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Our history

Four ski clubs decided to stop being four ski clubs

The Bulkley Valley Cross Country Ski Club was formed in the late 1970s out of an amalgamation. Four small volunteer clubs, spread across one valley, agreed to become one — and what stands at the Nordic Centre now is what that made possible.

The late 1970s

One valley, four ski clubs, and a decision to merge

Amalgamations are the least romantic thing in any club's history and usually the most important. Four separate groups of volunteers in the Bulkley Valley agreed in the late 1970s to pool what they had into a single club. A network of 52 km, a biathlon range with its own cabin and a caretaker cabin are not things four small clubs build separately.

One of the four was called the Every Man and His Dog Ski Club, which tells you roughly everything about what skiing in this valley was like before there was a Nordic Centre.

The four clubs

  • Tyhee Mountain Club

    Telkwa

  • Silver King International (SKI) Club

    Driftwood

  • Smithers Ski Group

    Smithers

  • Every Man and His Dog Ski Club

    Location not published

The record

What is written down

Four entries, and only one of them carries a firm year. That is not the club's history being thin — it is the club's history not being written down anywhere a stranger can read it.

  1. Before

    Four clubs in one valley

    The Tyhee Mountain Club at Telkwa, the Silver King International — the SKI Club — at Driftwood, the Smithers Ski Group, and the Every Man and His Dog Ski Club. Four sets of volunteers, four sets of trails, one valley.

  2. 1970s

    They amalgamate

    In the late 1970s the four clubs amalgamated into the Bulkley Valley Cross Country Ski Club. Everything at the Nordic Centre follows from that decision.

  3. 1994

    The Buchfink family

    In 1994 a helicopter crash claimed the lives of the Buchfink family. A donation from their estate funded the lodge that stands at the centre today.

  4. Now

    Fifty-two kilometres and a range

    The club operates the BV Nordic Centre on Crown land under a partnership agreement with Recreation Sites & Trails BC: 52 km groomed for skate and classic, a biathlon range with its own cabin, and coaching for all ages.

Names

The people the club still names things after

A youth programme out of an elementary school, an Olympic skier who helped run the racing side of it, and a wax hut with a name on it. None of these are dated in anything the club has published, so none of them are dated here.

  • Jack Rabbit, at Telkwa Elementary

    Gary and Liz Murdoch

    Started a Jack Rabbit programme out of Telkwa Elementary — which is how most of the valley's skiers first got onto skis.

  • Olympic cross-country skier

    Esther Bahen

    Partnered with Gary Murdoch on the club's youth racing programme.

  • Named for him

    The Murdoch wax hut

    A wax hut at the centre carries Gary Murdoch's name. Small clubs do not do that casually.

  • 1994

    The Buchfink family

    In 1994 a helicopter crash claimed the lives of the Buchfink family. A donation from their estate funded the lodge that stands at the centre today.

Days until

78

Registration opens

The 2026 – 2027 season

Registration opens in mid-October

That is the club's own line: registration for the coming season opens mid-October. It is the single most useful sentence on the whole site, so it is the loudest thing on it — and it is written in one place, so that a volunteer can change the date and the fee table each summer without touching anything else.

Registration opens
Mid-Oct 2026
Season
2026 – 2027
Fees on this site
2025 – 2026

The club named a month, not a day. The counter runs to 15 October 2026 because that is the middle of it — our arithmetic, not a date the club has announced. Every fee shown anywhere on this site is last season's published schedule.

A note from JnP

A history page is only as good as the archive behind it

Everything above came from what the club has already published. There is no photograph on this page because we have none that belong to the club, and we will not put a stock photo of a stranger beside the Murdochs' names or the Buchfinks'.

What this page really wants is the club's own material: the year the amalgamation was signed, photographs from the four original clubs, the Jack Rabbit years at Telkwa Elementary, the names of the people who have groomed these trails for decades. Almost none of it is currently anywhere a person outside the valley can find.

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