Ryan Elden’s eyes gleamed with surprised delight like sunshine on freshly packed snow.
As one of Canada’s top biathlon prospects, he was at home in the hustle and bustle of race day.
As a Quesnel kid, he was at home in the historic streets of goldrush town Barkerville.
What he never imagined until he walked into it were the two things happening together. It was snowing lightly, the music pumped, the athlete conversations and scrunch of skis on packed powder made a pleasant din, and everywhere Elden looked was a collision of familiarity with alien. How could this carefully curated outdoor museum be an active competition site for the BC Winter Games?
“No, I never expected I’d ever see anything like this, but it’s really cool and I really hope they do more (Nordic events here),” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of people talking. People are super excited about it.”
The competitive Nordic skiing community is a tight-knit family. As Elden takes in the anomalous scene, what isn’t unusual are the faces all around him.
His own father walks past, with the lanyard around his neck marking him as one of the day’s chief event organizers, and his mother is nearby helping the timing officials.
One of Canada’s premier biathlon coaches, Allie Dickson, comes over to say hello. Dickson is also agog at the sight, as she, hailing from Burns Lake, also grew up with Barkerville. The two exchange warm welcomes and some shop-talk.
“He’s been on tour,” Dickson said proudly, pointing to her fellow northerner on the international biathlon scene. “We met up, actually, in Montreal, at the airport, flying back. He was just in France.” Dickson’s Olympian sister, Emily, was there skiing in Europe’s World Cup series.
As the chat unfolded, Dianne Dagneau, the director of sport for the Lhtako Quesnel BC Winter Games came by and interjected when she recognized the athlete she’d known almost his whole life.
“This is the famous Ryan Elden, and when he was just a baby I taught him how to downhill ski. That’s where his love of skiing started,” she said with a mischievous grin.
There is some truth to the kidding around. Elden has been a dedicated athlete since the combination of skiing and shooting took hold, once he graduated as a child from the Quesnel Jackrabbits program at Hallis Lake Ski & Snowshoe Trails.
Some of his highlights of the past few years include being a member of Canada’s contingent for International Biathlon Union (IBU) Junior World Championships events, winning a personal gold and a relay team bronze for Team BC at the Canada Winter Games in Red Deer, just this past January winning a home province NorAm Cup event at Sovereign Lake Nordic Club’s trails, and this year he was named (along with Emily Dickson and 15 others) to Biathlon BC’s High Performance Squad. As part of that group, he has to consistently train at the three designated centres of excellence: Sovereign Lake, Canmore and/or Whistler.
The latter is his location of choice, especially considering how close it is to Quesnel. It allowed him to come take part in the Games purely as an eager volunteer.
“I had to make it up. This is so special,” he said, and not just because of the memory-making novelty of Barkerville as a setting. Races were also held at his childhood headquarters of Hallis Lake, a facility that became a certified functional facility as a result of the 2000 BC Winter Games, when Elden was less than a year old. The 2024 encore added even more permanent features, especially a biathlon shooting range, to deepen its effectiveness.
“I wish we had that range when I was a kid,” said Elden. “We would haul the generator out on a sled so we could have floodlights, training after school. There was the cow pasture right there. Every year we would set all the targets up, then when it was over, take all the targets down and haul them back to the storage shed. It was a whole big thing. Now, it’s good, and every year when I come back there’s a little more done, it seems. This improvement is a big deal.”
All of Elden’s personal plans seem like big deals, in the next short term, but it’s all just part of the position his talent and training has enabled. It started with the Cariboo Ski Touring Club, then he spent Grade 12 in Prince George working with the Caledonia Nordic Ski Club under the PacificSport Northern BC program, and now with the B.C. elite program he will compete March 26-31 at Biathlon Canada’s national championships slated for Hinton (snow conditions there improved after recent concerns), and his focus is set on making Canada’s team for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Italy.
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