Like a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, John Morton’s trails serve as venues for international competition and recreational enjoynment alike. Lucky for Mainers, there are more than a dozen of them around the state.

Whether you’re from Aroostook, Kennebec or Cumberland counties, if you love Nordic skiing, chances are you’ve skied on a Morton trail.

Next month in Fort Kent, his trails at the Maine Winter Sports Center will showcase a World Cup event, proving his ability to design a world-class skiing venue.

And yet, Morton’s fingerprints are all over the trails in New Gloucester, Gray and Kents Hill, as well as Caribou, New Sweden, Limestone, Fort Fairfield and beyond.

He has been the architect behind trails in Korea, Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Morton competed, coached or served the United States Biathlon Team in seven Olympic Games, from the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan, to the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. He designed the course for the 1997 World University Games in Korea.

After Morton finished 11 years as the Dartmouth College ski coach in 1989, he began designing competitive ski trails. Soon, he also was helping small landowners and towns offer recreational trails.

Through the support of the Maine Winter Sports Center and the Libra Foundation, Morton has designed trails throughout Maine.

Morton has been active in promoting the organization’s mission: to create as many small, community trails as possible and to make Nordic skiing a way of life again in northern Maine.

‘The idea was to make it just as easy for kids to learn to go out the back of schools to ski as it was for them to play Little League baseball. Every town has a Little League diamond. Our hope is to do something similar with skiing,’ Morton said.

Most recently, Morton has worked on the trails at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester and on community trails in Gray.

He said community trails get the same treatment as his world-class courses.
Ideally, Morton likes to ‘fool skiers’ on the uphills by moving the trails through the woodland terrain so skiers are less aware they’re climbing, and then by making the downhill worth the climb.

‘They are fun and interesting and exhilarating,’ he said. John Eldridge, who was involved in planning the town trails in Cumberland, said Morton ‘maximizes on the fun element’ in his trail designs.

He said the ‘wizard’ of trail design uses a lot of quick inclines and descents, as well as fast curves and turns in his trails. Eldridge said characteristic climbs and winding woods are signature Morton elements.

Dave Wakana, Caribou High School athletic director, said the trails there are special because of the location. They have allowed the students to train at their high school, while offeriing the community a venue other than the local golf course.

‘People wanted the trails,’ Wakana said. ‘The beauty of our trails is they’re right in town. Parents can bring kids and ski. It’s so easy.’

Gray resident Carl Holmquist said the six miles of Morton-designed trails across form his home on land owned by the town, the local school and a paper company are a roller coaster of fun.

It’s obvious the Morton-designed trails were not the work of a ‘common trail builder,’ Holmquist said.

‘The trails are interesting, not only for skiers, but for bikers or runners, even for someone just doing a hike. They’re serpentine and go in and out of all these interesting areas,’ Holmquist said.

The ski trails sit close to the high school and middle school in Gray, making them perfect family trails.

This community draw is another signature element of Morton’s trails in Maine, even though he has also created trails at the world-class level.

Next month at the World Cup event in Fort Kent, Morton’s name will be cemented in Maine skiing history. The Fort Kent event will be the first World Cup on a Morton-designed course, a high achievement, even if it wasn’t his end goal.

Rather Morton, of Thetford, VT, said it is the increased Nordic activity his trails have brought to Maine communities that has made his work here meaniingful.

‘Presque Isle and Fort Kent, right from the beginning, were world-class competition facilities. Now we also want these trails to be for more modest abilities, ideally, to provide something for everyone,’ he said. ‘The goal early on was to make skiing more affordable for Maine families.’