In 1960, there weren't many cross-country ski trails in Duluth. So Jerry Nowak made his own.
He started by chopping down trees in a wooded area of the Piedmont Heights neighborhood near Chambersburg Road and before long, he had carved a modest 4-foot-wide ski trail through private property.
It's now one of the busiest trail systems in the city.
Standing at the Piedmont Ski Trail parking lot off Hutchinson Road, Nowak, 94, reflected on nearly 60 years of nurturing the trail with his friend and fellow skier Glen Nelson, 83.
"I not only started this trail, I got a lot of people to start cross-country skiing," said Nowak, who skied regularly until he was 90.
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Before the trail was popular, not everyone was on board, Nowak said, recalling a confrontation with a snowmobiler wanting to use the trails.
"He said, 'Get the hell out of here! Nobody's gonna take up skiing on those skinny skis,'" Nowak said.
But if there's snow on the ground today, then the trailhead parking lot is probably full.
Nelson joined Nowak on the trails in the mid 1960s. Nelson, then the Proctor ski coach, had to travel to Chester Bowl or in Cloquet to ski until he found Nowak's trails in Piedmont.
Over the years, the two worked to maintain the several kilometers of trail.
Nelson would recruit his son and his son's friends to drive a snowmobile with a homemade groomer behind it, packing the snow until it was skiable.
"So that was our track for about 20 years," Nelson said.
But by the early 1980s, Nelson and Nowak convinced the city to turn the tax-forfeit land into an official ski trail, and the city built parking lot and trailhead off Hutchinson Road near the intersection with Adirondack Street. The city is also in now in charge of grooming the trail.
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But Nowak and Nelson still maintain the trail's signature tradition: wood-carved signs naming turns, hills and other features along the 5-kilometer-long trail.
Entering from the trailhead parking lot, skiers are greeted with a sign that reads "Friends." As skiers finish the loop and head back to the parking lot, the end of the trail is marked "Finnish."
Other signs include "The Plunge," "Go Dis Way," "Finland 6999 Mi," "Finland 6999 ½ Mi" and a bench labeled "The Butt Stops Here."
Each sign has a story to with it. The "Straight Shot" sign was installed after Nelson saw someone skiing with a flask on his hip, then passing it to his skiing buddies.
Nowak said he was inspired by advertisements for a shaving cream company.
"When I was a kid, my dad would take us up to Pike Lake and all along Miller Trunk Highway, they had Burma-Shave signs," Nowak said, referring to signs placed along busy roads by the company. Each sign would have several words written on it and, when all signs were read in sequential order by a passing motorist, would spell out a poem.
"That kind of stuck with me ... They were funny signs and they put ideas in my head when I was a kid," Nowak said.
At Piedmont, the signs were first made out of cardboard, but Nelson, who spent his career teaching shop at Proctor, made them out off wood instead.
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Now, approximately 50 signs line trail.
But over the years, some signs have gone missing
"That really hurts," Nelson said. "It's not so much about the signs but it's about the people that come back who really like those signs."
In the News-Tribune and Herald's 1983 guide to Duluth ski trails, outdoors writer Sam Cook described Piedmont as "A dandy little neighborhood trail made more fun by creative signing." "Relatively moderate hills, both up and down," Cook added. "Most of the trail is in the woods, but a couple of overlooks provide panoramic views of St. Louis River and West Duluth."
Since then, not much has changed. Another kilometer or two of trail has been added, and one loop of trail has been widened to accommodate the skate-skiing technique.
The rest has largely remained the same, and that hasn't deterred skiers.
On recent Thursday, Piedmont's trailhead parking lot off Hutchinson Road was full at 11 a.m and a trio of women - Marilyn Carter, Linda Harper and Kathy Riddle - passed the "Norway Pine Knob" sign where Nelson stood talking with a News Tribune reporter and photographer.
"We love your trail," Carter told Nelson. "We come out here a lot."
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"We love the signs," added Harper.
That's exactly what Nelson wants to hear.
"It just kind of keeps a person going. They like the signs, they enjoy being out on the trail and they're out here in zero-degree weather," Nelson said. "It just does your heart good that maybe you touched somebody, somehow just to enjoy being out in the woods and in the parks."
