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Eight Loiper members are signed up for the Mistaya Lodge trip next March, returning to one of our favourite wilderness lodges in the Canadian Rockies. A number of us were there in 2015 for a wonderful week of guided ski touring - some of us on telemark skis and others on alpine touring gear. Skiing from Mistaya Lodge in 2015 Mistaya Lodge is accessed by helicopter from the town of Golden in BC. Once at the lodge we are looked after by a resident cook and two guides who are well practised in finding the best skiing terrain, usually with fresh untracked snow every day. Some days we will be skinning up the nearby peaks and skiing down from the summit. On other days we will be skiing in the…

Loipers Peter and Alison Aldred are the first this winter to get some local skiing. They skied today up from the Durham/Cumbria county border between Alston and Middleton in Teesdale. There was only a thin snow covering but, with a cloudless sky and no wind, it was almost a perfect day! Photos look great (see below).

Good luck to Mike Hall who is heading to Switzerland in March for his debut (Engadin) ski marathon. Mike is doing a few days of training before the race with Alan Eason (a senior coach with Snowsport England) and was heard getting tips from Heather at the New Year Meal on Thursday! Alasdair will be competing in the World Masters Cross Country Ski Championships at Beitostolen in Norway (60-plus age category). Alasdair will be racing 3 or 4 events (classic and skating) up to 30km distance. He is no stranger to the World Masters and has competed most years at venues over Europe and N America. Good luck to Alasdair and the rest of the team.

The Snowsport England Coaching week is returning to Kvitavatn (near Rjukan, in Norway's Telemark region). The three top SSE coaches Patrick Winterton, Mike Dixon and Alan Eason will be running a whole week of training focussing on cross country skills (classic and skating) and racing. Dates are 31st March to 7th April 2019. Highly recommended by several Loipers who have participated in previous years. Accommodation is available in the comfortable Kvitavatn Fjellstue. Full details can be found here.

More details and contact info are on the Events Page.  In March we will be based in the lovely Dalseter hotel in Norway for a week of track skiing and off-track touring. There are 23 of us signed up for the trip and 9 of us are then moving on to the Jotunheim area for a week and a half of hut touring. We are hoping to ski Norway's second highest peak Glittertind. We also have a couple of trips organised by Tim Owen - a telemark coaching week in Val d'Isere with Telemark Tracks in December and a week of telemark/alpine guided ski touring in the Queryas national park in Jan/Feb. Jane Brantom is also organising a week of track skiing in Dobbiaco Italy. And we are expecting to…

Fifteen Loipers attended the AGM at the Northumberland Club in Jesmond on 9th October. This has been a good venue for us but the buffet meal this year was a bit disappointing. The meeting produced some good discussion. Thanks everyone for contributing and thanks to Neil for chairing and Charlie for the minutes. After the meeting Alan showed a few slides of club trips from last winter and looked forward to some of the club trips planned for this year (details elsewhere on this website). Download the full meeting minutes here