Nordic skiing: Summit County has enviable trails

They measure the track by kilometers. The snow underfoot is groomed like new corduroy. Skiers on skinny skis shoot past little old ladies walking their golden Labrador retrievers and snowshoers who look like they're heading for the Pole. On the last full moon, people were out serving soup at midnight. There are signs telling you not to hassle the moose.

Where in the heck are we? Norway?

Nope. Park City.

Bit by bit, little by little, 1 kilometer at a time, a sort of nordic transformation is going on in the greater Park City area. Squint, and you'd think you were in Lillehammer.

On both sides of town, on the flats above Jeremy Ranch, on the Rail Trail to Wanship, halfway down Old Ranch Road, all over the area known as Round Valley, lapping Willow Creek Park, parallel with Highway 224, a series of groomed snow boulevards, wide enough for skate skiers to pass side by side, dot the countryside. And it's all open to the public, free as the winter air.

If, as Dan Jenkins once famously wrote, "cross-country skiing is how a Norwegian gets to the 7-Eleven," in Park City, it's at least now how you get to the Whole Foods market at Redstone.

But it's not just skiers out there using the trails. At any given moment, at any given intersection, you're liable to see walkers, joggers, snowshoers, mountain-bikers, horses, dogs, moose, elk, deer and the occasional fox right alongside the skiers, who travel at speeds ranging from barely moving to U.S. National Nordic Team-pace (Billy Demong was seen warming up at Round Valley just before he went to the Vancouver Olympics and won his gold medal).

This snow-based winter public trail system has effectively sprung up practically overnight. Eight years ago, there was virtually nothing. Now there's a nordic network of nearly 100 kilometers.

That's 60 miles in American.

And that doesn't count the 22 kilometer trail system at White Pine Touring in the middle of town, which is restricted to cross-country skiing only. No dogs allowed. The difference is that White Pine's perfect trails aren't free. Day passes cost $18, and season passes $275.