Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties

New loop open at Miner's Memorial Heritage Park

By CHARITY SMITH

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Ironwood — An additional half-mile loop has been added to the ski and snowshoe trails in the Miners Memorial Heritage Park.

Friends of the MMHP started working on the new loop on Nov. 15, according to Rick Semo, the club’s president. The additional trail officially opened after the first major snowfall in late December.

“We had it partially groomed before that, but it wasn’t really ready because it’s rougher than the rest of the trail,” Semo told the Daily Globe. “Next year we’ll get it worked out a lot better, but we just roughed it in this year to get it going.”

Semo said the trail did get some use in early December, though.

The trail is located off of Clemens Street, behind the Department of Public Works building. It has been dubbed the South Pabst Loop, as it is near the former Pabst Mine location. Semo said it connects the people of the South Pabst Location directly to the MMHP trail system.

“We’d been thinking of the idea (for the loop) for a long time. Thinking it would be really nice to extend our trail system a little bit, especially our ski trail system; and one of our members, Jim Decur, really got motivated this year to get it going and we jumped on board and did it,” Semo said.

Semo said this summer they will work to make it a nice walking trail, as well.

On Dec. 27, the Friends of the MMHP hosted the ninth annual candlelight walk on the trail, with candles lighting the trail for a one-mile loop. Semo called the event a success and said they raised $1,000.

He said they were unable to count the number of attendees because people entered the trail from two different trail heads, and there was no indoor gathering afterwards due to COVID-19 social distancing concerns.

“It was a pretty big success,” Semo said. “People really had a great time. They loved it.”