Mountain Trails Foundation

We build, maintain and protect Park City, Utah's trails

Lora Anthony, Executive Director

Us vs. Them, No Please

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During the past month, the political muddle around e-bike access on Park City’s single-track trails has caused an inordinate amount of brain damage. And, while MTF’s 13-person board of directors, and 11-person staff, are experienced, educated and publicly supported in our position, there is also an overt acknowledgment that the issue is not two-sided. As with any political issue, the issue of e-bikes on old-school singletrack is multi-faceted, with each facet illuminating its own virtues – and shortcomings.

For MTF, the hardest, most frustrating element of this conversation is not the vitriolic rhetoric distorting facts. It’s not the tightly held beliefs – ignorant or meritorious as they may be. It’s not even the curveball 3/5 of Park City’s Council threw to the public on June 28th. No, the hardest thing to reconcile is the Us vs. Them mentality that has grown around this matter. Opponents in this conversation see them as competition. Them as stuck-up, elitist athletes – or lazy no-goods. Them as threatening a classic, analog way of life – or oblivious to the ways of the future. Them as ignorant. Them as the threat. In reality, let me say loudly and clearly, there is no us and them. There is just one asset: a 35-year-old, world-renowned trail system.

To one who has built a personal and professional life out of trails, it is astounding and heart-breaking that we – yes, we the trails community – are not coming together on a solution that will both protect and enhance what we have. We are fortunate to have in our town a long and well-loved legacy trail system, built over decades, with way-back technology, and the blood, sweat and tears of hundreds, that make for a very unique experience. The Park City trail experience is, in fact, so special that people travel from all over the world to enjoy it – or move here to weave it into their daily lives.  

Like it or not, the fact is that e-bikes are a disruptor, a new technology, both in the physical and mental/emotional spaces. And they are here for good. So now what? What are we as a trail loving community going to do?

MTF’s board and staff propose the employment of open minds, patience, understanding of other viewpoints and, above all, kindness as we adapt. Shouting from soapboxes about personal rights and entitlement will not move this community toward harmony. Neither selfishness, protectiveness nor self-righteousness will move us toward a solution in which every trail use, novel or historic, has a space to play in the specific way they want to. As with purpose-built pickleball courts, purpose-built trails take time to develop. And time we have.

Park City’s classic non-motorized trails have long been the backbone of a fun-loving, welcoming, passionate outdoor culture. Trails are the thread that knits the community together, turns neighbors into friends, and families into generations of outdoor enthusiasts. Next to, and not behind, world-class ski resorts, world-class trails are the reason many of us live in, and visit, Park City. Let’s spread the stoke, keep old-school single-track safe and build for the future.

After all, this is Park City: we can have our cake and eat it too.

Hope to see you out there!

Lora Anthony, Executive Director

More Than A Picnic Table

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In Round Valley there is a very special picnic table. It has been there, well-used, weathering winter snow loads and summer heat, since long before my boys and I first discovered it for ourselves more than two decades ago. Back in the day, prior to the development of the North Round Valley Trailhead (an area my children named The Boneyard for all the “dinosaur bones” lying in the sage), we’d stuff a backpack and hike from our home down the street, up to the picnic table for lunch. In a more recent and globally unforgettable era, that picnic table served as a place to hold socially distanced, BYO dinner gatherings, providing relief from the crushing isolation of a quarantine. 

The other day, I ran past the table and a tsunami of nostalgia stopped me cold. I remembered warning, “be careful of splinters” as the weather-beaten planks wobbled like a rocking horse beneath the wiggles of four little boys. Over time, the table became a little more sturdy, then sturdy and splinter free, and then for a time before they too rotted, the table top planks were wonderfully, colorfully painted with wildflowers and joy. It would be safe to bet that not a single part of the original picnic table still exists. 

And yet, today, a picnic table stands solid. It is not the same picnic table – it is something much more. You see, the object that now stands is not just two benches and a table top, it is also a testament to the goodness of people. Those who have used the table, cherish it. And over the years, probably unbeknownst to one another, they have hauled and installed new planks. Hiked in tools to tighten hardware. Painted and repaired. Care has been applied, layer upon layer. This is an ongoing story of the spirit of the trails community. 

It may be that I’m just a wistful older lady, but I can’t help wondering if there’s a lot more inspiration to unpack in this story. Let me know what you think. . . 

Hope to see you out there!

Lora Anthony, Executive Director

MountainKind

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Last week, the Park City Chamber and Visitor’s Bureau launched its rebrand which is founded on a philosophy they’ve called “MountainKind.” It’s a versatile phrase, “Be MountainKind,” or “We are the MountainKind,” or “Dude, that’s so MountainKind!” Ok, maybe not that last one, exactly. 

As I sat on a large committee where ideas for the future brand percolated around preserving local assets, including the environment, better serving residents and attracting the “right” type of visitors (those already conscientious of sustainable practices), the phrase MountainKind resonated. It turns awareness to two things we here at Mountain Trails have, for over three decades, strived to grow and share: a love for the mountains and kindness toward others. Recall MTF’s 10 Seconds of Kindness campaign? It’s still a thing.

