Grass in the Meadowood neighborhood’s namesake meadow is seen here. Homeowners and Pitkin County recently agreed to a new three-year agreement to allow Nordic ski trails on the private property after the county agreed to help pay for weed mitigation.
The Nordic skiing network in Aspen and Snowmass is something of a unicorn in winter recreation — a system of free trails across public and private lands, available to everyone.
There are about 90 kilometers (about 56 miles) of trails extending from Aspen to Snowmass and, in good snow years, to Basalt as well.
A small, key piece of the network — a roughly 1.8-kilometer segment through the namesake meadow in the Meadowood neighborhood — will continue to be part of the system, after more than three years of negotiation regarding noxious weeds and soil compaction. This month, Pitkin County agreed to pay $12,000 toward weed and soil treatments on the private property this year as part of a license agreement to continue to allow Nordic skiing in the meadow for the next three years. The settlement averted the potential breakup of a Nordic course adjacent to Aspen’s public schools that has long held a designation to host high-level races from the International Skiing Federation (FIS).
For 40 years, Nordic skiers have been enjoying free access to an extensive trail system. The local cross-country trails initially relied on contributions from local governments and are now funded through Pitkin County Open Space and Trails. A nonprofit advisory board, the Aspen/Snowmass Nordic Council, oversees the system, and the city of Aspen grooms and maintains the trails under a contractual agreement with the county.
Portions of the network, including some of the most iconic, connecting segments, sit on private land and rely on cooperation from private landowners.
Such cooperation typically leads to mutual benefit, said Steve Wickes, president of the Meadowood Metropolitan District. Meadowood, which sits between the Aspen Valley Hospital and Aspen School District campuses, has permitted Nordic skiing in its meadow for all of the 32 years that Wickes has lived there, he said.
“We’ve always wanted to protect the Nordic trails because we love them and we love the meadow,” Wickes said.
Racers climb a hill on the Aspen High School Trails network during the AVSC end of the season celebration in March 2023. A portion of those trails cross a portion of private property in the Meadowood neighborhood.
Meadowood’s 64 homeowners all have a share of ownership in the property’s 35-acre meadow, and Wickes said some owners have complained that the grass under the Nordic trails is slower to grow and green up in the summer. In 2022, the Meadowood Metropolitan District, which acts at the direction of the Meadowood Homeowners Association, hired soil expert Steve Dahmer of Rifle-based Environmental Solutions, who found that the soil under the groomed tracks was more compacted than in the rest of the meadow and those areas also have more noxious weeds.
The Meadowood owners and various groups involved in the Nordic system have been in talks for more than three years about how to best mitigate invasive weeds. When the three-year license agreement that permits Nordic skiing on the property expired in 2023, the metro district asked Pitkin County to cover about half the cost of Dahmer’s prescribed treatments, which include interseeding new plants rather than spraying to kill the weeds.
Skiing continued without a new three-year agreement last winter. Still without a deal in May, Wickes appeared at a Pitkin Board of County Commissioners meeting and asked commissioners to encourage county staff to find a solution.
“Sadly, after too many months and too many meetings, we are at an impasse. The folks representing Pitkin County are refusing to pay what we consider to be your fair share,” Wickes said. “Meanwhile, a growing number of my neighbors in Meadowood are thinking that we would be better off without the Nordic trails.”
Stakes mark where the Nordic trails are groomed through the meadow owned by the Meadowood Homeowners Association in late spring 2023. A report commissioned by the HOA shows that there is more soil compaction and more weeds in the areas under the groomed tracks.
Key terrain within network
Aspen’s Nordic trails were designed to provide connectivity throughout the community, in a web that links the Marolt and Moore open spaces, the Aspen School District campus and two Aspen golf courses, and extends along the Owl Creek Trail into Snowmass Village and downvalley along the Rio Grande Trail.
Local governments have long supported keeping trails free and open to the public, and taxpayers established a long-term funding source for overseeing and maintaining the network through Pitkin County Open Space and Trails in 2006. But nothing beyond love of the sport and community compels some private property owners such as Meadowood to continue to allow access.
The system crosses private property at numerous points, including the Meadowood trails and along the Owl Creek Trail. There are recreational easements in place in some areas; license agreements that are renewed every several years in others; and handshake agreements in a few.
The private property in Meadowood is home to a key part of the Nordic network’s so-called Aspen High School Trails. The meadow, which includes accessible terrain near the public school campus for kids to learn to ski, is part of an established race course that brings high-level races to the community.
“These trails are essential for our daily training, community races and top-tier competitions, providing valuable experiences for young skiers and the broader community,” August Teague, Nordic program director for Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club, wrote in an email.
The trail through the meadow is part of an FIS-homologated racecourse, which certifies that the course meets international design requirements for high-level races. This allows AVSC to host 5- and 10-kilometer FIS races with an internationally approved ratio of uphill, downhill and relatively flat sections. Regional, national and collegiate races provide exposure and development opportunities for local athletes.
Teague said Aspen has a long history of homologated courses, and the current course was developed shortly after the arrival of Five Trees, a subdivision near Meadowood and the schools. Certification is valid for five years, with an option to renew. FIS requires that an inspector visit courses every 10 years, and AVSC will need to host an inspector and submit for reapproval this season.
AVSC is not scheduled to host any FIS competitions this season; Teague had been working with the Aspen/Snowmass Nordic Council to develop alternate courses to submit to FIS for consideration in future seasons, in the event that the licensing dispute caused the loss of skiing through Meadowood’s property.
