South Wirth Controversy (or, A Tempest In A Teapot)

As an avid cross country skier - note I didn't say "experienced" or "seasoned" - Theodore Wirth park is one of my favorite wintertime haunts. A gorgeous series of interconnected trails through Wirth golf course and down through south Wirth and to the lakes makes this one of the more varied, lengthy and challenging trails networks anywhere in the metro area. Really, it's a cross country skiing jewel to the Minneapolis' parks crown.

While Minneapolis has featured groomed CC Ski trails such as north Wirth's golf course front nine and back nine loops for years, the expanded trail network from north Wirth to uptown began a few years ago with John Munger's dream to make Minneapolis a CC Ski Mecca by creating the City Of Lakes Loppet ski marathon. This has resulted in expanded ski trails through what used to be fairly quiet wooded areas surrounding Eloise Butler wildflower gardens and the Quaking Bog.

These expanded trails, featuring more numerous (and wider) skiing/hiking loops have cut a swath through what was a well-kept secret of Bryn Mawr residents, bordering Eloise Butler in particular. When you combine this with the Park Board's multi-year campaign to rid these parks of Buckthorn, south Wirth has really thinned out in the last couple of years.

Many residents feel it's irrevocably changing the nature of this practically wild habitat, and threatening rare vegetation. They have directed much of their frustration at what they perceive to be a skier conspiracy to strip-mine south Wirth of buckthorn in order to lay wide switchbacks of skate ski groomed trails. The Southwest Journal recently reported on The Controversy

Why these residents (banded together as the Friends of the Wildflower Garden) have taken such a hard-line with the Nordic Ski Foundation escapes me. Even after the multiple use groups like the Nordic Ski Foundation, area residents and mountain bikers all attempted to reach a consensus on use and seemed to reach agreement on keeping potential trails away from the flower gardens, their stated goal is to remove all nordic trails from south Wirth.
They raise two principal points, as I see it:

• Wide trails have cut through old growth vegetation and threaten rare species, and,
• Nordic trails and usage has scared off local fauna

Aside from the inherent contradiction of an inner city park "wilderness" area, nordic skiing is one of the least invasive recreational pursuits a park area can possibly see. I'm pretty intimately familiar with the Eloise Butler ski trail. Most of trail is perimeter use (running along the neighborhood, roads, schoolyard and on top of the Park Board summer use parking lot road. It briefly skirts near the flower garden and, as I mention above, consensus has been reached not to expand any closer to the flower garden. I can only conclude that people are confusing most of the buckthorn removal with a Loppet land-grab.

As to wildlife, I fail to see how it's use by skiiers would be markedly different from any other non-motorized use in terms of threatening local wildlife. I use a variety of the region's trail systems to ski, hike and run and cannot fathom why people would think that this type of usage would materially impact local wildlife. Anyone who's had to shoo turkeys, deer and coyote out of the way when they are trail running or skiing would agree with me.

It seems the Friends of the Wildflower Garden have misdirected their anger here and are bit ignorant of the ski community. It is one of the most genteel, gracious, environmentally friendly recreation groups you can come across.

Check out my local video of skiing Wirth on Christmas (footage here from the connector section from JD Gardens and the south Wirth areas back to Front Nine):



Look at those guys! Just the picture of gentility.