| The Mysteries of Nordic Trail Design Revealed |
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| Written by Bryce Evans, Summit Daily News, Summit County, Colorado | |||
| January 2009 | |||
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Trudging through on an old mining road, the Suburban began to slide sideways down the gravel path. John Morton and his wife clung, white-knuckled, to the sides of their seats, a little uneasy about their trip down Lincoln Meadows near the Sally Barber Trailhead. “Don’t worry, we do this all the time,” the driver of the truck told him. Morton rolled his eyes and laughed, recalling the “eventful” first look at the construction for the trail he designed at the Gold Run Nordic Center in Breckenridge. Sitting at a table in Clint’s on Main Street Breck last weekend, Morton was relieved to be preparing for his next trip to his Hoodoo Voodoo Trail. This time, though, he’s trading the Chevy sled for some skis. But before the renowned Nordic trail designer escaped for his day on the snow, he was stuck discussing his trade and sport to the uninformed local media — i.e. me. It’s not like he seemed upset about it, though. In fact, I’m pretty sure he could talk about Nordic skiing all day if he had the chance. And what I was trying to figure out was how someone can stand on a hill overlooking a vast expanse of flumes, foliage and former mining roads and envision a top-of-the-line Nordic ski trail. That is to say, I wanted some secrets of the trade that Morton indirectly fell into a number of years ago. First, a bit of background. Morton, originally from New Hampshire, attended Middlebury College in Vermont, which was where he began his Nordic career. In his first team meeting for the Middlebury ski team, Morton sat surrounded by All-Americans and national champions. “Our coach told us, ‘Look around. You can see that Alpine skiers are a dime a dozen on this team ... If you want to ski for Middlebury, you’d better concentrate on cross country,’” Morton recalled. Morton went on to ski in two Winter Olympic games in the 1970s in biathlon. He later coached the U.S. team and served 11 years as the head coach of the Dartmouth Nordic ski team. So, needless to say, his resume is pretty extensive. He got into the design side of things after deciding he needed a change from coaching. Two friends of his envisioned a plan to turn northern parts of Maine into a Nordic hotbed. Their goal was to give a struggling area with a slumping economy a new source of revenue and tourism. Morton designed 16 trails in the region, including two that have since served as sites for world championship competitions. Now, the goal is to transform Summit County into one of the world’s top ski destinations, not just on the slopes, but through some of the flatter land. “The downhill area does such a great job of bringing people into the community,” Jim Sanders, of the Gold Run Nordic Center, said, “So we thought, what can we do to bring people in and help the economy.” One problem Morton saw with most mountain Nordic areas was the lack of technical terrain and overall versatility of trails. “A lot of the skiing out here is on Forest Service roads and mining roads,” Morton said. “It’s a lot of long, gradual climbs and long, gradual descents.” This is why Morton was brought in to design the Hoodoo Voodoo Trail, Sanders told me. “It’s not the size that matters, it’s having that diversity that brings people in.” So Morton set out to create a trail that maximized the existing land in the Horseshoe Gulch but turned it into something that didn’t just follow the old paths already laid out. He commuted to Breck five or six times during the design process, walking and hiking to get the feel for the land. He spent countless hours studying maps and plotting courses, trying to keep in mind the desires of the community that hired him. Eventually, it came to the conclusion that you can see today. Sanders probably best sums up how everything turned out. “I started running it a lot this fall, and it was so cool,” he said. “I knew the design, had been on it, ran it, but once I got out on the finished product, I was like, ‘Wow, this is more than I could have imagined.’” That’s how Morton decides whether his designs were a success or not. He simply leaves it up to the most important stakeholders: the skiers. “ ... When they finish out the trail and they say, ‘Man, that was great, I’ve got to do that again,’ that’s what really matters,” he said. “If you get that response, then you’re doing it right.” With the early praise the 5k trail is already receiving — including one man who, on my way out of Clint’s, told me it’s the best around — it looks like Morton did just what he wanted. And for the area that was best known for finding that “yellow stuff,” it looks like it’s the “white stuff” that’s going to redefine Gold Run.
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