Skip to content
Larch Hills Nordic Society

Trails & snowshoe

Fifty-seven kilometres groomed, and a hundred and fourteen that are not

The society publishes its network as five numbers: 57 km groomed for skate and set for classic, 114 km ungroomed, 17 km of snowshoe trail, a 10.1 km canine trail and 6.4 km lit. Those numbers are reproduced here exactly and nothing has been added to them.

Groomed
57 km

skate and classic trackset

Ungroomed
114 km

beyond the groomed network

Snowshoe
17 km

trails for snowshoes

Canine trail
10.1 km

where the dog can come

Lit trails
6.4 km

for skiing after dark

Technique
Both

groomed for skate, set for classic

No photograph here, on purpose

There is no picture of the lit trails on this page. We have none that belong to the society, and a stock photograph of somebody else's floodlit track would be quietly asserting something we cannot verify — how wide it is, how it is lit, what it looks like at seven on a Tuesday.

Where this concept does use a stock photograph, it carries a visible chip saying so. Where it cannot, it says nothing at all rather than guessing.

Lit trails

Six and a bit kilometres, lit, for the months when it is dark at four

The society publishes 6.4 km of lit trail. In a Shuswap December that is the difference between skiing twice a week and skiing at the weekend only — it is the number that makes a membership worth it for anyone with a job.

Lighting hours are not published, so this concept does not print any. On a real build that is one line of text, and it is probably the thing people phone about most.

Not only classic tracks

Snowshoes, dogs, and everything past the groomer

The published network is not one thing. Most of it — 114 of the 171 kilometres — is not groomed at all, and there are separate trails for snowshoes and for dogs so that none of those uses has to share a set classic track.

  • 10.1 km

    Canine trail

    A published canine trail, so a dog is not a reason to stay home. Rules for using it are not published, so this concept does not invent any.

  • 17 km

    Snowshoe trails

    Seventeen kilometres of snowshoe trail, published separately from the ski network and covered by a ski membership as well as by a snowshoe one.

  • 114 km

    Ungroomed

    Twice as much ungroomed trail as groomed. What condition it is in on any given day is not something the current site reports.

What covers what

The one asymmetry in the membership categories

  • A ski membership covers snowshoeing

    The society states it directly: ski memberships include snowshoeing. If you ski and snowshoe, one membership does both.

  • A snowshoe membership does not cover skiing

    The reverse is not true, and it is the sentence most worth reading before you pick a category.

  • Registration is online

    Memberships are registered through zone4.ca. Which season a given fee applies to is not stated on the current site.

What is not on this page

Trail names, difficulty grades, a daily grooming report, opening hours, rental rates and facilities are not published on the society's current site, so none of them appear here. Each would be straightforward to add on a real build, and a grooming report in particular would answer the question most people ring up to ask.

Ask the society →

Trail map

The map belongs here, and it belongs to the society

In a real build this is where the trail map would sit — zoomable, downloadable, readable on a phone with gloves on. We have deliberately left it out of this concept, and we have not invented trail names or distances the society has not published.

Ask the society for the current map →

Getting here

605 Edgar Road, up in the hills above Salmon Arm

That is the address the society publishes for the trails. Post goes somewhere else — to a box number in town — which is worth knowing before you send a cheque to a trailhead.

Trails

605 Edgar Road
Salmon Arm, British Columbia V1E 2Y2

Mail

Box 218
Salmon Arm, British Columbia V1E 4N3

236-586-5711 · info@skilarchhills.ca

Driving directions, road conditions and parking are not published on the society's current site, so this concept does not describe the drive.

A snow-banked road climbing between winter forest towards low forested hills under a pale sky Stock photo