By Scott Andrews

“We’re not spending $250,000 to hold a race,” asserts Thom Perkins, longtime executive director of the Jackson Ski Touring Foundation. “We’re spending $250,000 on trails to make better skiing for recreational skiers. Ninety-five percent of the use of this trail is going to be recreational and we designed these trails first and foremost to be fun to ski. We’re building a recreational trail that we can race on. This is a world-class recreational trail and it is one of only six of these facilities in the whole U.S.”

When Cross Country Skier caught upwith Thom Perkins this past summer, he was tramping through soft, fragrant, freshly bulldozed soil on a rocky hillside with a million-dollar vista of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Periodically he stopped to chat with his construction crew and check out the progress of a project that will widen and lengthen The Wave ─ one of Jackson’s most famous and most popular trails ─ and bring it up to current FIS homologation standards.

Jackson has scheduled two major competitions on the trail this winter. The one with the broadest appeal is the January 24 TD Banknorth White Mountain Classic 30K, the opening event in the New England Nordic Ski Association’s 2009 Marathon Series.

Perkins is one of cross country skiing’s most forceful and influential figures. He has been the Jackson Ski Touring Foundation’s executive director since 1976, overseeing a sprawling 154-kilomter trail network that interconnects a dozen-plus restaurants and hostelries in Jackson Village, crosses two golf courses, climbs three mountain ridges and radiates into three river valleys. Jackson has repeatedly been voted the best ski touring center in the East and, in 2005, Cross Country Skier cited Perkins among the 25 most important “Nordic Heroes.”

During the one-third century he’s been head honcho, Perkins has overseen about a dozen major construction projects plus many high-level races. This year’s undertaking, which combines both recreation and racing, is emblematic of Jackson’s status as an 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, as well as the foundation’s role in the U.S. cross country community.

“Building trails like this is way above and beyond what normal cross country ski areas are able to do,” Perkins states, noting that funding for this summer’s construction comes entirely from grants and donations. “Our non-profit status is critical to this operation. The fact that we are non-profit gives us a larger social responsibility within the sport. We accept that responsibility to the extent we can because we have the money.”

Although serving the recreational enthusiast comes first at Jackson, hosting races is also part of the foundation’s mantle of social responsibility to skiing. “I believe that races are good for the long-term health of the sport,” Perkins avers. “Racing is part of the culture of the sport.”

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