The bond that links your true family is not one of blood… Richard Bach
Just two short weeks ago, our team wrapped up the 2023-24 winter trails season in Bonanza Flat. Grooming operations extended from December 5th in Round Valley to April 21st in Bonanza Flat. That’s nearly 5 months of sliding and gliding, rolling, and strolling. A big shout out to Matt and Alec for the stellar grooming this season as well as our community partners, Park City Municipal and Utah Open Lands, for enabling our team to provide this amazing (free) community amenity.
Last month my sister and I joyfully celebrated my dad’s 90th birthday in New Hampshire with over 60 of our relatives and close family friends. My Dad came from an extremely large, French-Canadian family of 15, so we grew up with dozens of cousins, aunts, and uncles. Having been adopted as infants, my sister and I shared no DNA with the “Fournier” clan, but we never knew differently, as we were always loved and treated as “family”. So, as we celebrated my dad’s milestone and caught up with long-lost relatives on a snowy spring night in New England, I was reminded of just how fortunate I was to be welcomed into this big, beautiful family with open arms.
If you’ve ever worked for a small business or non-profit, you inevitably share many of the same experiences with your team of coworkers that you would with family members – successes, failures, the good times and the bad, losses, births, and birthdays. And like family, you interact daily with many different personalities, hopefully embracing each other’s uniqueness and yes, even a little disfunction from time to time. The reality is that we quite often spend more time with our co-workers than we do many of our family members, and if we’re lucky, we get to work with, and learn from, some unique, fun, talented and inspiring individuals. Such has been my experience with Mountain Trails, and gratefully so.
This past week, we welcomed back our trails family; Sean, Emma and Derek, each returning for their third season in addition to year-round staff, Matt and Alec, in their third and fourth seasons respectively. New to the team are Zach Strickland and Idahoan, Emil Harry. Zach worked trail crew for us during the 2017-18 seasons and will now be assuming the role of Trail Maintenance Coordinator. Emil brings with him significant backcountry trail experience and will be a huge asset to our team. We’re super stoked to have this group of really good humans working (and playing) with us this year…
