Now that the snow is here for the season, there are plenty of good cross country skiing opportunities in Southwest Michigan.
Berrien County Parks Department Chief Naturalist Derek Pelc tells us they have skiing at both Madeline Bertrand County Park and Love Creek County Park. He says the trails at Love Creek are quite popular.
“We groom about five miles for cross-country skiing, and then we also groom about three miles of that for skate-style skiing,” Pelc said. “So the skaters require a little bit wider track to skate on, whereas most of the classic or cross-country skiing is done in tracks.”
The park features a two-mile loop for beginners, a bit of a longer loop for those who are more experienced, and two miles of trail for experts. Pelc says that last one can be pretty tricky.
Hikers are asked to stay off the trails used for skiing this time of year so they don’t break up the tracks. But there are plenty of other trails at Love Creek for hikers, and Pelc says the park has good news for them this year. It has new snowshoes for rent.
“Our previous snowshoes I think were roughly 30 years old and they’re the old wicker style snowshoes and through a generous donation that was just for Love Creek we used some of those funds to get some new aluminum style tub snowshoes.”
Pelc says they have about 25 pairs for youth and 20 pairs for adults. He notes the park also offers amenities like the nature center and a warming room with a fireplace, and sometimes, they’ll have a fire pit going outside.
As of Friday, the skiing trail conditions were fair with about three inches of base to work with for a track.
Pelc says Madeline Bertrand County Park also offers cross country skiing, but they haven’t started renting skis for the year just yet.
