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XC skiing starts strong in Tupper

TUPPER LAKE — Cross-country skiing is moving along in this town as it opened the Cranberry Pond Loop on Monday.

Volunteers and village and town staff worked Monday to groom the trail, which starts and ends at the golf course on Country Club Road and follows an old logging road around Cranberry Pond.

The trails are all in shape and ready for snow, town Councilman John Quinn said at Thursday’s town board meeting.

“I just want to publicly acknowledge town highway Superintendent Bill Dechene, all the work he and his crew have done for the cross-country trails,” Quinn said. “They put the snow tracks on the four-wheeler, they brought that and the snowmobile up to Roberts, got them serviced and brought them back and had equipment out on the trails.”

Town board member Mary Fontana said she had recently gone to check out the trail and said the skiing was “fantastic.”

The crew will also look to clear out Little Loggers Loop, an intermediate 2.4 kilometer loop, and Hull’s Brook Trail, an intermediate to advanced 1 kilometer loop, in the near future. Other trails are the Golf Course Loop, the Big Tupper Trail and the Skidder Trail. There is no charge to use any of them.

The cross-country ski program will start up on Dec. 12 with several new initiatives this year, according to a report by town Youth Program Coordinator Amanda Helms.

Helms said the 2016-17 program will include a paintball biathlon competition, full moon skis, a ski bus that takes kids straight from school to the trails and professional ski instructors from the state Olympic Regional Development Authority at Mount Van Hoevenberg in Lake Placid to teach the children proper techniques.

“If we have the snow, we are set up to have an outstanding cross-country ski program,” board member and Councilman Michael Dechene said.

Helms said the program will also put on its first ever Junior Lumberjack Scramble at 10 a.m. Feb 11, inviting all ski teams within a hour-and-a-half radius to participate.

The program is every Monday and Thursday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. and will tentatively end March 9, depending on weather conditions.

Town Supervisor Patti Littlefield said the town has all its skis for the program accounted for and kids have been coming to town hall to pick them up.

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