What Hayward needs is a 50-foot tall skier statue

However, sometimes I get the impression that the Hayward area doesn't really know what they have with the Birkie Trail, and it seems to me that they're leaving precious winter tourism dollars out in the snow by overlooking a few key items of promotion.

In late January, I headed up to Hayward for a precious weekend of ski training. Although there are a plethora of great ski trails in the Chippewa Valley, where I live, the Birkie trail just has a mystique unmatched in the region. When I left Chippewa Falls, it was actually raining, the worst possible weather for cross-country skiing. By the time I'd reached Hayward, however, those raindrops had transformed into big, juicy flakes that were just perfect for packing.

I have no doubt that the trailhead at County Road OO would have been in spectacular shape, but after the drive, I had no desire to spend another 20 minutes in the car to reach Seeley. That decided, my friend Chris and I trundled off to the Fish Hatchery trailhead just outside of Hayward.

On our way out there, Chris said something that kind of started the gears turning in my head.

"I always forget which road it is," he muttered while trying to choose between two snow covered paths leading into the woods. The statement provoked a simple thought: Why is the Birkie Trail so hard to find? This is the greatest ski trail in the Western Hemisphere and people travel thousands of miles to ski there. Shouldn't the road to the trailhead be clearly marked?

I quickly decided that the best way to mark and welcome skiers to the trail would be to have two 50-foot tall wooden or maybe granite Nordic warriors standing on either side of the highway, each of them holding skis that bridge the road and in their other hands, giant torches belching fireballs 600 feet into the air, or maybe a pair of those four way spotlights like you see when there's a sale at Pamida.

Without such guideposts, Chris and I finally figured out which road to take, only to discover a State Patrol squad car spinning its wheels on a small, unplowed hill. We sat and waited for a few minutes as the officer struggled with getting his vehicle to move. Chris eventually leapt out of the car and hiked over to ask the officer if he could use some help, only to have the officer bark, "Yeah, you can help by getting your car out of my way."

As Chris stalked back over to our car, another question occurred to me: Why wasn't the road to the Birkie Trail plowed? Sure, it was new snow and there was a lot to do, but please. The Birkie Trail is the premiere ski trail on the continent. Whoever's in charge of plowing Hayward should do Main Street, the hospital parking lot and the Birkie trail, in that order.

When we eventually reached the trail, we saw that it wasn't groomed. That, at least, was predictable since the snow was a little too close to rain to risk messing with. We dug our classic skis out and strided for a couple hours before heading home. Throughout the day I was excited to see the snow continue to fall. As the temperature dropped, I could see that the snow would need only a single pass by a groomer to compress into an already solid base, solid ice sure to last through March and maybe into early April.

The snow and temps continued to drop throughout the night. In the morning, Chris and I drove back to the Birkie Trail excited to see the ridges of a beautiful, pristine, newly groomed trail.

We took the turn onto the trailhead that wasn't marked.

We went down the road to the trail that wasn't plowed.

We grabbed our skis and headed to the trail ... that wasn't groomed.

I immediately started cursing, and Chris - who is no less of a hothead than I - calmed me down with a string of logic.

"Well, I'm sure they're grooming at OO. It's expensive to run a groomer, after all," Chris pointed out. "Would you have wanted to sit in the groomer all night?"

It's certainly true that grooming is expensive and inconvenient to do frequently. I'm sure there are a whole slew of other excuses as to why the trail wasn't groomed. But there are also solutions to such a problem.

Maybe they didn't groom the Fish Hatchery/Mosquito Brook portion of the trail because they don't feel there is a demand. Maybe they think all the skiers are up at OO. Maybe there are some other reasons that aren't even occurring to me.

But maybe if they groomed that part of the trail and got a reputation for always having it groomed, you'd find the parking lot brimming with enthusiastic skiers.

Perhaps I just had the misfortune of going up to Hayward on the one weekend of the year that they didn't groom the lower half of the Birkie Trail. But the effect it had on me was to ski elsewhere for the remainder of the winter. I had intended on going up there every free weekend when there wasn't a race, stay in a hotel, eat in the local restaurants and spend a lot of money as would my friends. The expense is worth it for the privilege of skiing on the Birkie Trail. But if the trail isn't even going to be groomed, then I'm not interested in going.

It could be that I'm being a bit naive, and that there just isn't enough demand to justify the small investment it would take to further underscore Hayward's status as the region's mecca for cross-country skiing. But I can't help but think how Seeley has transformed itself into a kind of small Swiss villa. The Sawmill Saloon and the Lenroot Lodge are obviously catering to cross-country skiers looking for a weekend getaway. I think that if Hayward were to follow suit, there'd be a new influx of tourism comprised mainly of people who just want to cut that extra 20 minutes that it takes to get to Seeley.

I'm not willing to give up my dream of the 50-foot-tall statue of a cross-country skier or two. I mean, Hayward's already got a giant statue of a muskie. Can you really honestly say that a giant skier would be any less appropriate for the town that boasts the best cross-country race of the nation?