 This is Dennis McMahon, and welcome to Positively Vermont. And my guest is Greg Nano, the Communications and Events Director of the Catamount Trail Association. Welcome, Greg. How's it going? Good, excellent. And we're looking forward to hearing about you and your organization and some very exciting events coming up in the near future. First of all, tell our viewers a little bit about yourself. So as you mentioned, my name's Greg. I work for the Catamount Trail Association. I've been here for nine years now. And my job is to kind of like connect people with the trail, the Catamount Trail, which is a 300 mile long backcountry ski trail here in Vermont. And then create opportunities for people to kind of engage with the Catamount Trail and backcountry skiing here in Vermont. Tell us a little bit about the Catamount Trail Association, how it got started, what it does and some of the things that it's done in the past. Sure, yeah, so the Catamount Trail is a 300 mile long backcountry ski trail that runs from the Massachusetts border to the Canadian border. And that was established in 1984. And at that time, the Catamount Trail Association was established to kind of promote and protect this trail corridor. And so we've been around for, you know, 30, so almost 40 years now. And over that time, a lot of our life, the job, the association, the CTA, was to kind of work with landowners across the state to kind of make sure to kind of like, you know, keep the trail up to date, keep it open for people to use. And at the same time, like work with other agencies to kind of protect the corridor so that it would be available for future users here in Vermont and abroad. In the last 10 years, we've kind of expanded a little bit. We've created, we started working with chapters throughout Vermont, like smaller local organizations to manage backcountry ski zones. These are areas that have been kind of developed for so people can climb up and then ski down or splitboard down in these areas. And we have a growing number of chapters and zones throughout the state. And more recently, also in the last 10 years, we've really gotten highly involved in kind of youth learn to ski programs. And our youth learn to ski programs, you know, especially in the last three to four years have really kind of exploded. And, you know, we're seeing, we're serving well over a thousand youth of every winter now. Tell us a little bit about the configuration. I know it runs from Massachusetts to Canada. Just give us a bird's eye view and we're gonna have some photos of it, of course, but just give us a verbal picture of what it's like, the terrain, the obstacles, the challenges and things of that nature. Oh yeah, I mean, it's, you can think of it a little bit. We like to think of it as the cooler version of the Long Trail, just in the sense that it does follow the spine of the Green Mountains. And so you tend to be, you know, either climbing or descending for a lot of the route. It's on gentler terrain and the, you know, the Green Mountain, it doesn't follow the ridge line. We stay a little bit below the ridge, but we try and maintain as high an elevation as possible so we have good snow. You are, there are river crossings and other things, you know, sometimes we do share terrain with snowmobile trails where necessary. And other times, and then when the trail was originally laid out, you know, we try to connect as many of Vermont's Nordic centers as possible. Those places provide like a nice reprieve place to grab a hot bite and something to drink. Sometimes, oftentimes there are ins you can take a, you can rest and stay overnight at, but they, but we're also utilizing their trails, their groomed trails as well. So the Catamount Trail experience is a real kind of menagerie of kind of surfaces from like dedicated backcountry ski trail that we maintain and have developed to kind of groom Nordic center trails and then occasionally groom snowmobile trails as well. That's great. The last time we spoke was well over a year ago, right in the middle of the pandemic. Maybe you could tell our viewers what's been going on since January of 2021. Yeah, actually it's been, it's surprisingly busy. You know, the pandemic is really, seems to have helped people rediscover the outdoors. And so it's really pushed people to kind of like look for new and different ways to kind of engage with the area around them. And so that's really led to, and also, you know, ski resorts these days are, you know, people who knows like they're busy right now, like for the same reason, a lot of people are getting outside and so there are more people at the resorts and you know, crowds or something that people, you know, have differing opinions about whether or not they wanna engage with places that have crowds. So that has also pushed a lot of people into the back country. So over the last, you know, during the pandemic we've been surprisingly busy, you know, there's a lot of interest in the trail, there's a lot of use to all of our zones. We're trying to manage and keep the trails open and the zones skiable. We're also trying to manage parking. Parking, as use has increased drastically, parking