An unannounced yet significant occasion has passed by without recognition from the Park City community. An occasion recognizing a person’s 20 years of service in an area so important to our everyday Park City life — trails!
That’s right, Rick Fournier of the Mountain Trails Foundation, while transitioning from a public to a private trail building career, his 20 years of service to our Park City Community has slipped by unnoticed.
Many of us know Rick for his trail designing expertise, his sustainable trail builds and his thoughtful consideration for the user’s safety and enjoyment of Park City’s world renowned trail system! Yet, there is another side to Rick’s career that most trail users are totally unaware of, his everyday field work.
Trail building is not always glamorous, in fact what we don’t see as trail user is at times the most difficult aspect of the job. On so many subzero mornings in Round Valley Rick would be out in the predawn darkness working on getting machines to start for that days grooming. Bare handed and cussing a bit while attempting to thaw out frozen machines and once they were working he would groom for many more hours in the cold.
Come summertime, bushwhacking to flag new trails while being exposed to the heat, dust, ticks, hornets and wildfire smoke, Rick plotted out our next new trails. Over the 20 years, Rick assembled a topnotch trail crew. He not only mentored and trained the trail crews to produce high quality trails all while having an impeccable safety record over the 20 years as trail manager.
His driving force was his passion for trails and his motivation was seeing the trails enjoyed by all trail users who adventured out into nature.
During my 11 years as executive director for the Mountain Trails Foundation, for which I received several community awards, there was no one more important to my and Mountain Trails success than Rick Fournier. Without Rick’s passion, energy, experience and quite frankly his durability our trail system wouldn’t be the world renowned system it is today.
Thank you Rick for 20 years of outstanding service to our Park City community!
Charlie Sturgis
Former Executive Director, Mountain Trails Foundation