Volunteer
A ski hill is a lot of people agreeing to keep it open
Summit Lake has no parent company and no outside owner. It is operated by the Nakusp Ski Club Association — a non-profit society, run by volunteers, for the people of Nakusp and the valley.
The club
Built and kept going in kind
The Nakusp Ski Club Association is a non-profit society, and the hill it operates runs on volunteer time. The day lodge was renovated through a mix of grant funding and in-kind donations — materials and labour given rather than paid for, which is the only way a small hill improves anything.
That model works right up until the moment there are not enough people. It is a fragility worth stating plainly rather than dressing up, because the club has already stated it plainly itself.
The club's 2022 appeal
"Volunteers Needed To Keep Summit Lake Open!"
"Simply put, without more help, there may be no local ski hill."
Quoted from the club's own 2022 appeal. Nothing in this concept puts it more bluntly than they did.
Placeholder photo Pitch in
Four ways to keep the T-bar turning
The club has not published a list of volunteer roles, so these are the areas the hill plainly runs on rather than named positions. Ask what is actually needed this season — that is a better first question than any list.
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Help run a day
The day lodge, the cafeteria and the rental shop all need hands on an operating day. None of it requires you to be a good skier — it requires you to be there.
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Keep the hill working
A T-bar, a lodge and a trail all need maintenance, and on a volunteer-run hill that work is done by whoever can do it. Trades, machinery and a free Saturday all count.
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Join the society
Summit Lake is operated by the Nakusp Ski Club Association, a non-profit society. Members are what a society is made of, and someone has to sit on the board and do the paperwork.
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Give in kind
The lodge was renovated on grant funding and in-kind donations — materials, equipment and labour given rather than bought. Grant writing is its own kind of volunteering, and a rare one.
Start with one email
There is no volunteer sign-up form on the hill's site, and there is not one here either — this is an unofficial concept. Write to info@skisummitlake.com and say what you can do and when you are free. On a hill this size that is enough.
Contact
Talk to the hill
This is a concept site and has no working contact form — please use the real details below, which are the ones published by the ski area.
- Phone
- 250-265-3312
- info@skisummitlake.com
- Where
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16 km east of Nakusp
British Columbia
Two things we have deliberately left to the club
A territorial acknowledgement belongs to the ski club and the Nation whose territory the hill sits on, and its wording is theirs to set. We have not drafted one on their behalf, and a real build would carry whatever they choose.
We have also named no volunteers, board members or staff anywhere on this site. The hill does not publish those names, and an unsolicited concept is not the place to start.
Everything else here is drawn from the ski area's own public pages, and is listed source by source in the content inventory that accompanies this concept.
Season updates
The single most useful thing a hill this size can publish is whether it is open today and what a pass costs this year. Both live at the top of this concept's home page, in one block, for exactly that reason.