Work on the Rib Mountain Park master plan has been awfully quiet...

...until now

For a time in 2022, all you heard about was the Rib Mountain Master plan process. That included a few last-minute changes related to Granite Peak’s proposed ski area, disregarding Rib Mountain residents and others’ concerns.

That, of course, infuriated residents who took the time to answer survey questions, attend numerous meetings and voice their opinions for what they wanted to see happen at the park. After a carefully crafted plan that took everyone’s interests into account emerged, some clandestine wrangling behind the scenes by area business leaders subverted that, giving Granite Peak more land. (It also designated more to the mountain biking area.)

But after that furor, silence. I reached out to DNR officials after the final decision to ask how things proceed next and received the equivalent of a shrug. The bottom line, I was told, was that it was up to the individual groups for how they would proceed next.

That’s the best I got, and that was January 2023.

Since then, things have been awfully quiet on the Rib Mountain front. For more than a year, no one said peep about any of these great projects outlined in the master plan. It seemed to be a Who’s on First routine of everyone saying it was someone else’s role to start the work.

All until recently. According to IronBull’s Bill Bertram, the DNR held a meeting earlier this month to start coordinating work on the master plan. They’re now coordinating everything, Bertram told The Wausonian (which is the opposite of what DNR officials told me in January 2023).

That meeting, which included all of the constituent groups who have projects spelled out in the master plan were present, as were some high-level DNR officials including the head of parks, Bertram told The Wausonian.

The meetings signal the start of some progress starting to happen in the master plan, but don’t expect anything to actually materialize before next year.

“Working with government, there are some things in the process that just have to happen,” Greater Wausau Chamber of Commerce President Dave Eckmann told The Wausonian. “It’s not fast.”

The news comes after Central Wisconsin Off-Road Cycling Coalition President Aaron Ruff revealed that work is underway on trail plans for mountain biking at Rib Mountain. Ruff speaking at the CWOCC annual meeting this spring said those plans would likely be ready to go by fall, with construction possibly to begin in 2025.

And Bertram says Rib Mountain and the Greater Wausau Prosperity Partnership are partnering with the North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission to coordinate the development of a biking trail system that connects all of the mountain biking parks to Rib Mountain. Bertram says a draft plan of that has already been developed.

Meanwhile, while the master plan approved additional space for Granite Peak, Granite Peak still has to go through a DNR approval process. Granite Peak first proposed to expand its ski area in late 2014 — one of the first stories this reporter covered for City Pages after moving back to town. For context, Mayor James Tipple was present at the announcement as was police chief Jeff Hardel. The expansion was controversial, sparking a Leave Rib Mountain Alone campaign, and the whole hullabaloo eventually led the DNR to start from scratch with a new master plan for the park.

From the looks of it, readers shouldn’t expect to see much progress on the mountain this year. Next year might be a different story.

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