Last year on the day Jake Carpenter passed away, we found out we had just won a $5000 matching grant from Burton for maintenance on Joe’s Trail. Known as the Godfather of Snowboarding, Jake and Joe share similar qualities and we felt it was appropriate that we honor Jake’s memory with maintenance of Joe’s.
Like Jake grew the sport of snowboarding, we have Joe Cavalear, and fellow Waterbury locals to thank for building Joe’s trail, and for being a founding member of WATA. So many of the legendary trails of the late 90s and early 2000s were lost to the forest, but Joe, and fellow waterbury local riders, felt it important to preserve and share these special trails with the public. One could call Joe, the Godfather of Perry Hill.
For this work, we hired the one and only Knight Ide, and his crew of talented builders to do maintenance by hand. Expect rock work, like you saw on the maintenance we did on Burning Spear last year. Knight calls this work “historical preservation,” aimed at maintaining the character of the trail while improving the long term durability. Don’t you worry, we also walked the trail with Joe, and got his personal sign off on all projects. If anything our hope is that it returns it closer to his original vision for the trail.
WATA would like to thank Burton for funding this project as well as their interest in partnering on trail days this summer once we are able to. Look out for more about this exciting partnership!