Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of three stories following a Standard-Examiner editorial board interview with Ogden City Parks and Cemetery Division Manager Monte Stewart and Ogden City Recreation Director Edd Bridge on a broad range of topics including Gib’s Loop Trail, the new Marshall N. White Community Center, participation in youth sports, park usage, upgrades to existing parks and park vandalism. Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski also joined the interview.
OGDEN — The Ogden community is continuing to contemplate a potential compromise to settle a clash between two styles of recreation.
Earlier this year, after the city sought to cut down on users of the Gib’s Loop Trail utilizing “social trails” across the Mount Ogden Golf Course and subsequently experienced pushback from trail users, city leaders sought to come to a compromise. Earlier this month, the city launched a survey to seek the public’s input on a potential trail alignment that allows users to cut through part of the golf course.
Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski said it’s important for the city to help provide access to recreation opportunities when appropriate.
“We have to be able to provide access and opportunity that’s safe and of high quality for all of those different users,” he said. “That was the original impetus around having a loop that goes around the golf course — you still have that ability.”
Image supplied, Ogden City
A proposed trail alignment through Mount Ogden Golf Course as part of the Gib’s Loop Trail system. A public survey is being conducted on the proposal.
However, he said that there are realities that come with maintaining a trail system.
“Over time, users have a tendency to show you where they want to go,” he said. “That’s another lesson I learned in my prior career managing hundreds of thousands of acres, you have social trails and people will show you where they’re trying to go and why. The change we made, although controversial and challenging, absolutely helped us get some control over unfettered access on our golf course. We were in a situation where it was dangerous. We had people trespassing, going anywhere and everywhere they wanted to go.”
Nadolski said he’s even had some personal experience with trespassing on one of the “social trails” through the Mount Ogden Golf Course.
“I golf some and I recreate on trails as well,” he said. “I’ve personally been on the golf course, chipped up on the green and watched a dog come take my ball and run off with it.”
He said the effort to cut down on trespassing has, thus far, been successful.
“This effort, although uncomfortable, helped us get some control over that,” he said. “What it’s also done is highlighted the fact that people want to cut through the course and find a way through. The physical setting of this course is different than any other that we’ve been able to find. Yes, there are examples out there where there are trails and golf courses, but the physical setting and separation is nothing compared to this.”
City Parks and Cemetery Division Manager Monte Stewart said this spring wasn’t the first time the city has tried to curtail deviations from the Gib’s Loop Trail through the golf course.
“I’ve been with the city 18 years and there were numerous times we made attempts from the trail side … closing off social trails and trying to keep people on the designated Gib’s Loop, really to no avail,” he said.
Nadolski said in hearing from trail users speaking against the closure of social trails, an important detail emerged.
“I had this moment during the public hearing where everyone came out,” he said. “I heard a difference in the way they were talking between being on the trail and trespassing off the trail and across the golf course. That’s important because all of the different networks of social trails through the course in the past were little jump-off points for people to go through fairways, down fairways, across greens, for the dog to come and take my ball. And what I heard was there was not a lot of tolerance for that amongst users and that it was a small number of people that were habitually doing that and there was a lot of support for reigning that in. What I also saw, they handed us a map that night and said, ‘We think that this could work.’”
That map, he said, became the starting point toward a compromise trail proposal that the city is now surveying users about.
“The solution that we put forward as a proposal to get feedback on right now is 95%, if not, 100% what they asked for,” he said. “It is the only way through that minimizes conflict as much as possible. It doesn’t eliminate it, but I do think that there is a lot of agreement from us and across the community of all users that leaving that trail and interrupting everybody else’s experience is not OK. That’s important.”
Stewart said that, as of Wednesday, the survey has generated more than 600 responses nearly two weeks after being posted.
Nadolski said whether a trail alignment through parts of the course will work to stave off trespassing that has been seen in the past is a matter yet to be seen.
“There’s a lot of back-and-forth as to whether having a trail through it facilitates more trespass or if it controls it and focuses it in an area that’s appropriate — it can go either way,” he said. “We need partnership and help and support through the trail-user community if we’re going to do this.”
He added that the outpouring of support for Gib’s Loop Trail and the strong response to the survey is actually a sign that the city’s residents are heading in the right direction.
“It means that there are more and more people in our city that are getting out there and using our outdoors and they’re benefitting from the health benefits of this,” he said. “This is a symptom that our community is becoming stronger and healthier, so that’s a trend that we want to help support.”
To take the survey, visit www.ogdencity.gov/trailsurvey.
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