Riding the chairlift at Saddleback in Rangeley, skiers will sometimes turn to Michelle Cuva and ask, “Are you Jack’s mom?”

Her son, Jack Cuva, 9, is a familiar face at the Rangeley ski resort. He rides the lifts, skis the mountain and explains it all to anyone who asks.

Jack has the mountain’s trails memorized: “If you are looking at the trail map, Casablanca and Muleskinner are farthest to the left, off the Kennebago,” he’ll tell you. “Professor is a single and it’s off the Rangeley, Thrombosis is a double and it’s also off the Rangeley.”

Jack’s mother is Saddleback’s ski patrol director.

“He’s a little bit free-roaming but has rules,” Cuva said. “He has lots of rules, actually. But we let him have a little freedom on the mountain. He spends a lot of time wandering around in the trees,” she said, adding that though everyone knows him, he wears a GPS tracker. “At this point he’s a better skier than me — and my husband.”

Jack said he meets people while skiing and walking around the mountain and answers “quite a few questions,” including where to ski, where to eat and what the conditions are like.

Besides favorite ski trails, Cuva highly recommends the cake pops at Mountain shop, Katie Bakes Desserts.

General Manager Jim Quimby said Jack embodies the resort’s spirit.

“Jack is a great representation of what Saddleback really is. He has more personality than most adults and knows more people here than I do. We are very happy Jack and his family are at Saddleback,” Quimby said.

Jack has been around ski patrol since he was 3 or 4 when, during COVID-19, Saddleback reopened but day care had not. Cuva said Mountain Operations Director Jared Emerson suggested Jack spend his days on the mountain. Emerson’s children work there as well.

On Saturdays, Jack skis with a group of about 18 children who have been skiing together since age 5. He said he and his friend, Hazen Wilcox, of Bangor, whose grandmother works at the mountain, sometimes take on the double black diamonds Casablanca and Muleskinner.

Quimby said he remembers skiing in a similar pack when he was younger. “He is much better behaved than we were. We were a bunch of little heathens,” Quimby said.

Jack learned to ski at age 2, just a few months after learning to walk, his mother said.

“I am better at skiing than walking. I fell coming around the table just now,” Jack said.

Last year, in second grade, Jack built a paper mache Saddleback Mountain for a school project. Quimby helped him with the mountain’s history and even attended the presentation at his school.

“You should have seen the look on his face when he saw me,” Quimby said.

The family spends nearly every weekend at Saddleback, commuting from their home in Farmington to a nearby cabin.

At Saddleback on Feb. 7, Jack was eager to get on the chairlift but quietly posed for some photos and listened to Quimby, who had him laughing.

His mother stepped outside with a new ski patroller and asked Jack if he could show him the secret Rabbit Hole off Peachy’s Peril.

“This is how we test; if they survive skiing with Jack, they get to come back another year,” quipped his mother.

A ski patrol “sweep” is the final safety check at the end of the ski day to ensure no guests remain on the mountain. Jack has participated in sweeps with Emerson and Quimby. He has served as a back boarder during ski patrol training and learned CPR last year.

Cuva said some of her 64 patrollers start as young as 15. Jack assisted another ski patroller when two boys were injured falling off the T-bar.

For Jack, who already knows the trails, the people, and the work that keeps the mountain running, the path is already cut.

“If I could become a ski patroller right now I bet I would pass all the tests,” he said.