has become a real concern and making sure that, you know, people are informed of and know kind of like what the parking etiquette is and what happens if they show up in a parking lot is full. And just kind of managing all those, a lot of the stuff that comes with, you know, high levels of use. There's a lot of good stuff that comes with that. You know, people are engaged with us and our membership is up and our event attendance is up and that's really fun. On the flip side, there's also, you know, the overcrowding and other things that we're trying to manage and working with our partners to figure out if what we can do right now and also like long term thinking more about, you know, we imagine that this use isn't gonna decline anytime soon. Like once people discover something like back country skiing, most people really find that they love it and want to keep doing it. So we're looking long term to figure out, work with our partners in figuring out ways that we can kind of address use and make sure that these areas are accessible for everybody. And, you know, we don't have to start running into your capping or writing tickets or any of these other things, drastic measures that we really want to avoid. Well, tell us Craig, a little bit about, you know, the levels of skill that is needed to navigate this. Is it for amateurs, is it for professionals, is it for novices, is it for long time skiers? Just give us an idea as to what kind of challenges or no challenges that the trail presents or provides. For sure, I mean, I'd like to think, I mean, there's definitely a little bit of skill needed. Like, I mean, you're skiing and kind of ungroomed snow or traveling through ungroomed snow. And so there's definitely a little bit of skill that is necessary for, you know, being out in the back country alone, kind of like independently, you need to be prepared for if you have equipment failure, if you're stuck out, you know, and you need to know like navigational, you know, skills to make sure that you're going in the right direction and can get back to your vehicle if necessary. But generally, we like to think of the Catamount Trail as being kind of available to just about everybody. You know, with the Catamount Trail itself with 300 miles of terrain, you can imagine it varies kind of pretty drastically. So if you're a beginner skier, like you don't have a lot of timeline skis or a lot of, you know, technical skill on the descents, there are plenty of sections that are flatter and don't require a lot of, like a high level of technical skill to kind of navigate. You know, we also work to try and make sure that the trails are well marked. We provide navigational resources on our website to make sure that you, you know, users know what they're getting into and have the resources available to them to make sure that they can, if they do get turned around or do get lost, that they have resources available to help them find out, you know, discover like where they are at and how to get back to, you know, a trailhead. And so, you know, it's, again, it varies. It depends on how you want to engage with the trail. You know, we have a number of people will try and, you know, not a through ski the trail. So they're going to ski from start at one end and ski to the other. Some, if those people are camping, you know, that's a relatively high level of like expertise is required to kind of like do that safely and do that efficiently. Other people are going to go out, you know, we run multi-day tours. We run coast between 60 and 80 day tours throughout the course of the winter. Other people will sign up for one of the day tours on the Cadmium Trail and they'll go out with someone to show them, you know, help facilitate shuttles and help show them where to go and set the pace and make sure that, you know, provide some of that resources and facilitate that experience a little bit more. And the same thing is kind of true about the zones that our chapters manage. I mean, there's backcountry skiing in the sense that you just kind of like look at a map, kind of like you can read that map and like, oh, here it looks like, this looks like a slope that could be skiable. Let's go check it out, you know, to like some of the zones that we have, the zones that are maps, there's trailheads, there's parking areas, the uphill tracks are marked. So it's a little bit of a facilitated experience compared to kind of like full on backcountry skiing with no resource, no additional resources like that. So it's a kind of a stepping stone. If you think of like how people get into backcountry skiing, oftentimes they'll start uphilling at a resort, you know, they'll go to a friendly resort that will allow them to skin up and ski down. And then from there, they need to kind of like, that next step is oftentimes one of these zones that has additional resources to help people kind of like, ensure they have a good experience. And at the same time, they can find the goods and get back to their car safely. And then from there, they can jump on to bigger and, you know, adventures further abroad into the kind of more unknown and exploratory backcountry experiences. That's