Clearing hurdles: Swiss Valley insider takes on state's skiing. Marquette Greenway grows.

Mike Panich has been a “ski area junkie” since he was a kid, fascinated by the inner workings that keep the chairlifts turning and a velvety blanket of snow on the downhill slopes. His career shows it.

In January, when winter finally woke up and ushered in a week of deep freezes, he and fellow management at Swiss Valley Ski & Snowboard Area in Jones decided to “lay the hammer down pretty hard” when they made snow.

They knew winter would regress, that funky thaws would come. They always do. And if Swiss couldn't preserve white slopes, the skiers and their dollars — fuel for next season’s upgrades to the resort — just wouldn’t come.

The season at Swiss was eclipsed by too much warmth, at least in the number of days, but the slopes proved as resilient as it gets in southwest Michigan. The initial thick blanket mostly held its own, to skiers’ and snowboarders’ surprise, as crews refreshed with snowmaking at every chance and used their experience at grooming stockpiles and leftovers of what they did have, be it fresh, icy or mushy.

“Mother Nature was fighting us at every step of the way,” he says.

After four seasons as assistant general manager at Swiss — from snow making to marketing — Panich is leaving. But his experience with survival for a small, family-owned resort will play well into his new gig: as executive director of the Michigan Snowsports Industries Association.

On April 1, he begins his new role in a trade group that helps to rally skiers and snowboarders to play at the roughly 40 downhill resorts across the state, plus some cross-country ski areas, and that gets resort managers to talk, share ideas and survive the challenges of winter business.

Challenges like the climate. He’s taking over from Mickey MacWilliams, who’s held the role as its sole employee since a group of resorts and ski shops started MSIA 31 years ago.

This winter, she says from her home office in Clarkston, halfway between Detroit and Flint, proved how much harder and smarter resorts will have to work to overcome the weather. MSIA advocated for and gained access to no-interest federal Small Business Association loans for some resorts as disaster relief this winter. Meant as a way to recoup losses, the loans are available to resorts in most of the Upper Peninsula and the northern half of the Lower Peninsula because of a drought declaration in those areas.

Swiss Valley’s snowmaking muscle this winter wouldn’t have been possible without its recent investments in new snow guns along with new, wider water pipes to replace the old, leaky infrastructure.

MacWilliams says that kind of investment will be key in the years ahead. But, after such a freakishly balmy February, she asks, “If you want a ski industry in Michigan, what does that look like?”

MacWilliams will stay on staff for a full year as MSIA president as Panich grabs the organization’s tow ropes. Then she’ll retire, saying, “It’s time for someone to come along with new ideas.”

Panich has ideas (no surprise), though he says it’s too early to talk publicly about them. He’s helped to market ski resorts and ski-related businesses ever since he started his freelance design and marketing business 25 years ago. He’s helped to promote Swiss for 20 years and spent several years marketing and consulting for the family-owned Caberfae Peaks in Cadillac.

Skiing and snowboarding is “a very friendly industry,” he says, that does well at sharing ideas. It’s about relationships, he says, and helping collectively so “everybody benefits.” There have been times when Swiss has quietly turned to other resorts for parts and advice on snow-making gear. That spirit will be key to outsmarting and outworking an unpredictable future for Michigan winters.

Panich, who will work from his home in Cassopolis, says Michigan has to continue to grow the sport. Teach folks at small resorts like Swiss, so they’ll want to travel north to bigger resorts and spend money.

If resorts gain our dollars, they can reinvest. And, if they can preserve the snow, hopefully, they’ll keep us skiing longer.

New Buffalo trail to Chicago

More hurdles are being cleared so that work can begin soon on more portions of the Marquette Greenway, the partially built 60-mile trail that, when finished, will connect New Buffalo to Chicago.

On April 3, advocates with the Friends of Berrien County Trails and civic leaders will celebrate the groundbreaking for the future trailhead at North Smith Street and West Mechanic Street in New Buffalo.

That will launch construction this year of about three miles of paths that include sidewalks along Mechanic Street and a 10-foot-wide paved path along U.S. 12 from Willard Street to the Grand Beach/U.S. 12 intersection. The second phase, to be built in 2025, would then extend it almost one mile to the Indiana border.

