Snobuilder just listing the trails open in poor condition and letting people decide what to do doesn't work any longer in SE WI or for majority of the state for that matter. A prime example would be Vilas County this year not even opening their trails until Christmas this year even though they did have snow to ride on, yes it was marginal and in poor condition but they kept them closed until they had enough snow to protect their landowners. I recall Adams county along with others used to open December 1st and closed March 31st and were open all season between these dates no matter the conditions and the rider could decide if they wanted to ride or not, with snow on the trails or not. This quickly came to an end within the last 5-6 years due to landowner issues. I agree some of the trails in the area are ride-able still to date but majority of the system is very thin with a lot of ice in some areas, any heavy amount of traffic will for sure ruin them. The reason it is not done and what we are protecting is our landowners and the future of our trail system. Yes 80% of the trails are through bean/ corn fields where no damage would be done other than to your sled perhaps. But the other 20% is what we are protecting. An example of that would be hay fields, no till fields, and winter wheat fields. Damages to these types of fields results in loss of landowner permission and usually gives us a bad name. Yes insurance can pay for some of the damages but it also creates more work for the landowners of these fields. And from experience once this happens they tend to shy away from permission in years to come which results in a lot of work for the club to reroute the trail if possible or just loss of trail all together. Our club specifically goes through 2 hay fields, 3 winter wheat fields, and 2 no till fields this winter where the farmer will not even let us drive a truck on the no till field this year alone. 1 hay field which we are already potentially looking at having to pay for crop damage from earlier this year will likely have to be rerouted next year due to the landowner. The signs are posted that this crop is here and yet people still tear it up and/or go off trail in these areas. I get that people with half a brain and a sled may not be the issue but the others that do not have half a brain (which there are a lot) unfortunately ruin it for everyone else. And SledTL is correct people for whatever reason cannot stay on the trail when they are open so it generally gets worse when they are open in poor conditions. So to avoid any issues the trails are closed. That is why they have been closed for the last week and a half. If we would have gotten a couple inches of snow on top of the base we have now I would have almost bet on them being open. But that did not happen. Just my insight on what we deal with in the small portion of our county and 25 miles of trails we manage. I know there are plenty of other issues and reasons county wide.
RS