Another element of the Chamber’s new brand that is hard to miss, if not for quantity, then for high quality representation, is outdoor recreation as the main attraction. Hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of perfectly illuminated trail shots supply the Chamber, local business and resorts with exhilarating content. They are flawless images of families, whose children never whine, hiking Empire Pass. Mountain bikers floating in slow-mo through golden aspen forests on Park City Mountain’s buffed singletrack. And of course, there’s the golden retriever patiently sitting upon a Deer Valley promontory as her people drink in the undisturbed vastness of Bonanza Flat. These uplifting narratives speak closely to the hearts of visitors who love the outdoors. They are also the very essence of local culture and community pride.

So, yes, bold as it might be, I am going to go right on ahead and claim it here: trails and open space play leading roles in an all star cast. They are the heroic protagonists in the Tale of Utah – What Wonderful Place to Be. 

As we consider the asset trails and open space are to the story being told in destination marketing, let’s also reflect upon the role they play – we play – in Utah’s economy, outdoor culture and high quality of life.

Trails are here, in large part, because Mountain Trails Foundation, other trails and open space nonprofits, and a supportive local community, are here. Working together.  Always.

Untethered Fervor of Spring

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Upon returning from Patagonia, with the biggest of big trips in the rear view mirror, my husband and I decided it was time to take the plunge. Two weeks ago, a 12-week-old puppy joined our family and, to say the least, she has really stirred things up. We are giddy in love with Banksy, and her presence in our home feels like the untethered fervor of spring manifest in four legs, a wet nose and an incessantly wagging tail.

Spring is universally beheld as a time of birth, growth and optimism. We await longer, warmer days on the trails which will fuel the spirit and, much like a puppy’s bubbling energy, excitement over the coming of those days is just barely contained. 

Here at MTF, spring fever is growing. The crew is glad to shed winter layers and turn attention to big, juicy summer projects. Soon enough, we’ll start on a major restoration of some of Round Valley’s winter-blasted double track, begin clearing deadfall from trail corridors on the mountain and tend to much needed maintenance in the King’s Crown area trails and beyond. But until then, we’ll enjoy respite from the cold and look forward to the coming of a new season. 

While we’re collectively reveling in this vernal moment, please join me in commending and encouraging the MTF trail crew for sustaining positive attitudes through another long, cold winter, for going above and beyond as always, and for embracing the approach of yet another season of hard work. . . work that makes a big difference to an entire community of trail lovers. 

Here’s to the crew, the joys of spring. . . and puppies!

Lora Anthony,
Executive Director

Livable Wages, Faith and a Golden Parachute

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The logistics and resources required for managing a trail system are nothing short of a marathon effort. From unpredictable winter grooming ops, to moving the trail crews around the mountains for spring maintenance, to fundraising for expensive projects, we’ve got our hands full.

As I write this message, just six dedicated employees manage all of these responsibilities for more than one half of the year. In a few short months, we’ll hire four seasonal crew members, raising our employee count to 10 for about five months. During that time, we will roll through a long list of projects, and cover maintenance for over 200 miles of trail spanning from Bonanza Flat to Round Valley and most of what lies in between. To say our crew is a lean machine is, perhaps, a boastful truth – and a truth we are very proud of.

MTF’s treasurer and I put final touches on the 2024 budget in early January, and as always, he reminded me to take a deep breath. As a nonprofit we can predict neither revenue, nor surprise expenses like the most recent whopper for an excavator repair. Thus, the budget is the best, educated guess we can make. And yet, year after year, we come remarkably close to projections – last year we were within a couple hundred dollars on expense projections.

Still, I do believe my heart skipped a few beats as we pressed the go-button on a budget that added many tens of thousands of dollars to cover livable wage increases for MTF’s professional trail crew. It was a huge leap of faith that our donors and community would understand that we cannot ask of this small crew what we do, and not pay them what they’re worth. The jump in the budget was a must from both the employee retention perspective and the ethical perspective.

No sooner had we leapt off that cliff, than I received a message from our friends, the Goldfield Family, wondering how they might help MTF this year. With full support for the merits of livable wage increases and extreme generosity, their family readily offered to cover that line item in the budget.  

In the nonprofit world, it is a most delightful, if emotional, privilege to experience the intense gratitude that comes from taking a leap, knowing that what you’re doing is right, and then being gifted a golden parachute.

To our many wonderful donors – you make what we do possible and wonderful.

THANK YOU!  

Trails Are Like Family Dinners

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On many Saturday evenings, our family gathers for dinner. Nothing fills my heart with greater pride or lifts my spirit higher than seeing my four sons, now men, greeting one another with bear hugs, and sharing soul-deep laughter. They have always had their own semi-clandestine language and, tap-tap toss it back, insider rituals. Their brotherly bond, which in many ways defines our family culture, has been cultivated over 25 years of shared experiences, co-surviving the rough patches and in celebrating one another’s hard-won victories.

It’s probably an occupational consequence that I think of trail experiences as sharing qualities similar to family dinners – but on a societal level. Trails are where we arrive as who we really are. Where pretense and nonsense disintegrate before the mother of them all, Mother Nature. Where we find “our people” and feel at ease among them, as different from us as they may be. Trails are the place where, regardless of generation or native tongue, we understand a common language and embrace certain mannerisms. Where everyone has something to contribute. In short, trails are the place many of us call home. A place we are as one. . . the trail lovers of the world. 

See you out there,

Lora Anthony, Executive Director

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