BOLTON, Vt. (WCAX) – It all started with an idea between three friends on top of a mountain.
In 1982, outdoorsmen Steve Bushey, Paul Jarris, and Ben Rose were looking for their next adventure.
“The three of us went on an overnight hike to the summit of Mt. Hunger, and we decided at that time that we wanted to ski across the length of Vermont,” said Bushey.
The co-founders strapped on their skis and got to work, traversing across the state with maps in tow to link together existing trails – and blaze their own.
“For me, being a geographer and cartographer and a mapmaker as a whole, route finding was a delightful puzzle that took a number of years to unravel,” Bushey said.
But that puzzle wasn’t always delightful, and the group hit a few bumps in the road along the way.
Jarris said, “We learned the first day from the Massachusetts border that we got displaced. We realized we really have to pay attention to the map and compass, not just skiing because there is no trail.”
Today, the trio’s route has evolved into a 320-mile-long trail that’s now marked and kept up by the Catamount Trail Association. They founded it shortly after completing the trek.
Matt Williams, Executive Director of the Catamount Trail Association, said, “It’s a lot of work, a lot of people, and a lot of volunteers, frankly. We have hundreds of volunteers every year. They split into sections and local volunteers step up and take care of specific sections of the trail.”
And maintaining those sections means adapting to Vermont’s changing climate.
“Particularly with climate change impacting snowpack, we’re doing a lot of work with drainage bridges and culverts to make the trail more skiable with less snow cover,” said Williams.
It’s something that the trail’s founders and current stewards agree on.
Jarris said, “That’s my biggest worry and all our biggest worry, is that the trail is the canary in the coalmine – how is this trail gonna survive climate change?”
Now, some 40-some-odd years later, the founders look back on their time mapping the trail fondly.
“I feel so good about it and there are a lot of professional things, like when I was Commissioner of Health in Vermont, there were a lot of things that got started that I feel really good about, but nothing is like the Catamount trail,” said Jarris, “we feel very good that this dream we offered to the people of Vermont has really gained traction and come true.”
The trio is strapping in for a 40th anniversary trek in mid-February.