Walking around: City says majority prefer keeping hikers off Mount Ogden Golf Course, sticking to Gib’s Loop Trail | News, Sports, Jobs - FOGOLF

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A Mount Ogden Golf Course maintenance cart drives past signs restricting access to the course off of Gib’s Loop Trail west of the course in Ogden on Tuesday, May 6, 2025.

Ryan Olson, Standard-Examiner

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Ogden City representatives (from left) Todd Brenkman, PGA Golf Professional at El Monte and Mt Ogden Golf Courses, Mayor Ben Nadolski and Monte Stewart, Parks and Cemetery Division Manager, talk to the editorial board at the Standard-Examiner in Ogden on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025.

Jared Lloyd, Standard-Examiner

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A Mount Ogden Golf Course maintenance cart drives past signs restricting access to the course off of Gib’s Loop Trail west of the course in Ogden on Tuesday, May 6, 2025.

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’s PGA Golf Professional Todd Brenkman on a broad range of topics including Gib’s Loop Trail, a resurgence in the popularity of golf, getting more youths trail use and golf and coming projects. Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski also joined the interview.

OGDEN — Hikers along Gib’s Loop Trail are going to have to stick to the trail.

A survey found the majority of the public would rather not see a potential shortcut trail through the Mount Ogden Golf Course.

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 fall, 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 this decision led to a lot of mixed feedback.

“When we announced that we were going to start to enforce the closure that’s always been in place, there was tons of mixed emotion, sentiment, public backlash and pushback,” he said. “There was also a lot of outreach directly to us, particularly in one-on-one conversations at the golf course, and it became really clear that there is a lot of overlap between the uses. My whole goal all along, and the directive I gave to these guys and the rest of the staff was we’re here to make sure that we’re providing access and opportunity to as many people as possible and we want to make sure the people have a save and high-quality experience when they’re doing it.’”

He said one thing was very clear.

“Things had just gotten out of control over the years,” he said. “When you don’t manage something, things get little-by-little further and further down the road. And we found ourself at a time where I’d personally experienced it. People were running, riding and walking dogs across the course the length of holes. It wasn’t just a cut-through. It was just becoming too much.”

Nadolski said this came at a time where the golf course was seeing rise in patronage and that vandalism also became more prevalent.

“There was a lot of concern around shutting down trails and stuff,” he said. “We didn’t shut down any formal or official trails, but what we did wrap our arms around were informal, unofficial cut-throughs and so on.”

He said that the alternative cut-through trail that was drafted generated a lot of response and a fairly close vote.

“One of the critiques I took and I accept — when we made that decision the first time — was inadequate outreach to the community,” he said. “Before moving forward with a trail, I committed to doing a more thorough job on community outreach. We put together a survey, put it out to the community and got thousands of responses. The feedback came back slightly in favor of no trail, pretty close to evenly split — I think it was 52% wanted no trail.”

Nadolski said it was just hard not to avoid conflicts.

“We tried to reduce the conflict points as much as we could, but there’s just no way to avoid it,” he said. “There were going to be conflicts.”