With the heavy snowfall this past week, the Omineca Ski Club has already started seeing people out on the trails skiing but with the new provincial orders around COVID, there would be a few things changing for the club in the upcoming days.
Club president Agathe Bernard spoke with Lakes District News immediately after the new restrictions’ announcement and said that the club already has a COVID plan in place under which they are asking users to stay home if not feeling well, complete an online self-assessment before arriving, stay home if traveled outside or Canada, live with someone who has COVID-19 or is showing symptoms, keep physical distancing at all times, leave the club as quickly as possible after skiing, respect the maximum capacity of four in the wax cabin and bring their own sanitizing kit to reduce points of contact. The club is also providing sanitizers.
“With today’s order, the immediate impact is that in addition to the measures above, users of the wax cabin will need to wear a mask while in the cabin. We also need to suspend lodge rental for now,” said Bernard, adding that while the order does not affect planned lessons or events as those are planned for 2021, they would have to adapt if the situation changes and they will follow the Provincial Health Officer Orders and guidance provided by both Biathlon BC and Cross-Country BC.
READ MORE: How is Omineca Ski Club prepping for this ski season?
This year, the skiing club will not be holding ski swap and won’t have rentals available either.
“We are not doing the ski swap this year; that is something we could not figure out how to do it safely. We don’t have any drop in rentals anymore either. Instead, we are going to do rentals for the entire season and will be available only to members,” she said. The club will give away rentals on a first come first basis and then the members will have to take the skis, boots, poles home with them.
“The other thing we will do is until Dec. 10, we will be giving priority to kids for rentals enrolled in ski lessons,” she said adding that there however is no plan to conduct adult ski lessons this year, mainly due to not having volunteers to do that.
The club is also offering discounted rates for early membership until Dec. 1.
“We have worked very hard this summer; we have some volunteers working really hard to get trails ready, and we already have some great trails that are groomed and ready,” she said.
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Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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