The year was 1994 and Canada had just witnessed Myriam Bédard win two Olympic gold medals in the women’s biathlon.

Her next stop? The Biathlon World Cup in Hinton, Alta., a town 270 kilometres west of Edmonton.

“She was everything … she was a rockstar,” said Rick Zroback, former president of the Hinton Nordic Skiers Club. 

Pulling off an international event in a town of 10,000, with only a volunteer crew, was a big feat Zroback credits to the community.

“The key thing for us at that time and continues is volunteers — people stepped up.”

Even during the hardest years, when there was no money left in the club’s accounts and enrollment in the children’s Jackrabbit program had dropped to its lowest point at only eight skiers, volunteers kept the movement alive.

This year, the Hinton Nordic Skiers are celebrating their 50th anniversary. And with 64 Jackrabbits this season, the club is looking ahead to another half century.

$1 jigsaw puzzle

“The foresight of those early pioneers of cross-country skiing in this area, and the way that the culture has built over the years, has really borne a lot of fruit,” said Bob Udell, who was involved with the club since its inception.

The club first developed trails in the Hinton area near the Pedley Reservoir, Camp 29 and Gregg Cabin before pioneering the main trail system in the mid-1980s, now known as the Hinton Nordic Centre.

The club reassembled the main lodge from a cabin built in the Columbia Icefields in the 1960s. 

“For $1 dollar, we inherited a bunch of logs,” Zroback recalled. Using a set of “funny blueprints,” he said, the club reassembled the numbered lodge like a jigsaw puzzle.

That cabin is now the heart of 35 kilometres of trails in William A. Switzer Park, in the foothills west of Hinton.

Biathlon builds

Once the skiing started, the club started taking aim.

The 1994 Biathlon World Cup was slated for Canmore, Alta., but organizers wanted to add a second location and looked to Hinton.

Nearly 20 countries raced, and Zroback said the club pulled off the international event with “no glitches, with perfect track, with perfect everything.”

The small-town trails gained international recognition, and the club gained a few “bizarre” stories, said Zroback. He recounted a time when one of the Norwegian coaches wanted a grizzly bear paw, so he hunted down a local trapper who sold the team some authentic goods.

“It might have been quite a thing to see the Norwegian team leaving Canada with fox furs or whatever,” Zroback said.

Through the years, the Hinton Nordic Skiers pulled off some memorable New Year’s Eve parties and countless races, including two gruelling marathons in 1980 and 1982 from Hinton to Robb, a hamlet about 45 kilometres to the southwest.

Udell hopes visitors today get a sense of the culture that has been long developing around Nordic skiing in Hinton “and how it continues to survive and thrive even today, despite our problems with snow.”

Sustaining momentum

While early season snow conditions in Hinton were favourable for skiers, cold weather followed by warm spells made it “nearly unskiable,” said Christian Weik, the current president of the Hinton Nordic Skiers.

Some of the events planned to commemorate the club’s golden anniversary — like the annual Chili Loppet, where skiers race the trails, then eat chili together — were cancelled due to a lack of snow.

“The loppet didn’t happen today, but a lot of community still did,” said Jailin Bertolin, referring to the dozens of skiers who came out anyway after the surprise of fresh snow overnight.

Bertolin was on the club’s anniversary committee, tasked with ensuring the celebrations honoured the last half century, while looking ahead for the next generation.

Using grant money from Yellowhead County, the club commissioned local log cabin builder Mark Deagle to construct a new gathering place on the K-9 ski loop.

“The idyllic log cabin waiting at the end of the ski day, the two definitely go together,” said Deagle, adding that his creation is a “nice place to escape from the elements.”

Two new murals were added to the main lodge by artist Madison Sharman. To preserve the stories of the past, Zroback collaborated with the museum to install “legacy signs,” detailing the club’s history along one of the trails.

“The most important thing is just sustaining that momentum and that history moving forward,” said Weik.

That future of the club, he said, relies on continuing the growth of the kids’ Jackrabbit program and biathlon program, both thriving under the leadership of dedicated volunteers.

With the momentum of the last 50 years, the Hinton Nordic Skiers aren’t slowing down anytime soon. They’re instead creating exactly the kind of legacy Udell intended to leave.

“I just hope Hinton Nordic has another good 50 years,” said Udell. “I won’t be around to celebrate.”