PRESQUE ISLE – While the Maine Winter Sports Center still keeps its focus of “re-establishing skiing as a lifestyle in Maine,” officials are widening their scope this weekend for the first Outdoor Fitness and Equipment Expo.

The event, which the sports center is hosting to promote a “healthy, outdoor lifestyle,” will be held from 2 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 1, at the Aroostook Centre Mall, according to organizer John Farra, a Maine Winter Sports Center coach.

The expo will feature all kinds of outdoor equipment, including skis, boots and poles, mountain bikes, roof racks, eyewear, snowshoes, kayaks and canoes. Farra said expo visitors also will have a chance to try several activities, including biking and skiing indoors, and learn about the Biathlon Junior World Championships and local ski and bike trails.

Farra said the event started off last year as a “mini-expo,” with representatives from four or five companies from the cross-country skiing equipment industry gathering at a ski shop in Van Buren.

“It was really successful,” Farra said. “The reps liked to meet the local people, show their wares and compete for new business that we’re helping to create up here in the ski industry.”

Farra said that because of the success, Maine Winter Sports Center officials felt they should do it again and on a bigger scale.

“We thought, ‘Let’s do it in a public forum so that more than ski-racer types would have access to this information,'” Farra said. “The fact is, we’re trying to re-establish skiing as a lifestyle in Maine, and with this, we’re trying to promote a healthy outdoor lifestyle.”

Farra said organizers have attendance confirmation from about 25 vendors from as far as Boston, including: Fischer Sports, Atomic Sports, Rossignol, Alpina-Madshus, Salomon Sports, Exel Poles, Holmenkol, Toko and Aegis Bikes.

Highlights of the event include a 6-foot-wide, 100-foot-long all-weather carpet that participants can use for indoor cross-country skiing, a chance to use a biathlon laser rifle, and physical challenges – some including medicine balls – for kids and adults.

“The idea is that there are people we are able to hook into skiing by normal means, but we want to open it up to another spectrum of people who happen to be at the mall that day,” Farra said. “We hope once they try it they’ll think, ‘Gee, that wasn’t so hard.’ It’s another opportunity for us to draw the connection between skiing, fun and fitness.”