The Crookston Parks and Recreations Department has continued to work through the difficult weather conditions to prepare the outdoor ice-skating rinks and trail for people to use and announced that they will be ready to have all outdoor skating facilities open this weekend.
Parks and Recs Director Jake Solberg reported that both the outdoor rinks in old Carman Park and Ray Ecklund Park Complex are open for people to skate on, and the skating trail in Castle Park will be ready for people to skate by Saturday. The Parks and Recs Department thanks the community for their patience in preparing the ice rinks and explained that the weather had caused many delays for the department in preparing the ice rinks until recently. “We had warm weather to begin with. We were planning on being open by Christmas, and then we got some warm weather prior to that, and then the snow that we got,” Parks and Recs Director Jake Solberg explained. “So the delay was thanks to the snow that we got. We have a lot of sidewalks, parks, and areas that we clear, so we were really busy with those, but we’re all caught up now, so our main focus these last couple of weeks has been on our outdoor facilities.”
Aside from the weather, the department has had many other setbacks that have caused them to be short-staffed in handling the ice rinks. “It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. We got a lot of snow in a short amount of time, and when you’re going along, we try to get things open and widen or clean them out. But we’ve dealt with everything that everybody else has dealt with,” Parks and Rec Supervisor Scott Butt explained. “We’ve dealt with sickness, vacations, and machinery breakdowns, so it never goes as fast as you’d like it to. We’d like to open the walking areas as quickly as possible, but it doesn’t always go as fast as everybody would like it to. We appreciate everybody’s patience, and we will continue to work at it and continue to strive to get better.”
One of the major things the department mentioned was that it has made some changes to the skating trail in Castle Park after they had to close it many times last year thanks to the weather, mainly the wind blowing in loose snow and other items onto the trail. “Our staff worked really hard, and they rerouted the trail to give it a little bit more protection from the wind. We can’t predict the weather. If there are 20 mph winds, things are going to get blown in. We live in northwestern Minnesota. That’s just how it is,” Jake Solberg explained. “So, they changed the trail around a little bit to try and protect it more, but it’s an open, grassy area, so the winds are going to blow, and things are going to blow in. It all depends on what kind of winter we have. Right now, we’ve had a pretty mild winter so far, so the weather’s nice, and we’re going to keep it open with the nice weather we had this weekend. We hope that the community is going to go out and utilize the facilities that we have.” Solberg explained that the department has recently added water to certain parts of the trail to even out the bumps and dips in the trail to make it a more pleasant and safer experience for the skaters.
Director Solberg noted that while the weather has been cooperative with the ice rinks lately, future snowstorms or other unforeseen events can cause the department to delay in tending the ice rinks as the department has to tend to other more important priorities. “You can prepare for a storm, but we have a lot of snow that we move, so we try to prioritize as best as we can. So, if a winter storm does come, we will prioritize things, and then we will get to the rinks,” Jake Solberg explained. “We have the pool, the hockey rink, the sidewalks, other parking lots that need to be opened, and the Crookston Sports Center. Typically, though, we try to get to our outdoor rinks and skating trails as soon as possible because we know that it is a want and need in this community to have an outdoor recreational facility like we have, but those are priority things that the community needs us to get done first. We don’t try to wait too long on them, but if we get two feet of snow, there’s a priority list that needs to get done first.”
The outdoor skating rinks and trail will be open this weekend at Carman Park, the Ray Ecklund Complex, and Castle Park. If you have any questions about the ice rinks being open or other items in the Parks & Recs department. You can contact them at 218-281-1242.
