This presentation will review fundamental trail design considerations for skiing and winter trails.
Speaker: John Morton, Principal and Founder, Morton Trails
Cross country skiing includes an estimated 10.2 million participants, up from 3.5 million in 2007, making it one of the fastest growing trail-based activities. Other winter activities, such as snowshoeing and winter mountain biking, have also become popular in areas with reliable snow. As these activities become more popular, traditional locations have less predictable snowfall, emphasizing a need to re-think the planning, design, and management of Nordic skiing and winter-based trail systems. Based on examples from across the United States and internationally, this presentation will review fundamental trail design considerations for skiing and winter trails, with new techniques and approaches to address issues of warmer winters and less snowfall. These approaches include considerations of site location, trail width, surface, gradient and slope aspect (orientation), grooming equipment, snowmaking, and alternative surfaces. Additionally, the presentation will provide management approaches to diversify and provide financially stable trail-based winter activities, including both opportunities for competition and events as well as recreation, along with four-season use of trails.
Trails as Resilient Infrastructure
posted Dec 19, 2023
This guidebook demonstrates how trails are part of resilient transportation infrastructure, how trails can be planned and designed to be resilient and sustainable, and how trails have a role in emergency planning and response.
ON FIRE: The Report of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission
posted Oct 2, 2023
The wildfire crisis in the United States is urgent, severe, and far reaching. Wildfire is no longer simply a land management problem, nor is it isolated to certain regions or geographies. Across this nation, increasingly destructive wildfires are posing ever-greater threats to human lives, livelihoods, and public safety.
Why Trails Matter: Resilience to Wildfire
posted Aug 9, 2023
Trails connect suburban and rural communities to wild places, and they can play an important role in landscape resilience, as wildfire becomes more frequent in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) where homes are increasingly being built.
Trails and Resilience: Review of the Role of Trails in Climate Resilience and Emergency Response
posted Apr 12, 2023
Trails are often overlooked as elements of essential infrastructure for a resilient transportation system.1 In emergencies where other transportation facilities are shut down or inaccessible, people may use trails to get where they need to go.
1,408 views • posted 02/19/2018
