LUDLOW, Vermont — Okemo Mountain Resort Assistant Lodging Director Matt Webb is the winner of the resort’s Name-Those-Trails Contest.

With work nearly complete on Okemo’s newest additions this year, resort management decided to turn to its staff for naming the two double-black-diamond trails at Jackson Gore. A contest was organized and the response was overwhelming. Among the hundreds of trail names submitted, White Lightning and Rolling Thunder were the winning entries.

Contest winner Matt Webb is assistant lodging director and has worked in the lodging department for more than 20 years. Matt has won dinner for two at Jackson Gore’s Coleman Brook Tavern.

The final two trails of the original Jackson Gore layout are slated to make their debut this winter. For years, skiers and riders traveling to the Jackson Gore summit on the Jackson Gore Express Quad have looked longingly upon the partially cleared trails located on skier’s right halfway down Quantum Leap.

“These are not your typical Okemo trails,” says Okemo Mountain Resort VP of Operations Barry Tucker. “Offering some of the steepest pitch at Jackson Gore, they have lots of character with natural outcroppings and contours to enhance the way these trails will ski.”

Looking a little like a scene from the History Channel’s Ax Men, the summertime trail clearing operations at Jackson Gore took on an innovative approach to some timber removal challenges. To avoid a wetlands area located downhill from the trail-clearing site, felled trees had to be hauled uphill with a winch, to a point where they could be loaded onto trucks and removed via Mountain Road.

White Lightning measures about 1,000 feet long and Rolling Thunder is about 2,600 feet long. The latter has a vertical drop of 850 feet. Together, the new trails will add approximately eight acres to Okemo’s skiable acreage total ??“ now 632 acres.

The addition of two new trails is just one of the many improvements being made by the popular south-central Vermont resort for this season. More information is available at okemo.com.