Bike race worries ski club

The city of Cloquet will host a mountain bike race featuring as many as 600 youth participants later this month. But such a large race coming so close to the ski season at Pine Valley has the local ski club concerned.

"We know it's a multi-use park," Cloquet Ski Club representative Ken Ripp said. "But let's not ruin one sport for another."

The Minnesota Cycling Association's race series for sixth- through 12th-graders is coming to the Pine Valley Recreation Center on Sept. 24-25.

"At this point we feel it's worthy of a trial run," public works director Caleb Peterson said.

Peterson explained that city staff have been working with the cycling group for more than a year to coordinate the event, discussing issues such as parking, traffic control, and course maintenance and cleanup.

"Thus far, the group has been committed to leaving the site as good or better than existing," Peterson wrote in response to emailed questions.

Long a ski park with jumps and Nordic trails, Pine Valley has grown in recent years, thanks to the 2013 parks master plan, to include a network of single-track trails used for biking, hiking and snowshoeing.

"I have no problem if they race as they have it laid out," Ripp said. "My big concern is you cannot run a big race on ski trails."

According to plans Ripp has seen for the race, 95 percent of racing will be restricted to the single-track trails, using the wider ski trails only as crossings and connectors.

But previous races, though smaller, have chewed up the ski trail, leaving parts of the trail soft and muddy. Areas like that, if not corrected, won't always hold snow. Skiers like to hit the trails as soon as possible after the first snowfalls.

The ski club is meeting later this month to discuss what it can do to help protect the trails during the course of two days of bike racing. It's likely the ski club will have a presence volunteering at the event, Ripp said.

"I don't want them putting any pressure on our ski trails," Ripp said. "We want to make sure they're not training on trails - that they're using only designated parts."

The Minnesota Cycling Association did not respond to inquiries from the Pine Knot.

Peterson noted a bigger picture resulting from the event: the city is applying for regional designation status for Pine Valley through the Greater Minnesota Regional Parks and Trails Commission. Such a designation could open up access to "legacy funding," he said.

"These are the types of events that would gain the park regional status," Peterson added.

So too, is the fact that the park is one of only two northern Minnesota cities with ski jumps.

Pine Valley also has been the subject of a recent effort by the city parks commission to update the park's wayfinding signage. For the first time, the new signs feature Ojibwe language translations.

And while the park can fill up on any given day with high school runners or skiers, dog walkers or cyclists, including popular Thursday night rides that fill the parking lot, Ripp noted how the upcoming race figures to bring a crowd to the park unlike any other events.

"With 600 riders, that means 1,200 people overall with coaches and spectators," he said. "Every team will have a tent and workstation. It becomes a big tent city."

With hockey gearing up by the end of the month, cyclists for the event will be asked to park in the lot behind the Pine Tree Plaza and not in the Northwoods Credit Union Area lot, nearer to Pine Valley.

In any case, the race figures to be an experiment worth watching.

"If we had world-class-level snowmaking, we'd be fine," Ripp said. "We'd make 4 feet of snow and cover up our mistakes. But we don't have that."

Instead, the ski club, which itself features more than 100 youth skiers, is reliant on Mother Nature to fill its trails with snow.

"I want to see the trail used," Ripp said. "But I just want to see it used well."