Photograph courtesy of Berkshire East and Tino Specht
Jon Schaefer grew up in Charlemont, a community of nearly 1,300 that lies between Williamstown and Interstate 91. His family owns the local Berkshire East Mountain Resort, where he and his siblings, and most everyone in the hill-towns region, learned to ski. Some Schaefer family members became racers, traveling to compete on some of the world’s most daunting and magnificent alpine heights. “When you’re in a little town in New Zealand and it’s in the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific, but it’s full of fun outdoor activities and fun people in a community,” Schaefer says, “in a lot of ways it’s like what we grew up with in Western Massachusetts.”