From the Director

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.

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

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!  

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

Message from the Director

Here we are. It’s the second week in January and it feels as though winter is just barely getting started. With storms arriving this week, I can hear the collective sigh of relief as natural water systems replenish, the winter economy rebounds, and we’ll finally get full access to local trails for some good ol’ fashioned winter fun.

Up to this point in the winter, the only game in town has been in Bonanza Flat. Recognizing the public’s great desire for a winter playground, several organizations rallied their respective troops, money and effort to make Bonanza Flat accessible. Let’s applause the organizations and people – because it always takes great people – who have kept Bonanza Flat trails running so far this winter:

Park City Municipal, Trails & Open Space Department’s trail rangers, Hannah Halstead, Billy Kurek, Joe Sipe and Ethan Peterson, and their office compadres, Logan Jones and Heinrich Deters. Coordinating a shuttle company, lining up approvals, paperwork, etc., this group buckled down and figured out how to extend the Transit to Trails program until Round Valley is ready to groom.   

Utah Open Lands for its support of the Transit to Trails program.  Without UOL’s financial support through a generous, anonymous donor, and a grant from the Central Wasatch Commission, the shuttles to snow wouldn’t have been possible.

And finally, Mountain Trails Foundation’s very own grooming crew, Sean Ward, Alec Johnson, Matt Jones, Seth Angevine and Rick Fournier. Without their crack-of-dawn efforts, the trails at 9000’ would not exist. If you have been up to elevation before the sun rises, then you know what grit is – the grooming crew is about as gritty as they come. 

As we move into what is hopefully a more robust stream of winter storms in the remaining few months of winter, I hope you’ll keep front of mind the privilege it is to have winter trails. They exist because a whole bunch of people think they are a good idea – and then get to work making them happen!

See you out there,

Lora Anthony, Executive Director

Mountain Trails Foundation had its 30^th anniversary as an officially chartered organization on September 30^th. Conveniently that was a Saturday in 2023, so a good excuse to celebrate. Laughter and nostalgia filled MTF’s garage as some of Park City’s trail legends shared origin stories of Park City’s trail system. Some taller than others, perhaps, these tales told of landowners, guns, pirate builders and shovels. And, it was from those very seeds of contention that Mountain Trails Foundation grew.   

I don’t regularly suffer from imposter syndrome relative to my position as MTF’s fourth executive director, but humility was quick before a garage full of people, young and old, whose collective histories with Park City’s trails now paint a picture of unity and love of the outdoors.

Like any normal 30-year-old, Mountain Trails Foundation has suffered its bumps and grinds. We’ve dreamed naïve dreams and stumbled through disappointment. Relationships with partners have grown strong, morphed or disappeared. MTF has lived in the garages and spare bedrooms, relocated more times than any of us can count, and finally scraped together enough to become a homeowner. All the while, MTF has lived in a Village that cared, invested and rejoiced in its growth.

Now, three decades later, that Village numbers in the thousands. Members who support our mission to build, maintain and protect trails for non-motorized recreation are part of the legacy – and simultaneously ensure that trails have a future in society.

See you out there,

Lora Anthony, Executive Director