The American Birkebeiner ski trail is a 52km long, 6m wide ribbon of grass that transects the Chequamegon National Forest between Cable and Hayward, Wisconsin. Maintaining the trail requires almost constant attention. The CXC Vertical Limit Team athletes spent Sunday afternoon doing volunteer trail work to get the trail prepped for the winter.
Every five years, brush needs to be cut back from the trail’s edge and tree limbs need to be trimmed. This allows the Tidd Tech’s to groom the trails without running into downed trees and also allows maximal snow accumulation on the trail. We got after it with chain saws, brush cutters, and tree limbers to cut back overgrowth.
Of course, everything that got cut had to be cleared as well. A number of cyclists out inspecting the Fat Tire course for next weekend’s race came across our operation and got some good cyclocross practice dismounting to get over the tree piles. In all, we cleared 2km of trail from OO South. That’s a good chunk of the 10km that needs to be trimmed this year.
