LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 34 Think of a trail you truly love. I'm talking about the place you choose to ride — or walk, or run, or ski — when you could go anywhere. Maybe your favorite trail climbs to a vista. Maybe it flows almost effortlessly down the hill. Maybe you love the way it challenges your strength or skill. No matter what, the feeling and experience of that trail is not accidental. If it's any good, the people who built that trail were likely thinking about folks like you who would benefit from their craft in the future. The better the builders, the more intentionally the trail's experience was cre- ated. A truly great trail doesn't just take you from Point A to Point B. That's what highways are for. Trails, on the other hand, give us an experience. They make us feel something. We are blessed with an incredible richness of tru- ly great trails in the Adirondacks. Our mountain bike and ski trails continue to expand, evolve, and improve thanks to BETA (the Barkeater Trails Alliance), count- less volunteers, and an increasing number of profes- sional trail builders. One of those pros is Luke Peduzzi. Born and raised right here in Jay, Luke has spent years honing his skills and blending a unique combina- tion of education and experience into his career. While I've known Luke for a few years, I recently had the priv- ilege of interviewing him about his background and ap- proach to trail building. As a teenager, Luke sought out a position on the Ad- irondack Mountain Club's Pro Trail Crew. This storied group has a long and proud tradition of building and maintaining rugged trails in the mountains all by hand. Talk to someone who has ever spent a season on the Crew, and they're still just as proud today of all the work and effort put in years ago. During Luke's tenure, the Pro Crew was sometimes hired out to build in other areas of the state. This brought him to the Windham area of the Catskills at the same time that efforts were just beginning to create a community bike path, the Elm Ridge trail network, and the Windham Bike Park — the latter with the goal of hosting a UCI World Cup. (They succeeded, hosting the event six times from 2010 to 2019.) Working with the Windham Area Recreation Foun- dation (WARF) proved to be a perfect confluence of opportunities for Luke. At that point, he was studying outdoor education at Johnson State College in Ver- mont. He and a friend proposed that WARF create its own trail crew. They were given that opportunity and started the Windham Professional Trail Crew, some- thing modeled after the ADK Crew. This time includ- ed a flurry of trail building. Teams from Gravity Logic, Tahawus Trails, ADK, and WARF worked together and independently on a variety of projects. With all these builders in one area, Luke was a sponge, energetically Following the Flow: Inside the Mind of Trail Builder Luke Peduzzi By Patrick Carey Left: The author rips through one of the many perfect berms at the East Branch community Trails. Photo credit: Rachel Carey. Right: Luke Peduzzi poses amidst some recent trail construction. Photo credit: Sam Curtis

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