The KN Board of Directors and Staff frequently hear ideas from members on future possibilities for development. This outline is meant to be a gathering place for brainstorming and consideration of possibilities. Some of these ideas may never become viable while others may in future become reality at our club. As a starting point, the KN Board and Staff have prioritized the ideas based on need and strategic direction.

• Priority A — Ideas identified as urgent needs, which, if possible and approved, could move forward before next season
• Priority B — Ideas which may possibly be approved in the near term, but which require more development and information gathering before any decision could be made
• Priority C — Ideas worth considering but which offer no urgency at this time and are neither scheduled nor approved

If you would like to offer feedback or support, please submit it to board@kawarthanordic.ca or reach out to any KN Board member.

For Priority A & B items in particular, we would like to hear from you by 31 August 2021 as the Board studies possibly moving forward with implementation for Priority A items and with investigation and planning for Priority B items.

The remainder of this document provides a discription of the various ideas the Board has heard along with some maps showing possibilities.

Priority A

The following have been identified as urgent needs, and If possible, the Board is interested in proceeding with these ideas before next season.

New Driveshed & Shop Building

As many of us saw last winter, we don’t have a proper space for servicing our grooming equipment and in February that led to a Pisten Bully taking up space in our parking lot in order to allow other heavy equipment to be used to lift the cab. A proper shop would provide a heavy-duty hoist, but also give our staff a heated space for repair work, a concrete floor to work from, and space to store our grooming equipment out of the elements. Our grooming team frequently arrives before first light to start cold engines, and having the machinery stored in a heated space will go a long way toward increasing the longevity of both our equipment and our staff.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Pillar: Loyal and Engaged Community – Provide opportunities and experiences that will attract, mobilize and retain our members, staff, volunteers and the community.

Site Plan

In planning for the development of new buildings, new trails, and other changes to our property it is important to protect what we value, be it a stand of trees, a view, a wetland, a habitat, or even a valued trail or cabin. The Board would like to pull together our Natural Heritage inventory, a topographic & property land survey, the work of our Managed Forest Plan consultant, the planning drawings from our architectural consultant, and recent Trent University ecological field research completed at KN into both an Ontario zoning site plan and a land stewardship plan for KN.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Strategy: Adopt land management practices that protect significant natural features, habitats, forest cover and people’s connection with nature.

Old Adam Scott North Trail

Members that skied with us before the Trillium trail was completed in the early 2000s will remember that the North end of the Adam Scott trail used to vear East and connect to the Kenner instead of its current 90° bend to the West connecting it to the Trillium trail. Re-opening this trail segment to the East would add to the possibilities for classic skiing, and bring back a once loved route, while also breaking up a 3km long segment of the Kenner trail. This trail could be re-opened as an ungroomed, classic “wilderness” trail with minimal effort to clear downed trees.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Pillar: High-value Experiences – Continue to maintain and improve our high-quality trails, programs, services and events.

Transportation Alternatives

In the recent past, the Board has trialled offering programs that included bus transportation and carpooling apps to encourage lower per-person fossil fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions. Reducing the number of vehicles arriving at our trails will have the biggest impact on our club’s overall footprint. While COVID put the brakes on these plans, we hope to once again trial transportation alternatives.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Tactic: Develop sustainable transportation options.

Service Upgrade

The total possible electrical load on site at Kawartha Nordic is higher than the 200 amp service provided by Hydro One, and during times of high usage we have seen our circuits cutout. Working with Hydro One, we have come up with a plan to upgrade the service that will take advantage of existing cabling and present very little visible change beyond a new pad or vault transformer.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Pillar: High-value Experiences – Continue to maintain and improve our high-quality trails, programs, services and events.

Priority B

The Board is gathering more information and developing these ideas with an eye toward possibly approving these projects in the near term.

New Rental Shop & Group Space Building

As our club has grown, we have made good use of temporary structures as a stepping stone into new directions. To add ski rentals and support day lodge staff, we rented temporary office trailers, and when we moved to hosting large events and school groups, we built a temporary white tent next to our main chalet. While these structures have been successful, they require ongoing costs and maintenance that could be alleviated if they were replaced by permanent structures. The Board is investigating the possibility of a new building parallel to the WOODfine Chalet that in a similar fashion to the existing layout, would have its back corner adjacent to our washroom building for convenient access. This new building would offer two large group spaces, staff office space, and a retail store with a rental shop, allowing us to remove the white tent and two office trailers currently serving those purposes.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Tactic: Build new building to support rental shop, growth, and programs.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Tactic: Improve the accessibility and capacity of the entrance facility and rental shop.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Tactic: Explore opportunities to support and improve youth and school programs.

Fat Biking

Fat biking is a great low speed, low impact outdoor activity that is perfect for Kawartha Nordic members and our property, especially as a shoulder-season opportunity when people are itching to be outdoors but the conditions aren’t good for most winter or summer sports. During the winter of 2020–2021, KN offered a trial fat biking opportunity, and while a good number of members were keen to give it a try, COVID limited participation. The trial did allow us to see that dedicated fat biking trails and fat bike rentals would make the integration of this new sport to our club easier. Thanks to Wild Rock Outfitters we had insurance for group rides during this trial, but general fat biking would also require us to find suitable insurance coverage for all riders. No serious trail design has taken place, but we do know from other clubs that these trails can be squeezed in with very little removal of trees in a similar fashion to how we created our snowshoe trails. The map provided here shows only a guess at where some fat bike trails might fit between existing trails and wetlands, if we were to proceed with having fat biking on separate dedicated trails.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Strategy: Grow infrastructure and service capacity to maximize daily use and capitalize on opportunities.

