Words KADE KRICHKO Photos and Captions JAMIE WALTER THE chainsaws were a dead giveaway. the Woods Trail, slicing pathways that, once the snow fell, would transform into private powder stashes. It wasn’t a legal practice per say, but one they’d operated undetected for a few years now. Plus, the risk seemed worth the reward—that is, until they stepped out of the forest and right into Carter’s sight line, incriminating tools in tow. “Oh, we’re busted,” thought the younger Marcoux. Clandestine glade-cutting had earned East Coast infamy not long before that fateful day in 2010. Authorities were cracking down on unlicensed trailblazing across New England, and just a few years earlier, two Vermont men Jim Carter, the new general man-ager at Black Mountain of Maine, wasn’t sure what he’d find as he wandered toward the woods of his Rumford, ME, ski area, but spotting the same green Tundra in his lot again—and in August no less—had set off alarm bells. Through thick summer heat, Carter hiked up from the base lodge in search of answers. Somewhere on the side of the mountain, they almost ran into him. Jeff Marcoux and his father Gerry had spent the af-ternoon dreaming of winter. For the last few days, they’d thinned trees and cleared deadfall near an area known as 044 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume 17, Issue 4: Page 44