great. And I take it you have markers and signage around to help people, is that what you have? Definitely, yeah. I mean, on the Catamount Trail, the Catamount Trail is marked with blue blazes. We have, the trailheads are marked, you know, if you go to our visitor website, Avery, the trail itself is broken up into 31 sections that are reasonable day skis. And then each of those sections has a map and a written description and shovel directions. We have an interactive map on our website to help people with planning that indicates where all the parking areas are and additional resources like inns and places to eat. And then we have on our website, there's also a staying found page which has additional navigational resources that will help people while they're actually in the field. And we have paper maps and most of our zones that are chapter manager zones also have the maps as well. Tell us about these chapters. How many people are involved in that? Where do you have them? Well, yeah, we have chapters all throughout the state. You know, there's the Southern Vermont Trails Association down in Southern Vermont and the Dutch Hill Association of Skiers and Hikers. We have the Madden River Valley Backcountry Coalition, the Northeast Kingdom Backcountry Coalition up North. There's the Grateful Shreds. And we have, I mean, we have quite a few chapters and they manage. There's the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective which is in Rochester and Randolph areas. They were one of our, they were our first chapter actually and they kind of, they created the Brandon Gap and Braintree Mountain Forest Backcountry Zones. Those are kind of some of the kind of premier areas here in Vermont. And they kind of like establish the template for which these other chapters are working off of. And so every year we're trying to kind of, we're working with the through the chapters and with the land managers to kind of identify new areas that can be developed for this type of endeavor so that more and more people will have access to this experience and don't have to necessarily drive two or three or four hours to get to it. That's great. Well, tell us about this event that's coming up. The first ever CAT that Charity Ski for. So tell us what that stands for. I understand it's CAT amount brand ultimate tour. That's what it stands for. Yeah, we just, we wanted to, we wanted something short, a name that was short and sweet. I don't know if people know, but we also run the Northeast Delta Dental race to the top of Vermont in the, that happens in August at in Stowe. And, you know, after however many years of running in that and having to say that whole mouthful, we were just like, hey, we need something short and sweet. So it's easy to communicate with people. So yeah, we came up with CAT amount grand ultimate tour or CAT get. It's a little quirky, I think it's a little bit fun. And the idea of this, the idea of this event is that it's, it's a non competitive Nordic skiing event. You know, I think a lot of people look to the Nordic skiing world, especially here just after the Olympics, they see all the racers and the athleticism. There's so much more, you know, there's so much more to cross country skiing and racing. And we wanted to create an event that was not competitive. It was that would be a fundraiser for the cat amount trail association. And that was kind of open, you know, to everybody to come out and like have a good time, you know, a lot of people that are kind of like participating in the backcountry skiing or Nordic skiing are probably familiar with kind of gravel cycling. And it's like the dirt road riding and that happens in the, and like that sport has really exploded. And there are so many like really fun events that really kind of focus on bringing the community together and having a good time. And again, they're not that competitive. And this is kind of our attempt to kind of bring some of that community togetherness and that fun of just like spending time outdoors with like friends and other people to kind of the Nordic skiing and backcountry skiing worlds. That's great. Now I understand that schedule for March 13th, which is pretty near. Tell us what happened on March 13th. Sure, March 13th. So we're, this event is happening at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, Northern Vermont. They are one of the premier Nordic centers in the New England. They've got great conditions, amazing trails. And so what we're gonna be doing on the 13th is gathering for, and then there's gonna, the tour, to go for kind of a longish tour. We have a short course that's about 11 kilometers long. And we have a long course that's 20, around 28 kilometers long. And so we'll start in the morning and people will go off and we're working with untapped Naples out of Richmond there. They're gonna be providing some kind of treats for us at the aid stations. And then REI out of Wilston's gonna be hosting an aid station for us. Word has it, they're gonna have a fire and a s'mores bar and some fun stuff while you're coming through. And then Sterling College is gonna be helping hosting an aid station as well. And