At CORBA, we’re not the kind that head indoors and hide from the elements all winter-long. We want to get out, enjoy all four seasons, and embrace the cold and snow with a snap of fresh, cold air in our lungs. In fact, getting out on singletrack trails via snowshoes or a bike in the winter can completely change your outlook on the whole season, because there’s really nothing more beautiful than the Wisconsin woods draped in a fresh layer of the white stuff. And it’s with that in mind we welcome users to several of our parks all winter long, many with groomed singletrack trails for fat biking and snowshoeing. And some parks are also shared with wider ski trails groomed by other partners.

WINTER TRAIL RULES

However, winter trail use comes with a few ground rules to help our volunteers and trail users.

1. NO BOOTS. Please, do not walk on groomed trails with your boots. It creates deep imprints in the snow that can freeze and ruin the groomed surface for the volunteers that work on them and those who ride them with fat tires. All foot traffic on groomed trails should be in snowshoes to spread out your effect on the snow.
2. USE SNOWSHOES. If you want to go for a hike, you need snowshoes. Many affordable options can be found at area shops who support CORBA and the trails. Often after a fresh snow, we encourage snowshoers to go out on that fresh powder and help us get started on packing down and grooming the trail. So get out there!
3. TIRE SIZE. In general, it’s not great to ride groomed winter trails with “normal” sized mountain bike tires. They’re too narrow and create ruts in the snow. Please use fat tire bikes with tires of generally 3.8” or larger size.
4. TIRE PRESSURE. For those of you riding on fat tire bikes (thank you), be mindful of your tire pressure that you’re not running so high of pressure that you are breaking through the surface and also creating ruts. In hard packed snow, you can be in that 4-8psi range. For softer snow, go as low as 1-4psi.
5. STAY OFF SKI TRAILS. If you’re not skiing, stay off the ski trails Grooming ski trails is a whole other labor of love, and it’s important snowshoers and fat bikers largely stay off of wide groomed ski trails. If you must ride a ski trail for a connection, please only do so staying far off to the side, basically off the groomed skate deck.
   
   

BEST PARKS FOR WINTER SINGLE TRACK TRAILS

The following parks are those in our network that put the most emphasis on grooming the trails for fat bikes or snowshoes. You can see the latest grooming status of each system on their corresponding pages.

• Lowes Creek
• Northwest Park
• Hickory Ridge
• Area 178
• Menomin
• Hiawatha
• River Doc
  
  

OTHER PARKS

Our other park systems allow winter biking or snowshoeing, they just are not regularly groomed for these activities. Those parks include Centennial Park, Silver Creek, and Pipestone.

HOW DOES GROOMING WORK?

Grooming of singletrack winter trails in CORBA’s network is mostly done via a “Snowdog” – a highly maneuverable, one-person standing-snowmobile kind of thing. It takes multiple passes in the right conditions to get the trails in just the right shape, so it’s always important to respect the work of volunteers by following the above rules.

After a fresh snow and round of grooming, it can often take an overnight cycle for the trails to fully “set up” and become a perfect surface for fat biking, as so much of the surface is dependent on the moisture content of the snow and the ambient temperatures.

BEST PARKS FOR WINTER SKIING

If you’re looking to ski, your best bets in the area are at Tower Ridge in Eau Claire, and Hickory Ridge in Chippewa County. These are the best ski trail systems in our region. Silver Mine is also a great spot with a small track making snow in the years where that’s needed. Outside of that, Eau Claire County also grooms Lowes Creek Park and Northwest Park as best as they can, but the quality of the trails can be spotty due to unfortunate foot traffic.