Joe Pete Wilson in his early years courtesy of NorthCountyPublicRadio.org
Joe Pete Wilson recently passed away at age 84 and he will be remembered as a pioneer and endless promoter in the snow sports world.
Wilson hailed from Lake Placid, NY where he spent years as the innkeeper at the Bark Eater Inn located in nearby Keene. His tireless missionary work to promote cross country skiing was recognized by the now defunct Ski Trax Magazine as one of the top 10 promoters of cross country skiing in the US.
Wilson competed in a 30 km race at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, CA and in 1972 he directed the operation at Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, VT which was one of the first cross country ski areas in the US. The 30-year Trapp director Charlie Yerrick commented in Wikipedia that Joe Pete was known for “his humor and dedicated spirit.”
Wilson’s history is like a snow sports guide unto itself. He led the Vermont Ski Areas Association and was the general manager of Burke Mountain in 1966-69 and later he sold real estate at Glen Ellen. Drawing on his experience on the 4-man bobsleigh team that competed in St. Moritz in 1965, Wilson later became the venue manager for bobsled and luge for the Lake Placid Olympics in 1977-78.
In cross country skiing, Joe Pete was honored by the Professional Ski Instructors Association for developing the teaching system for cross country skiing and he was involved with setting up the original Eastern Professional Ski Touring Instructors organization (EPSTI). Additionally, Wilson had a hand in organizing the Northeast Ski Touring Operators Association, which became the National Ski Touring Operators Association, where he was the organization’s first president 1973-77. Today this North American organization is known as the Cross Country Ski Areas Association.
Wilson has a place in the St. Lawrence University Hall of Fame and in 2001 he was elected to the Lake Placid Hall of Fame. In 2014, Wilson was given the Founders Award by the Cross Country Ski Areas Association. During his life he also coached local high school cross country skiers as well as the US Biathlon Team.
Wilson, XC ski pioneer courtesy of Lake Placid News
Along the way, Wilson built a polo field at the Bark Eater Inn on a hillside farm in 1981. He also built a trail system in the Keene area while his stable grew to 85 horses. In 1977, Wilson co-wrote the book Complete Cross-Country Skiing & Ski Touring, and later in 1986 he helped to produce the coffee table book Cross Country Ski Inns of the Northeastern US and Canada. While this publication may have been one of the first to acknowledge cross country ski areas as a viable enterprise, interestingly more than two thirds of the 37 inns listed are not operating or are not in the cross country ski business anymore.
In his later years, I exchanged emails with Joe Pete and met with him to discuss his XC ski-snowshoe invention that he wanted to manufacture and market. He shared his invention drawings and strategies with me, but mostly it was laughing and remembering old times. During his many years at the Cross Country Ski Area Association meetings, he would stand up to share old fashioned stories that usually had a humorous punchline at the end. If cross country skiing had its own hall of fame and museum in the US, Joe Pete Wilson would be among the first to be honored.