Safer Access

Growth at our club combined with the traffic on Highway 28 have made turning into and out of our entrance a trickier proposition. The Board would like to look into what improvements might make access to our trails safer for everyone. This could involve a traffic study, “turning vehicles” warning signage, construction of a right-turn taper, a right-turn lane, or a left-turn lane, all of which would require Ontario Ministry of Transportation consultation and permits.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Strategy: Optimize our facilities and service offerings to enhance user experience and remove obstacles to participation.

Parking Study

This past season we saw an 86% growth in membership, and while our parking lot attendants helped to squeeze in all our visitors, we may need to expand our parking lot to accommodate this increase in popularity of our sport. The Board would like to gather more usage data this coming season, and investigate potential locations for additional parking, like the West side of our driveway. Changing popularity and initiatives to promote transportation alternatives may alleviate a need for expansion.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Strategy: Optimize our facilities and service offerings to enhance user experience and remove obstacles to participation.

Fundraising

For many of these development ideas, we will need to generate funds, and for that we will need a fundraising plan. In the past we have held a variety of events and auctions, while also applying for Trillium grants to support our needs. The Board plans to investigate these options once again, and entertain any new ideas members may have for raising the necessary funds.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Strategy: Develop and implement a fundraising strategy.

Priority C

These ideas are worth considering but offer no urgency at this time and are neither scheduled nor approved.

Wolf Trail Extension

A number of members over the years have asked why the Trillium-Wolf intersection is only a three-way junction, and that is a great question. Four-way junctions are much easier to groom and maintain, and this is especially important for high-traffic intersections like the Trillium-Wolf junction. Extending Wolf from where it meets Trillium due North to the Owl-Kawartha junction makes sense because of this improved groomability, but also because the path would largely follow an existing old logging skidway and add trail to a region that traditionally has better snow coverage than our southern trails.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Tactic: Ensure priority trails are conducive to low snow grooming.

Deer Trail Extension

While many members enjoy the Kenner trail, many also avoid it because of its length and its incline. Extending the Deer trail to the East would allow the trickier 2km segment of Kenner to be bisected creating increased options for those enjoying our southern classic trails. This extension would also make the Deer-Adam Scott intersection at the Laderach cabin into a four-way junction which will improve the groomability of an important high-traffic location.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Tactic: Ensure priority trails are conducive to low snow grooming.

Old Kawartha North Trail

Many members will remember the old Kawartha North trail with its beautiful large pines and picturesque “canyon,” and judging by the tracks this past winter, some even still ski the old path. Re-opening this segment of trail would likely require some culvert or bridge work to ensure consistent safe access, but is certainly within the realm of work that has been accomplished successfully on adjacent trails.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Pillar: High-value Experiences – Continue to maintain and improve our high-quality trails, programs, services and events.

2020 Logging Skidway

Many of the trails through our property and through the Peterborough Crown Game Preserve originated as logging roads or skidways, as this allows us to minimize the loss of trees while also being convenient and cost-effective. The logging on crown land that occurred in the summer and fall of 2020 left an obvious staging area clearing on Trillium just North of Adam Scott, but less obvious are the skidways they also created in this vicinity. Initial surveys suggest we could add a classic trail along one of these skidways from the Trillium due East to the Kenner joining up at the same point where the Adam Scott North used to join the Kenner trail. This would offer some additional enjoyable skiing while also breaking up this 3km long Kenner segment creating more route options.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Pillar: High-value Experiences – Continue to maintain and improve our high-quality trails, programs, services and events.

New Shelters or Cabins

School groups and families often benefit from a focused destination for their ski adventures, and so many of us have found ourselves saying, “our goal is the Tanney Cabin.” However, our trails don’t offer much in the way of middle ground — a goal that is farther than the Sugar Shack but closer than the Tanney, and members often propose we add additional shelters or cabins to fill these gaps. One proposal has been to add a shelter to the Roll trail as a good intermediate destination for skate or classic skiers, and another proposal is a cabin just south of the Western end of Wolf on a small peninsula overlooking a wetland.

2020–2025 KN Strategic Plan Strategy: Optimize our facilities and service offerings to enhance user experience and remove obstacles to participation.

Notes

• A number of members have suggested we consider summer use of our property, and this idea has been discussed many times in the context of offering hiking, biking, trail running, or disc golf. We haven’t added these ideas at this time as they offer a number of significant challenges, including a requirement for additional insurance beyond our current Nordiq Canada insurance, summer maintenance of washrooms and buildings, trail maintenance to keep paths mowed and usable, and staffing during the summer, all of which would require additional revenue that we don’t feel the suggested summer activities would provide in our region where there are so many free options.
• This Development Outline does not list the minor maintenance that is regularly performed on our trails and stadium area, including tree trimming, mowing, minor re-routing, trailbed smoothing, and drainage upgrades that often include adding culverts, bridges, additional fill, and gravel to existing trails and skied terrain.
• While the Board has tried to pull together all the ideas we have heard discussed or had proposed, if we have missed anything, please feel free to send a note.

Site Maps

Map 1

Showing potential trail extensions in pink and existing trails in dark red.

Map 2

Showing potential separate fat biking trails in pink and existing trails in dark red.

Map 3

Showing our development zone with possible new building locations in bright yellow, and existing building locations in dark yellow. Existing parking and driveways are also shown here in dark blue with potential new parking space and drive access shown in bright blue.