they've got a whole slew of activities planned for hand-free donut eating and hot drinks and tree identification and interactive art. They're gonna have, so it's a race. We want people to go out and have fun touring around and exploring and seeing the area. But we also wanna have people to kind of like engage with each other and kind of like, connect with one another and like have that community. Feel like they're part of a community, something larger. It's not just about them getting in the woods, but it's about this like bigger thing that's happening. Tell us, is there a registration for this or any pre-event necessities that people will need to know about? For sure, yeah, I mean, most people, I mean, you could, people could show up day of and sign up. It's the registration fee is $50. People can learn more about the event at catgutvt.com. And so, but yeah, I mean, it's, it is a fundraiser. So one of the things that, one of the other things that's happening is if you do fundraise, when you sign up to, when you register for the event, you, a fundraising page is created for you. And if you raise $100 or more, you will be entered for every $100 you raise, you will be entered to win a prize from one of our, we have these awesome prizes from our partners that include things like we have a package that is a three night in the in ski package on the Catamount Trail that includes lodging and dinner at the Trap Family Lodge, the Edson Hill Manor and Bolton Valley Resort. We have a hot to hot ski pack a package on the Catamount Trail from the Vermont Huts Association that includes three nights and huts. We have skis from Fisher's Skis. We have a $500 gift card to the outdoor gear exchange in Burlington. VIP Tire and Service is giving away a free set of tires like all season or winter tires. We also have, I'm sure I'm forgetting something. The Blueberry Hill Inn has an adventure weekend planned that they've donated. Bolton Valley Resort is also giving away a guided tour. So there's a lot, some really great prizes that you could win if you fundraise. So people can sign up, it's 50 bucks or if they do a little bit of fundraising to get to that $100 mark, they could be entered to win any of these prizes. And they would be helping out the CTA in our work kind of like managing backcountry ski terrain here in Burma and supporting our programs. That's great. So people can like have sponsors sponsor them. Is that what that's about? Yeah, the way, I mean, the way it works is like your typical social fundraiser where, again, when you register you'll have a fundraising page will be created for you. And then you can just share that page on social media or via email with your friends, family and colleagues to, and then ask them to kind of support you in this effort. We will also be keeping fundraising open through the end of the day and the third will come and participate in the event. They can also, they can take pictures of them actually doing the thing that they signed up for and then use that to kind of ask for funds for support. That's great. Now, today is February 21 and we've spoken about the March 13th event. Tell us what's gonna be happening in March and later on with the Catamount Trail Association and its associates. For sure, yeah, I mean, we have between now and the end of the season we still have a bunch of different tours that are happening, tours like tours on the Catamount Trail, tours that are chapter managed zones, multi-day tours and single-day tours. We actually on March 5th, which is next Saturday we actually are coming up. We have the Splitboard Vermont Splitboard Festival that we host in conjunction with Splitboard Vermont and that's gonna be happening at the Middlebury Snow Bowl. That's 100% free event. Anybody that's interested in Splitboarding can show up and we have, I believe we have 12 or 13 different vendors that are gonna be on site. There'll be Splitboard demos, don't hold 100% free clinics and other things. So people can just, it's one of those ways we just wanna, we're working to help connect people with the sport and give them the opportunity to try out some of the equipment, stuff that's like hard to get your hands on. And it's hard to know if you really wanna make, pull the trigger on one of these large investments if you don't get to try it. So this Splitboard Festival is that for us. We also run a Schimo series at Bolton Valley that happens on Tuesday nights. And so we have three more races left this season for that. And again, every night it's as competitive as you want it to be. You can come out and race hard if you want to or you can come out and just have fun skiing and the evening with us. Afterwards, we gather and have a raffle with prizes provided by the Derby Gear Exchange, Fisher Skis and Deena Fit. So there's still quite a bit left going on between now and once the snow melts, depending on, assuming the mother nature gives us a little bit more snow. That's great. Well, I know it's for the CATCUT event that you need volunteers, but tell us what types of things people can volunteer for for that event and for other activities that you've done. For sure, yeah. People at the CATCUT