Trails of Brotherly Dedication
By: Pamela Eyden, Outdoor Writer
When Brother Jerome and Brother John of Saint Mary’s University in
Winona, Minn., first started cross-country skiing in the 1960s and 70s, there were no meaningful ski trails around Winona.
They skiied the frozen Mississippi River backwaters, but backwaters are flat, so they started eyeing the hills behind campus where they had to bushwhack up a rough, heavily wooded ravine to the top of St. Yon’s Valley.
This invigorating downhill run inspired the building of the best-groomed ski trail system in south Minnesota.
Every weekend hundreds of skiers come to Winona to use the 16 kilometers of ski trails. The trails draw classic and skate skiers, racers and families.
The trails are now supported by teams of people, but in the beginning they were the work of Brother Jerome Rademacher and Brother John Grover. Brother Jerome is a physics professor; Brother John is head of I.T. at the college. They got permission from the college administration and went to work with hand axe and chain saw, carving a 2-kilometer loop up St. Yon’s Valley.
“We worked on weekends. We cut trees. Students helped get the rocks out of the way,” said Brother John. “We brought in a Cat to do major work during the summer. Jerome was off in the summer. This was his hobby — doing the trails, putting down wood chips, preventing erosion.”
They sold firewood to fund the project. Brother Jerome found college funds and wrote grants. Two old snowmobiles dragging a home-made rig to set tracks.
The low-budget approach extended to their ski equipment as well: four-inch-wide, wooden, Army surplus troop skis cabled to heavy leather hiking boots. The metal edges helped cut through crusty snow. They wore gaters to keep the snow out of their boots.
Today the trails have been widened to accommodate skate skiers as well as classic. Additional trails have been added for beginners and experts. Some climb higher on the flanks of the hills bordering St. Yon’s valley. Others swoop down along and then cross Gilmore Creek. The Winona Ski Club and Saint Mary’s Student Life have taken over maintaining the trails and raising the money it takes — $176,000 was spent last year on the trail and equipment.
Brother Jerome, unfortunately, stopped skiing two years ago when he was diagnosed with super nuclear palsy. Brother John, who is one of four people in Winona to have skied 33 Birkebeiner Ski Races in Hayward, Wis., is training for his 34th in 2012.
To share his love of skiing and the outdoors, Brother John teaches two sections of cross-country skiing for the college. He has also built what he calls the “environmental awareness center” on campus. It’s large room full of several dozen pairs of cross country skis in various sizes and styles; boots; poles; and other outdoor equipment — canoes, tents, sleeping bags, headlamps and cooking gear — for students and their families to use free of charge.
“I stepped back and did the equipment part of it, but these trails wouldn’t be what they are if it weren’t for Brother Jerome,” he said. “He did it for the love of it and to see the satisfaction of other people out there.”
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