Peter Hanson
Board President
Incline Village, NV
Growing up in Minnesota, Peter starting skiing at an early age. After downhill racing in high school and running track and cross country in college, he got turned on to skate skiing in medical school. His triathlete friends got him to sign up for the American Birkebeiner which got him hooked on Nordic. 30 Birkies down and he’s still not done!
Living in Incline Village for 15 years, he’s become attached to the big blue lake and the mountain above Incline. Peter can be seen skiing, coaching the Incline school teams, biking, hiking and working on the ski trails throughout the year. He works as a physician in Incline and Reno when he has time. He also volunteers as a team physician for Incline High and the US Ski Team which takes him to Europe for a World Cup or two each winter.
Peter finds joy in seeing so many people out enjoying the ski trails that he helped create!
dave straley
treasurer
Incline Village, NV
Dave Straley settled in Incline after his first career in foreign aid - Peace Corps and USAID - living in the tropics where he enjoyed sun, sand, and surfing. He took up XC skiing in 1999 after teaming up with Arthur Schultz, a Norwegian American whose dedication to and participation in the XC skiing was legendary. Dave was a season passholder at Diamond Peak XC during its last seasons and has been committed to bringing an XC skiing venue back to Incline since then. You may have seen him a decade and a half ago at IVGID Board meetings explaining why Incline needed to negotiate a land-lease with Incline Land Co or purchase a five-acre in-holding at Mt Rose. IVGID eventually agreed on a purchase. With the land in place, Dave and several other key members of the XC community created Nevada Nordic to bring groomed trails back to Nevada’s North Tahoe and help IVGID develop its five acres with a year-round high-altitude, multi-use venue. As with his XC skiing technique, building a sustainable XC venue is one of his lifelong works in progress.
Meghan Pry
secretary & Fundraising
Incline Village, NV
Meghan is originally from Boston and grew up downhill skiing at Sugarloaf in Maine. She came out to California to attend Stanford and fell in love with the West Coast. She has been living in Incline Village since 2015 with her young family and discovered a passion for XC skiing while exploring the Nevada Nordic trails with her bernedoodle, Ruggles. She enjoyed a career primarily in media production with ESPN, National Geographic Television and World Golf Tour but nowadays is focused on spreading the joy of XC skiing! Meghan is a certified USSA L100 XC Ski Coach and is committed to sharing her passion with the next generation as Program Director at Tahoe XC's Strider Gliders program and hopes to bring more kids programming to Nevada Nordic!
AMBER DIBELLO
Social Media
Reno, NV
I have a bit of a different background than the rest of the team. I am a lifelong snowboarder who didn’t touch downhill skis until I was 30, rented my first pair of xc skis at age 32 and was so hooked that I finally bought my own at 33! I am a mama of a 3 year old and love to remind everyone that moms can have fun too! Nevada Nordic helped me get outside in winter during the newborn-through-toddler stage and made learning and progressing very accessible while eliminating any intimidation or fear that I had. These trails truly made me feel like my winter loving self again after pregnancy and postpartum and they are the #1 place I bring my friends and family for guaranteed great days.
I wanted to share this side from a beginner standpoint especially as I enter my second pregnancy (and eventual postpartum) season and inspire others to get their kids outside. There’s no such thing as bad weather!
You can find me on the trails most weekends dressed in snowboard attire either on xc skis, backcountry skins, or snowshoes hauling a sled so be sure to say hello or ask any questions!
Valentin Alexandrov
permitting & Project development
Incline Village, NV
Valentin is originally from Kyiv, Ukraine and grew up paddling sprint canoe on the Dnieper River. He has a military background with two-year tour in the Middle East in UN Peacekeeping operations. His business career started in 1994 with work for Coca-Cola in Eastern Europe. He came to US in 1997 to obtain his MBA from MIIS in Monterey. After graduation he decided to stay in US pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities, first in insurance and financial services, and later, in renewable energy, electric cars, real estate development, environmental cleanup, firefighting aviation and many other fields. He has been living in Incline Village since 2014 coaching biathlon and MTB at Tahoe XC and x-country skiing at IHS/IMS. Currently he is focused on developing Nevada Nordic into a fully-fledged x-country skiing center.
TOM
burt
Lead Groomer
Kings Beach, CA
Tom is 4th generation North Lake Tahoe, who grew up skiing both alpine and cross country before starting snowboarding in 1982. He became a professional snowboarder in 1985 and is still involved in the snowboard industry as an athlete and a director of big mountain competitions. He helps coach the North Tahoe snowboard team and does forest conservation work in the summer. Tom got involved with Nevada Nordic in 2016 because growing up in Tahoe there were no public cross country trails available, and he found the mission of NN to bring trails to the public was worth the effort for our community. He brought his mechanical skills to help maintain the groomer and his heavy equipment skills for grooming the trails.
patrick Johnson
mapping & Project Development
Zephyr Cove, NV
Patrick grew up in Anchorage, Alaska where he fell in love with nordic skiing at a young age because his parents would lure him to the top of hills with chocolate. After several years competing on the US nordic ski circuit, Patrick settled in Lake Tahoe where he now works as an engineer designing water quality and stream restoration projects that protect the Lake’s clarity. Patrick was inspired by Nevada Nordic’s work in providing high-quality affordable and accessible ski trails to Nevadans and joined the board in 2021. He is also a mapping wizard and the creator of our new Nevada Nordic ski trail map!
Emily blackmer
BOARD MEMBER
Tahoe City, CA
Emily Blackmer grew up skiing on snowmobile trails in the woods of New Hampshire. She raced for Dartmouth College, before moving to Truckee in 2014 to compete for the Far West Nordic Elite Team for a few years. Today, she lives in Tahoe City, works on natural resource policy in the Sierra Nevada region, and still races recreationally (much slower than she used to). Emily believes that cross-country skiing builds the best community and is excited to help create more opportunities for people to discover and fall in love with the sport.