Despite trying hard to make it happen the Lacombe Cross Country Ski Club won't be adding trails around Elizabeth Lake and Lake Anne this year.

Having a hard time controlling snowmobiling on the lakes and maintaining the trails is just one of the roadblocks the club faced.

President Brent Bouwsema said the high cost of liability insurance was another issue and tripling the price of memberships to cover the cost is something the club doesn't want to do.  

“We want to make sure that we’re attracting a decent amount of people. We’re in our infancy and trying to create a good core group of people to support us in the long term,” Bouwsema said.

“We don’t feel like we can jump our fees from $10 to $30 without losing a whole bunch of our members.”

However, adding trails around the natural area at J.J Collett might be an option for the future.

“There’s someone who does trail setting there and they would like us to help them out because they’re borrowing equipment as well. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to get out there because we haven’t had our own equipment,” Bouwsema said.

“Once we do start to build up our own equipment and we don’t have to borrow it, then we can look at doing that.”

Also looking to the future the club has been experimenting with creating trails for Skate Skiing and is something they would like to continue doing.

With 100 members, an increase of ten from the year before, Bouswema added ideally they’d like to see 125 members.

But with the inconsistent weather, maintaining consistent trails has been a challenge and the club is hoping for one more large snow storm before the season ends.