It's easy to take the freshly groomed cross country ski trails for granted, but it takes a lot of resources to prepare a cross country ski trail before it is ski-ready.
Before a ski trail can be usable for skiing, new vegetation on the trail has to be eliminated, tree branches that could damage the grooming snowcat have to be trimmed, and lots of fallen trees from spring and summer storms have to be removed. Then before you can start using a ski trail, grooming equipment has to be transported back to Grand Mesa and our grooming operators have to create a trail in the snow, compact that snow, sometimes push the snow to thinly covered trail sections, and start grooming both skate and classic track.
By the time you click into your skis and hit the trails, the grooming operation is well under way and our grooming staff works every week grooming and maintaining trails.
The grooming staff and contractors also have to maintain our grooming equipment, the $250,000 PistenBully grooming snowcat, heavy duty snowmobiles and grooming attachments. The Grand Mesa Nordic Council's grooming expenses are about $65,000 per ski season, not including cost of doing business as an organization.