With a recent change in leadership, the Jasper Cross Country Ski Club is looking to rebuild itself and extend the reach of the sport deeper into the vast network of trails around town.

The club has been around for about 60 years, but its membership has ebbed and flowed, said current director Loni Klettl. The club is currently looking for more directors, but Klettl said the transition phase won’t keep it from its usual activities this winter.

“We’ll still be offering lessons. The Jackrabbits program is still on. We still want to have some waxing clinics,” she said. “But we have to sort out details.”

The club does have CANSI-certified instructors to provide lessons, she added, and is hoping to work with Wendy Hall of Freewheel Cycle to start a “women’s ski night” this winter, too, similar to the women’s mountain bike rides the shop offers during the summer.

In addition, Klettl said the club hopes to further integrate with the Jasper Trail Alliance and help cross-country skiers make better use of the various mountain trails that surround the town.

“We thought while we get our club together, the best thing to do is just to have it involved with the Trail Alliance,” she said.

Cross-country skiing in past years has largely been limited to groomed trails, Klettl said, often on fire roads or similar types of relatively flat terrain because it doesn’t take much snow to set a track. But this winter she hopes the club can work with Parks Canada to help skiers make more use of the rocky and rooty network of trails that surround Jasper by getting them packed down by snowmobile once there is enough snow.

“If you just pack it, they become multi-use winter trails, because then you can cross-country ski, you can run, you can dog walk, you can snowshoe – everyone has a good time,” she said.

“We think it would make an incredible difference in the winter to have that packed, Ski-Doo trail. They do that in Riding Mountain National Park (in Manitoba), and when you look at their trail report they go ‘groomed’ or ‘packed.’ And other parks do it too, so we need to get on that.”

The Jasper Jackrabbits program – for kids aged six to 12 – also hopes to make more use of natural mountain trails this year, said organizer Wendy Niven, including some possible “exchanges” with the Hinton Jackrabbits that will see kids from both communities get a broader cross-country skiing experience.

With the nordic centre in Hinton, the program there is more focused on racing than it is in Jasper, where the Jackrabbits program is only entering its second year of existence.

“We thought instead of competing with Hinton why don’t we try to complement Hinton?” Niven said. “Here it’s more about being out in the mountains than it is about the competitive end.”

The Jackrabbits will again do the bulk of their regular skiing in the Whistlers Campground/Marmot Meadows area, however. Niven said the plan is to have the road plowed right to the “warm-up kiosk” this winter so that kids can start skiing right from there. Last year, she said, just making it to the kiosk was enough of a challenge for some of the younger skiers, especially on colder days.

Organizers also plan to jazz up the terrain a little this winter, “because kids get bored pretty quick on the flat stuff,” Niven said.

“We dreamed of it last year but we didn’t really have he resoruces to pull it off, but we’re going to build a terrain park – a cross-country terrain park – at Marmot Meadows.”

The Jackrabbits program is looking for volunteers to help build the park, she added, and volunteer coaches are always welcomed, too.

“It’s called community coaching, so it’s not a CANSI coaching course,” Niven said. “If anybody likes kids, likes cross-country skiing and wants to volunteer – the more the merrier.”

The Jackrabbits program is aiming to run from Jan. 17 to March 17, 2012. To sign up, find more information, or volunteer, email jasperjackrabbit@gmail.com.

More information about the Jasper Cross Country Ski Club and the Jasper Trail Alliance is available online at each of those group’s Facebook pages, but Klettl said one of the best ways to stay up to date with the club is to join the Friends of Jasper National Park.

“We’re really encouraging people to become members of the Friends,” she said, “because then you’ll get email updates.”