded with young skiers, their parents and siblings almost every Saturday from noon to 3 p.m. Kids are assigned into groups by age and ability with parent leaders who use games to teach skiing basics and love for safely enjoying the winter outdoors.

Skiers graduate from the Nordic Kids program when they turn 13, but the club offers a more casual teen skiing program as well as a more advanced junior racing team that trains almost year-round.

Spokane’s Nordic Kids is part of a loosely-organized national program that originated in the 1970s as the Bill Koch Youth Ski League. The program was named for America’s only skier to win a medal in an Olympic nordic event.

The Spokane program originated with a few families and handful of kids when the nordic grooming at Mount Spokane consisted of parents breaking trail with their skis.

The developed trail system and building the warming lodge enabled the program to grow to more than 160 kids in the 1990s, ranking the Spokane’s program among the five largest in the nation.

“We realized the physical limitations of the lodge and the ski trail system were going to force us to put a limit on the number of kids,” said Bob Hyslop, who was the youth program director at the time.

Last year the program had 82 kids, leaving some room for expansion, said Schaaf. “Our only limits right now are in the number of parent volunteers,” she said.