The Weardale Ski Club Ltd
Hi Everyone
Just a reminder that we are holding work parties on both Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 July and need as many volunteers as possible as there is a lot of work to be done. Our last 2 work parties attracted a total of 2 volunteers which out of a membership of nearly 800 is pretty poor. I know I say this every year but all the work (and believe me there is a lot done) is done by volunteers. We, as the committee, are in charge of organising the work that needs to be done but as members of the club we call upon you to come and help with the work, please. We are a non profit making club owned and run by its members, ie you and me, and the only way we can continue without a huge rise in the annual membership fee, is to do the work ourselves to keep the costs down. As you will see a lot of our equipment is very old (some of it 40 or 50 years old) but to replace with new would be prohibitive. A new Pistebasher costs in excess of £250,000, (and that is for a small one!), so we have to make do with second hand equipment and maintain it and repair it whenever we can. We also need to groom the slopes as well as we can by cutting the grass, removing rocks, repairing and adding new snow fencing, treating all the timber and metalware etc.
This weekend we are planning to mainly get more fence repairs and new snow fencing as well as some ditching done but there are also a few more technical jobs such as getting the Lynx snowmobile to start, replacing the alternator on the smaller pistebasher, some maintenance of the hydraulics on the large pistebasher, replacing flail mower blades etc.
If you feel you can help with any of these or can just offer a pair of hands for 1/2 a day or a full day then please try and attend one day. Work parties start at 10am meeting at the car park though we generally get there a little earlier.
Steve
