Charlie Sturgis is stepping down as the executive director of the Mountain Trails Foundation in June, the nonprofit announced Thursday, ending an 11-year run leading the organization’s work building and maintaining hundreds of miles of trails in the Park City area.
“Being MTF’s Executive Director has been the honor of my life,” Sturgis said in a prepared statement announcing the move.
The foundation said in a prepared statement that it reached significant milestones during Sturgis’ tenure, including achieving financial stability. And Park City won the first ever “Gold Ride Center” award from the International Mountain Bicycling Association, a distinction it now shares with only a handful of other areas in the world.
Sturgis has been a longtime fixture in Park City’s mountain biking and cross-country skiing scenes, working on trail-use management issues for decades and participating in one of the first trail master planning efforts in the 1980s.
A 2007 Park Record article identifies him as “the minister of outdoor satisfaction for White Pine Touring” three years before he left the company and became the Mountain Trails Foundation executive director in 2010.
The prepared statement says that Sturgis’ collaborative approach helped steer the nonprofit through some challenging situations during his tenure.
“We cannot thank Charlie enough,” said Steve Perkins, the foundation’s board chair. “He has made Mountain Trails Foundation one of the most admired and loved organizations in this magnificent corner of the world.”
Sturgis was the third executive director since the foundation was founded in 1992, and the nonprofit is looking for his replacement. Interested applicants can visit mountaintrails.org/mtf-ed-job-description-feb2021/.
The statement did not include details about what was next for Sturgis after he steps down this summer, but did indicate he is grateful for being able to lead the organization.
“I could not have done it without the help and support of my wife Kathy, the incredible staff at MTF, the foundation’s board of directors, the amazing staff at the City and County, the many local nonprofits and, most importantly, the overwhelming public support which makes our trails what they are today,” he said.