CLIVE, Iowa, January 18, 2009 –  Not everyone likes to continue riding bicycles outdoors in the wintertime, but increasing numbers of people seem to want to do so.

So after we recently received a  couple of phone calls at the headquarters of the Raccoon River Valley Trail, asking whether any parts of the trail are cleared after snowfalls, we decided to do some checking.

It turns out the only part of the actual RRVT where the snow is removed is within the city of Adel, and that’s been the practice there for years. 

“The Adel Parks Department clears the bike path from the Raccoon River in the east part of town, to beyond the Adel brick plant in the west part of town,” said parks & rec director Nick Schenck. “We have never really measured it out, but another staff member and I are guessing it is close to two miles.”

But in Waukee, a new extension from the RRVT is indeed cleared.  That’s the trail that now runs east-west across the middle of the community, and it’s about two miles long.  “Currently our policy is that we clear this trail, but only after all of our other snow removal is complete,” said Matt Jermier, the parks & rec director in Waukee. “The reason for clearing this trails is it is heavily used for children walking to and from the different schools.”

Meanwhile, here in Clive and in West Des Moines, all paved trails are cleared after snowstorms, so that’s where bicyclists and other trail users can find the longest stretches of available trail riding.  Gary Scott and Jeff Thielen, of the parks & rec departments in those two communities, said their snow removal crews needed more time than normal after the December 8-9 blizzard to get the trails cleared.  “We have areas that had drifts over six feet deep,” said Clive’s Thielen.  And in West Des Moines, Scott said there were “a few isolated sections” that took several days to complete.

In the city of Des Moines, most of the recreational trail system is not regularly cleared of snow, but the two-mile trail around Gray’s Lake is cleared and trails that also double as sidewalks downtown are also cleared.

Most of the RRVT’s 56 miles are not cleared and, as other stories on this Internet site have reported, this year the trail is open to snowmobilers when there is at least four inches of snow depth on the trail surface. 

Some areas of the RRVT are used regularly by cross-country skiers. There’s no place on the trail where the snow is groomed specifically for the skiers, but after new snows, there’s usually good skiing in the paths that the snowmobiles create.

Many walkers continue to enjoy the trail during the winter.  They often report that when it’s cold and there is plenty of snow, they are amazed at how many more animals and birds they see along the trail right-of-way than in the seasons where there is thick foliage.