MIDDLETON - Cross-country skiers at the city's Pleasant View Golf Course have a longer and more challenging course on which to glide with the recent opening of a new path through a wooded section of the course.
The ski trail expansion - more than 2 miles at a cost of about $2,500 - also could be an important link in establishing a larger trail network throughout the city and town of Middleton, giving distance skiers an alternative to circling the same trail loops.
"I think there's a strong contingent of long-distance ski racers (who) currently have no great places to train," said Nicole Staskowski, project leader with JFNew, the company that helped the city expand the Pleasant View ski trails. "It would be nice to have some other ski trail opportunity of greater distance within Dane County."
Eventually the trail could hook up with ski tracks at nearby Pope Farm Park through Blackhawk Ski Club, making for 4 miles of cross-country skiing in that area.
Members of Blackhawk Ski Club, city and town officials are finalizing an agreement to allow the public ski trail at Pleasant View to connect with trails at Pope Farm.
Mark Torresani, club board member and director of the club's Nordic cross-country ski programs, said connecting to Pope Farm Park is a "very real possibility this year with the current snow conditions."
"That trail system would likely be one of the largest in the southern half of Wisconsin with the potential to expand it to other nearby parks in the next few years," Torresani said. However, "we still have a lot of work to do to make this happen."
Possible site for more trails
The new addition to the Pleasant View trail connects to the Blackhawk Ski Club property through an agreement with a residential property owner. But skiers must be club members to use the club's ski trail and continue to Pope Farm Park.
Another eventual trail connection could be to county-owned property in the town of Middleton known as the Sunnyside Seed Farm.
The county purchased the 292 acres, which is in the Black Earth Creek watershed, about five years ago and officials now are deciding how the park will be used.
Cross-country ski trails are "definitely a potential for that property," and would be an activity that complements the overall goal of protecting the area's land and wildlife, said Sara Kwitek, who works for Dane County and is leading Sunnyside's master plan project.
"We're interested in learning more about the goal of that regional trail and what connection could be made," she said.
Need landowners' OK
Sunnyside is open to the public for recreation uses such as hiking, wildlife viewing, fishing and bow deer hunting, and the county is looking at ways to provide better public access, she said.
However, before a connection can be made from the trails at Pope Farm Park to Sunnyside, the town of Middleton would need approval from at least two major landowners.
And at this point the landowners have said they have "no interest in allowing a public easement through any part of their property," said Sara Ludtke, deputy clerk and public works coordinator for the town of Middleton.
For now, skiers can enjoy the newly opened course at Pleasant View, which Staskowski described as "pretty hilly."
"From a training standpoint," she said, "there are not many other places you can go to get that kind of hilliness and intensity for free-style and classic skiing."