The bigger picture: Berrien County sets priorities for bike, boat and horse trails

The friends group says financial support for the Michigan portion of the trail has come from private, state and federal sources.

As that grows, Gary Wood, the friends group president, points out that construction this year will fill in significant portions of a separate trail that’s growing north of New Buffalo along the Red Arrow Highway to Harbert. There’s still a small gap between New Buffalo and where this trail would begin.

The Illinois portion of the Marquette Greenway is already paved.

Connections are being built in Indiana, too.

Late last year, two parts of the greenway in Porter County gained slices of $31.2 million in Next Level Trail grants that Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb awarded to 14 communities around the state.

These two parts are next to each other, both of which would likely be built in 2025 or 2026, says Mitch Barloga, the active transportation manager for the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning Commission.

In the town of Burns Harbor, a new 0.82-mile trail will go east of Indiana 149, follow a portion of the Little Calumet River, duck beneath a railroad line and head toward the town of Porter; it will include a boardwalk. A $5 million grant helps with an overall cost of $7.5 million. The town is already building bits of greenway trail to the west with other money.

In Porter, a one-mile trail will pick up from there and link to the existing Porter Brickyard Trail at Indiana 49, the Calumet Trail and the Indiana Dunes National Park’s Mnoke Prairie. A $2 million grant helps with the cost of nearly $2.6 million.

Also, this winter, the National Park Service announced that it found “no significant impact” on the environment if, as part of the Marquette Greenway, a good chunk of the current Calumet Trail was rerouted on a 6.3-mile alternative route through the Indiana Dunes National Park.

Currently, the Calumet Trail’s nine miles run west of Michigan City, a straight line through a utility corridor with a crushed-stone surface that regularly turns to puddles and flooding with significant rain. The new route would instead curve and weave through more scenic wooded areas and would include a boardwalk.

Construction will likely wait until next year for the 6.3-mile diversion, thanks to the rising costs of dealing with wet areas, for which Porter County is seeking extra grants, Barloga says.

But he says the two parts of the Calumet Trail that bookend this section will be rebuilt (paved, elevated and better drained) this year along their existing routes: from Michigan City to Beverly Shores and from Mineral Springs Road to Indiana Dunes State Park.

Walk to honor walking

The local Hoosier Hikers club will host four group walks April 1 through 7 around northern Indiana to honor National Walking Week, as declared by the club’s parent organization, the American Volkssport Association.

Cost for each of these is $4. Register at the online start box at my.ava.org or at the “start box” near the meeting place a half hour before each hike.

At 10 a.m. April 1, join walks of seven or 11 kilometers (4.25 to 6.75 miles) on the University of Notre Dame campus. Meet in the visitor lot behind the Walsh Family Hall of Architecture; this start box will be at Ivy Court Inn & Suites, 1404 Ivy Court, South Bend.

At 3 p.m. April 3, meet at Christo’s Family Restaurant, 2227 N. Michigan St., Plymouth, for hikes of five or 10 kilometers.

At 10 a.m. April 5, meet at Winona Mercantile, 700 Park Ave., Winona Lake, for hikes of five or 10 kilometers.

At 1 p.m. CDT April 7, meet at Fairfield Inn, 2101 E. Morthland Drive, Valparaiso, for hikes of seven or 11 kilometers.

For questions, contact Bob Buzolich at 574-339-9140 or sonofbuzz@prodigy.net.

Wander-ful learning

∎ Coastal hike: Explore the woods of the Tower Hill Camp in Sawyer and a nearby beach with Harbor Country Hikers at 1 p.m. March 30. At just over two miles, the hike will go over ancient dunes in the 32-acre Tower Hill Woods, which is within the camp property. The camp is at 12173 Tower Hill Road in Sawyer. From Red Arrow Highway at the southern edge of Warren Dunes State Park, go west on Browntown Road, left on Tower Hill Road and left on First Avenue.

∎ Mindful Birding: Elkhart County Parks’ monthly guided bird-watching hike will have a mindful theme at 8 a.m. April 3 at the Feedlot Shelter in Bonneyville Mill County Park near Bristol.

Find columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Pavich Swiss Valley hired Michigan ski group Marquette Greenway trails