We’ve been working on an online awareness campaign to spread the word about the awesome Nordic skiing experience in the Ketchum/Sun Valley area. The online approach really worked nicely because it fit the ongoing trend of reaching people through the web, and we experimented a little with social media channels.

All of the major Nordic skiing publications are online now – some of them exclusively online like fasterskier.com (one of the most popular cross-country ski sites for racers) – while SkiTrax and Cross Country Skier still publish print versions. Like everything else, the focus is shifting to free information on the web.

It’s much easier to reach scores of cross-country ski clubs in the West because nearly all of them are online, and have their own web sites and volunteer webmasters. So that’s a good thing.

For all of us Idahoans who cross-country ski or snowshoe, it’s important to remember what an awesome trail system it is, and how it really should be considered one of the Top 10 Nordic skiing destinations in North America. That’s because they have more than 260Ks of groomed Nordic skiing trails valley-wide, the trails are immaculately groomed daily, and Galena Lodge and Sun Valley Resort provide a great indoor retreat with hot drinks and scrumptious food when the skiing day is over.

In a nice showing of inter-valley cooperation, the Ketchum/Sun Valley Chamber of Commerce has a nice web page that provides links to all of the key Nordic venues in the Wood River Valley, including the Galena Lodge, North Valley Trails and Sun Valley Resort. This is your go-to source for more information on the Ketchum/Sun Valley Nordic scene.

We also created a spot on our client news page that will be expanded with more photos and video.

Since we’re bullish on social networking, we also shared information with 437 fans on the largest Nordic group on Facebook, and we created a Sun Valley Nordic Twitter page that’s been getting some hits. Galena Lodge has a blog that will be populated with regular updates this winter on snowfall and trail conditions.

Ideally, it’d be nice to be one of the 800 cross-country skiers who partake in the Wells Fargo Boulder Mountain Tour on Feb. 7. The race involves skiing 32Ks going gradually downhill (1,000 vertical feet of descent) between Galena Lodge and the Sawtooth National Recreation Area headquarters, north of Ketchum.

It all makes me want to wax up the boards and pray to the snow god Ullr for lots of snow this winter.