 Viking Nordic Center in Londonderry, Vermont is excited to introduce its new Director, Steve Bruner, who takes the reins from longtime managers Dana and Malcolm McNair. Steve developed a passion for cross-country skiing as a kid growing up in Minnesota, which fed into a college athletic career and a lifelong pursuit of many outdoor endurance sports including xc skiing, running, cycling, and paddling. As a young MBA and entrepreneur, Steve developed strategic plans for national parks, both nationally and internationally, including Yellowstone. He also taught collegiately and built and sold a green building materials business in Bozeman, Montana. Upon moving to New England in 2014 he immersed himself in the northeast and national Nordic ski scene. Steve is coming to Viking after four years at the Stratton Nordic Center, where, along with managerial responsibilities, he groomed trails and taught lessons. A certified USSA coach and PSIA-AASI instructor, he helped found and develop the Stratton Terrain Challenge. Steve lives with his wife and two kids, both of whom attend Stratton Mountain School, in South Londonderry, VT. He looks forward to assembling a great staff of groomers, instructors and ski & snowshoe enthusiasts at Viking Nordic! If interested in joining the Viking team, please contact Steve at [email protected].
Well that was fun!
Thanks to everyone who came out yesterday for one last great day and night of spring skiing. We hope you have as much fun as we did. We are now officially closed for the season, again. This time it's for real. But don't worry, there is still skiing locally. We recommend visiting our neighbors at Wild Wings XC over in Peru. They will be open this weekend if their snow holds up. Tell them we sent you. Footnote - Someone asked me why we are closing with all this new snow. It's true, we do have a lot of snow, we also have a few trees down that eventually need to be cut and moved off the trails, and there's a lot of water from snow melt. This new snow landed on bare ground and spring water spots, then it started melting yesterday which added to the water. There are some impressive pools forming up at the bottom of some of the hills, and in one place it's working its way across Norseman. With warmer temperatures again today, that water is just going to continue to work its way up and making skiing challenging. At this point, we need a full staff just to go out and wrangle a few K's of skiing which just won't last for us, so we're happy that we had such fun yesterday and to end on a high note we're closing up the shop. Thursday night - we got a hefty foot plus of snow today. It is a bit sticky but underneath is really nice snow. We are going to open tomorrow- Friday April 5th - for one last hurrah.
The following is from our Facebook Event posting. Come ski or snowshoe for one last Wahoo! We are opening our trails one last time this season to celebrate this snowfall with an afternoon into evening 'event'. We have NEVER had a night ski this far into April, partly because the conditions don't usually hold up and partly because sunset is pretty late, but we're planning on ending this season on a high note, so here it is! We will open for skiing and snowshoeing on the inner trail system at 1pm - We will turn on the lights from 7-8:30pm. Trail passes for the full day into night $20 Adults /$14 Senior and student/ $11 kids 6-14 You can leave and come back, your trail pass is good for the full day. Trail passes for evening (from 5-8:30) will go on sale at 5pm. $12 adults/$7 kids 6-14 Rental equipment is available although we are limited on the number of snowshoes available. This is not a BYD event. Sorry pups, you have to stay home.  Oh my goodness, the weather has turned nasty tonight. We are actually really jazzed about the potential for a nice dumping of snow.
Here's the plan. IF we get a good amount of snow, and IF we have power on Friday We will open for a late afternoon into night ski/snowshoe end of season Wahoo! Ski Night. We're currently thinking noon to 8pm. I'd really love to do this. I'm hoping the idea of night skiing in early April, something we have NEVER done in the history of Viking, is something you would love to do too. This would be our end of season hurrah. We will not be open for the weekend. Keep your eyes on our facebook page. I'll update tomorrow after we see how things are looking. If we're going to get snow, let's have one last good play date together and end this season on a really high note!  We are open today from 9:30-4:00 Classic spring conditions - soft granular spring snow. We are open with skiing on the inner trails and snowshoeing on any of the other trails you want to go out on. The snowshoe trail got some use yesterday, there's still quite a bit of snow out there. Conditions today will be classic spring ski conditions with soft but faster snow early this morning, softening quickly. This is great snow for kids to learn on because it is soft, squishy and fun to play on. Malcolm is out running the groomer around fluffing up the snow a bit this morning. He sent this picture. You can see great cover here, but in other spots we have spots opening up but nothing you can't ski around. It's spring and the temperatures have been unseasonably high but this is nice snow cover all things considered. Today may be the last day this season for skiing & snowshoeing but there is one more day this season we hope you'll come to Viking. On Saturday April 27 from 12 until 3 pm we'll be having a gathering to celebrate Dana & Malcolm McNair as they step away from Viking. Please mark your calendar now and plan to join us on April 27th! We are selling our rental snowshoes. There are two different models both similar size. $30 a pair. Pick up only, we cannot ship them, it's really not worth the cost of shipping, but we can take an order over the phone and put them aside for you. Call the shop 802-824-3933 for more information.  |
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