With each pull of the trigger, Alex Martin grew more visibly frustrated.

The Bend 15-year-old held a comfortable lead finishing the fifth and final mile of Saturday’s Powdr Shot biathlon, a summer twist on the sport that swaps trail running for cross country skiing. But on his last trip to the air rifle range near the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Lodge, Alex couldn’t hit a thing.

Five shots. Five misses. And so, five laps around the roughly 200-yard long penalty loop issued to every competitor for every missed shot.

Though he hung on to win the race, Alex was mystified as to how his accurate shooting deserted him on his final visit to the range.

“I hit four, four, five, five, and then, nothing,” he said.

Saturday’s event was a joint project of Powdr Corp., the company that owns Mt. Bachelor and eight other ski resorts, and Euclid Timber Frames, a Utah design and construction firm headquartered down the road from Powdr’s Park City Mountain Resort.

The two have teamed up to stage a series of summer biathlons at Powdr resorts this summer — they’ve been to Killington in Vermont and Gorgoza Park in Utah, and from here, they’ll head to Colorado’s Copper Mountain, Boreal near Reno, and back to Park City.

Tyson Apostol, son of Euclid Timber Frames head Kip Apostol, said the idea came about because of his father’s desire to develop an event to raise funds to promote sustainable forestry.

The company frequently uses timber killed through insect infestations, he said, and views the use of dead timber as a way of reducing wildfire risk and sequestering the carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere as dead trees decompose.

With around 30 entrants, the Mt. Bachelor race was the largest Powdr Shot event yet, Tyler Apostol said, though still far too small to pay for any significant degree of forest cleanup. In partnership with Powdr, he said they’re hoping the race series can grow large enough to remove dead trees and plant new ones on both public and private land.

For Saturday’s race, runners completed three to five laps of the nearly one-mile course, followed by five shots with a scoped pellet rifle from 10 to 15 yards — and any penalty laps assessed. Racing continues today with a mountain bike biathalon, run in identical fashion but with an approximately two-mile loop for riders.

Ethan Allison, 14, won the intermediate class on Saturday, and said accurate shooting is critical, even if it takes time to line up a shot.

“Hitting the shots is the thing, because those penalty laps are tough,” he said.

Chris Nyberg, president of Powdr Corp,, has competed in all three running biathlons held this summer. He won the inaugural race in Killington, but concedes low turnout — just eight competitors — was key to his victory.

Nyberg said the sustainable forestry mission of the event meshes well with Powdr’s efforts to minimize its environmental impact. Powdr has committed to supporting the race series for the next few years, he said, and he suspects summer biathlon events could catch on as people come to know that such a thing exists.

“It’s still a new event. Kids love it, they love to shoot pellet guns,” Nyberg said. “For a lot of people, it’s their first experience shooting a rifle.”

Like most competitors, Saturday’s race was the first summer biathlon for Ashly Hoffman of Bend. Hoffman, 33, said it was tricky to shoot while breathing heavily from the run, the crosshairs of her scope bobbing up and down as she tried to zero in on the target. Just the same, she hit three of five targets on her first two turns through the range, five of five on her third — and then, just one of five on her last time through, tacking on four penalty laps between herself and the finish line.

“That one, ooh, I really started to question myself,” Hoffman said.

Today’s mountain bike biathlon starts at 9 a.m. near the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Lodge, and competitors can register online or at the race site until shortly before the start. Information about the event is available at mtbachelor.com.