specifically, we're looking for people to help with registration, aid stations and to help out with the grill team. We have a grill afterwards, we'll be providing food for everybody that finishes. So we're looking for a handful of people to help out run the grill. So, and then otherwise, I mean, we could be, if people want to get involved with the CTA, like right now, I think we're pretty set for a lot of volunteer needs, but come the spring, summer and fall, things don't get shut down here. We actually, things get a little bit busier. If we start to, we start, stop focusing on more on events and kind of getting people out on the trail and we start looking at, we would start working on planning and all the maintenance and other stuff that has to happen between during the warmer months to make sure that winter can happen. So if anybody is interested in getting involved, there's always trail projects that are happening all throughout the state. So no matter where anybody is, there's usually some way, something nearby that they can pitch in with if they want to get out in the woods and kind of get their hands dirty. So if anybody is interested in volunteering and doing trail work, they can always contact us and we can connect them with a local trail chief that can, would be happy to have their support. Do you have any needs for any particular expertise as volunteers? Are you looking for someone special right now or just, this is open to any of them? Yeah, just kind of open. We have generally the, sometimes where we need some expertise is in with chainsaws. We don't just let anybody run a chainsaw. So they have to be certified by the state, by the US Forest Service to run it depending on whose land we're on as well. But we prefer to have people that have some experience and have those certifications. But we tend to have a pretty, we tend to keep our existing kind of trail chiefs. We have people that have adopted certain section of the trail. We try to make sure those people are up there kind of like are up to date on those things. That's great. Now, tell us one of the things we'd like to do when positively Vermont is give the organization an opportunity to say, what are your needs? Do you have any particular needs, any issues that are coming up or any financial matters or legislative needs that you have? What anything specific or in addition to financial, tell us what you would like the public to do with respect to your organization if they're in a position to do so. For sure. I mean, we're a membership based organization. So all the funds that we've received that kind of like allow us to do what we do come through membership and through charitable contributions. So I would encourage anybody to one, visit our website, learn a little bit more about the organization and the different opportunities that are out there, to get out there in the woods and like, check it out, like go for a ski somewhere or jump on your splitboard and explore one of our zones. And then three, if you like, if you like had a good time and you thought like you liked what you saw, then come back and like consider becoming a member. You can affiliate with the Catamount Trail Association or as a CTA member, you can affiliate with a chapter by affiliated with a chapter. A portion of your membership dollars goes directly to that chapter to support their efforts. And then, yeah, and then make a, consider making a charitable donation. This spring will be launching our Trail Fund raising campaign, which is a kind of a charitable donor campaign in the spring to kind of support our trail work efforts. And so that'll be happening. That'll be going live sometime in April. And so right now we're, there's always a 300 miles of trail. You'd think that at one point in time, the trees would stop falling, but there's always new ones ready to go. So it takes us all summer to kind of, make sure the trail is clear. There are bridges that are getting built that, in the winter, like we'll see how the spring goes, but when everything dies, like bridges get washed out and need to be replaced or picked up and relocated, it takes us, there's a quite a bit of work that happens between, April and November. So. That's great. And you have all this material on your website and you can get more information on that. And you have gear, do you have gear that's? We did, yeah. We have a, we have a small store. You can get Catamot Trail hats. We have buffs. And some of our chapters, some of our chapters also have gear that we sell through our store as well. So if you want to support any of our chapters directly, you can go into the Catamot Trail store and see those products as well. That's great. Well, thanks very much, Greg. And you Dennis. We look forward to bringing you back on occasion and hearing more progress about this wonderful activity you have. And just a good luck with everything that's going to be going on. And I want to thank you for appearing on Positively Vermont. My guest today has been Greg Meno, the Communications and Events Director of the Catamot Trail Association. Thank you. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you. Thank you all for watching.