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Trails of Brotherly Dedication

Trails of Brotherly Dedication

By: Pamela Eyden, Outdoor Writer

When Brother Jerome and Brother John of Saint Mary’s University in Winona, Minn., first started cross-country skiing in the 1960s and 70s, there were no meaningful ski trails around Winona.

They skiied the frozen Mississippi River backwaters, but backwaters are flat, so they started eyeing the hills behind campus where they had to bushwhack up a rough, heavily wooded ravine to the top of St. Yon’s Valley.