Steve Wickes, president of the Meadowood Metropolitan District, says the district has permitted Nordic skiing in its meadow for all of the 32 years that he’s lived there. Homeowners in the neighborhood hired a soil expert who found that grasses where Nordic ski trails are groomed in the winter are slower to grow in the spring and contain more weeds.
Harm to ecosystems?
Aspen’s Nordic trails sit on top of all kinds of surfaces, including open space meadows, bike and golf cart paths, fairways and even some driveways.
The Aspen/Snowmass Nordic Council and city of Aspen work together to oversee maintenance of the trails and to protect the underlying surfaces.
“We’re really conscious of taking care not to damage any surface under the trails,” said John Wilkinson, president of the council. Occasionally, there is damage to small segments, mostly from drainage when the snow starts melting, he said, but there have been no other reports of soil compaction across the network.
A 2023 analysis conducted by Dahmer shows that the soil has been compacted along the Nordic trails in the Meadowood meadow.
Dahmer compared soil from underneath the Nordic trails to nonskiing areas in the meadow and found “there was a clear fact, no question that there are some soil-compaction issues that translated to vegetation issues,” he said.
A map showing the Aspen High School Trails. Roughly 1.5 km of the trail network is on private property owned by Meadowood homeowners.
Meadowood property owners were primarily concerned about invasive weeds such as thistles and houndstongue. The rest of the meadow is a near monoculture of smooth brome grass, “which is not a native and could be considered an invasive because it is a pretty aggressive plant,“ Dahmer said.
Smooth brome is a grass introduced from Europe that is often used for hay or pasture. The meadow in Meadowood had been used for agricultural purposes prior to the development of the subdivision. Mowing and hay operations continued until 2013.
After two rounds of testing in the summer of 2023, Dahmer proposed a three-year course of treatments to break up the soil compaction and compete with the smooth brome in the meadow. Dahmer said the goal is to improve the microbiome in the soil for overall health of the area.
His system is based in regenerative agricultural practices, and Dahmer said the bulk of his work is with farmers and ranchers in agricultural operations.
“There is no such thing as acceptable soil loss. We need to be rebuilding our soils,” he said.
This past spring, Dahmer planted a seed mix that included species that can help break up soil compaction and provide forage for wildlife and pollinators. He said seedlings in some areas were well established this summer, but a dry spell caused the loss of many seedlings in other parts of the meadow.
There will be another round of remediation this fall, and Dahmer’s plan calls for three years of treatments.
“I think we can beat the soil compaction and improve the area for wildlife,” Dahmer said. “After three years, I suspect we’ll still see a differential in the compaction from on-trail to off-trail sites, but I don’t think it’ll be as dramatic as it is now.”
Soil compaction is not a typical issue for properties with Nordic ski access. The former agricultural field at Meadowood is similar to Moore Open Space, a county property that also was used for hay operations and now has winter Nordic trails, said Gary Tennenbaum, director of Pitkin County Open Space and Trails.
Once land managers stopped irrigating these fields, weeds proliferated in both. But Tennenbaum said the county has not seen issues with soil compaction along areas that are groomed in the winter.
“We’ve been grooming Moore Open Space, and the compaction is not creating more weeds than other areas,” Tennenbaum said. “We’re just not seeing the soil compaction that they’re talking about.”
When the county took over management of Moore Open Space, Tennenbaum said the area was a noxious-weed mess.
“But the whole property was a noxious-weed mess, not just the Nordic trails,” he said.
The Meadowood neighborhood sits between the Aspen Valley Hospital and Aspen School District campuses.
The county uses chemical sprays to control noxious weeds in all of its affected properties, and Tennenbaum said he has seen tremendous improvement at Moore Open Space. Weeds alone are not an indicator that soil compaction is causing damage.
The Spring Gulch trail system near Carbondale also sprays its noxious weeds, according to Rachel Perkins, executive director of the Mount Sopris Nordic Council, which raises money to fund the network there. Weed proliferation in Spring Gulch does not appear to be tied to grooming operations, and there are no reports of soil compaction caused by Nordic skiing, she said.
The cross-country skiing trails sit on private property used for cattle operations in the summer. The property has a recreational easement allowing Nordic skiing in the winter.
“What we see with areas that don’t grow grass well, it’s not related to skiing. It’s related to cattle traffic,” Bachman said. “There’s a trail that we cut that the cattle really like, and they walk on it constantly, and we see impacts there.”
Liza Mitchell, natural resource manager for Pitkin County Open Space and Trails, said she has not seen soil-compaction issues at either Moore Open Space or North Star Nature Preserve, the county’s two properties that are managed primarily as natural areas and have grooming for Nordic skiing in the winter.
The county has not tested for soil compaction in other areas that sit under Nordic trails. Mitchell said she has not seen problems that would point to soil compaction causing ecological damage.
Soil compaction is closely tied to soil moisture, since water takes up space between soil particles.
If the county were concerned about compaction on its properties, she said, further studies that take both soil moisture and compaction into account would provide more information.
“I wouldn’t have chosen this approach, but I am excited to see the results and learn from them,” Mitchell said.
The cross-country skiing license agreement with Meadowood is set to run through 2027, and Tennenbaum said the county and Meadowood will negotiate the cost of maintaining the meadow each year. The goal is to keep the vast Aspen/Snowmass cross-country network healthy and running.
“We really appreciate having the Nordic trails in our backyard,” Wickes said. “We also appreciate that the county and the Nordic council are taking our concerns about weeds seriously.”
