Meg Roussos / The BulletinEmily Hyde skis to a first-place finish for Summit during the nordic state championships at Mt. Bachelor in Bend in February. Hyde, who won a pair of junior national championship in March, is headed to Barrow, Alaska as part of a group that will teach locals how to ski.

Emily Hyde recently capped her impressive nordic ski season with two titles at the U.S. Junior Nationals — but the Summit High School senior is not done skiing just yet.

There is lots of snow north of here, and Hyde is preparing to travel about as far north as one can go to help spread the joy of cross-country skiing.

This week Hyde, 18, will venture into the Arctic Circle to Barrow, Alaska — the northernmost city in the country — with several other skiers and coaches from Bend.

The skiers are traveling there as part of the NANANordic and Skiku programs, which have the mission of creating a sustainable nordic ski program for isolated communities in Alaska. Hyde and the other athletes and coaches will teach nordic skiing to schoolchildren as part of their physical education classes. Hyde’s group also will offer after-school ski clinics to children and to adults, many of whom work for oil companies.

“I’m very excited for that,” Hyde says. “We stay on the school floor and you teach each PE class for a week. The idea is, there’s not a lot to do up there … so there’s a lot of drug and alcohol problems. The idea is to get the kids active.”

The program, which also donates ski gear to villages, was founded by former Olympic nordic skier Lars Flora, a former Bend resident who now lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

According to www.nananordic.com, in 2014 NANANordic and Skiku visited 27 villages from Aniak to the Bering Straits region, Northwest Arctic and North Slope, bringing 80 coaches to work with 3,000 students.

Hyde was selected for the program shortly after her victories at the U.S. Junior Nationals in the skate sprint and the 10K classic last month in Truckee, California. She will be traveling to Alaska with friend and fellow Mt. Bachelor Sports Education Foundation skier Casey Shannon, as well as a few other coaches from Bend. They plan to stay in Alaska for about one week.

“What a cultural experience,” says Dan Simoneau, Hyde’s coach at MBSEF. “There’s so many good sides to it. Learning about the cultures, and traveling to new places. And then the whole side athletically, when you really know something and you can teach it. These are some pretty isolated villages, and they’re trying to provide outlets for them.”

Last month marked Hyde’s fifth appearance at junior nationals. In 2014 she posted two top-10 placings there, so this year she was hoping for a top-three podium finish. Instead, she claimed two impressive victories, as well as a third place in the 5K skate.

“I’ve kind of been building up,” Hyde says. “I felt like it just all came together in that one week, which was awesome.”

Hyde plans to attend Dartmouth this fall, and she will compete on the Big Green’s NCAA Division I cross-country ski team.

She also has long-term goals of making the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team and qualifying for the Olympics.

Simoneau sees that potential in Hyde.

“What stands out about her is her focus,” Simoneau says. “Her results have gotten better every single year. She was ready to win and she won. The last Olympic team had five skiers from the Northwest, and none of those five ever one two races at junior nationals in the same year. That’s pretty cool. Emily’s strength is she’s really, really consistent.”

A Bend native, Hyde learned to cross-country ski from her father, a former ski patroller at Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort near La Grande. She started skiing at a very young age and joined MBSEF in 2005.

Hyde draws motivation from Simoneau and her fellow MBSEF skiers but also from the women’s national team, which has raised the bar over the past few years.

“They’re just so cool to watch,” Hyde says. “Their coach (Matt Whitcomb) has been at a couple of camps that I’ve gotten to go to, and he is incredible. He’s so motivating and hard-working.”

Hyde might one day make a bid for the national team, but for now she has her sights set on northern Alaska, where it is cold (temperatures below zero), but also light for most of the day. In Barrow in early April, the sun sets around 10 p.m.

“It’s just going to be a whole different experience,” Hyde says. “I don’t know anything about the lifestyle or anything. But I just love skiing, so it’s just teaching kids what I love to do.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0318, mmorical@bendbulletin.com