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Mt. Telemark Village: Honoring the Past While Moving Into the Future

Honoring the Past While Moving Into the Future
The Tony Wise Memorial Plaza
A Note on the Project
What We Need

Tony never rested in place. He was always charging ahead to the next big thing. 

While the Lodge is gone, the entrepreneurial spirit that defined the old Telemark lives on. The American Birkebeiner is the biggest race in North America. Over 340,000 people have participated, including some of the best skiers the world has ever seen. And now the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation (ABSF) has embarked on an ambitious project of Tony-Wise-like scale to rejuvenate the area: Mt. Telemark Village. 

The Village is a $10.2 Million project, complete with historic ski trails, state-of-the-art snowmaking, cutting edge mountain bike trails – the Trek Trails, powered by OTM, a paved loop – the George Hovland Trail – for rollerskiing, biking and hiking, the Kawabaming Lookout Tower – which is constructed out of pieces of the old chairlift, a biathlon range, the new Birkie Start Area, the base camp building where people can gather, and a number of partner-led investments, like a new hotel, a new restaurant, a coffee shop, bike and ski rentals, and a place for camper cabins and Sprinter van parking. 

The ABSF is off to a rousing start in putting this project together. They purchased the land, razed the old lodge, put much of the land into permanent conservancies, they built the George Hovland Trail and Kawabaming Lookout Tower, they have completed a number of bike trails, and the base camp building is slated to be ready this summer. 

But the organization needs the “old guard” – those who were there when Telemark was in its prime – to help ensure that we tell the stories and preserve the heritage of the old Telemark as part of the new Mt. Telemark Village project. We need your financial support so that we can include this homage to the past in the new Mt. Telemark Village. And the ABSF needs the old guard to help tell the story – so that the entrepreneurial spirit that defined the old Telemark will live on through the new Mt. Telemark Village. So that when a young child comes to the Village they will see the stories and know that Tony and so many who shared Tony’s vision started it all.