Crested Butte Magazine - Winter 2017-18

Winter 2017-2018 Complimentary

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’17-’18 CONTENTS

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FEATURES SHORTIES

40 ABCs, 123s, tiny skis by Erin English

Little Red Schoolhouse’s annual ski program preps the next generation of wee shredders.

10

Leaping into the Trout Tank

by Sandy Fails The ICELab at Western State Colorado University helps launch innovative products like Mark and Ali Drucker’s gourmet instant coffee.

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Singing of “ghosts and energies”

by George Sibley With support from the Crested Butte Creative District, Sophia Chudacoff writes modern folk songs that “howl to history to come show itself.”

16

Literature for the littles

by Arvin Ramgoolam Crested Butte inspired these three charming children’s books.

20

Fifty years of Flauschink follies

by George Sibley Because the ski season should end with a bang…and a polka.

22

A Grand finale

by Kristy Acuff Dan McElroy, 71, has skied the Grand Traverse with all five of his children, one of his grandkids, and two new knees.

26

Kids in the kitchen

by Cassie Pence Through Kids Cook!, young chefs learn to prepare food and make healthy lifestyle choices.

30

United we skate

by Lauren Kugler Even competitive athletes fare better when they work together, a lesson taught by our valley’s thriving hockey culture.

32

Romp stomps it

by David J. Rothman How local custom-ski entrepreneurs Caleb and Morgan Weinberg became unexpected defense contractors.

ESSAYS

36

By the light of the moon

by Sandy Fails With yurt parties, sleighride dinners and fullmoon celebrations, you can ski, snowshoe or sled to your next adventure, even on a crisp winter night.

122 The gift by Reed Meredith

47 A big-thinking little town by Sandra Cortner

In 1973, 50 of the 89 residents living near the ski area “seized control of their own destiny” by incorporating a new town called Mt. Crested Butte.

54 Finding the focus by Dawne Belloise

Photographer Dusty Demerson tells stories with light, shadow, color and contrast.

60 Two by two by Beth Buehler

Six young Crested Buttians share the funny, annoying and sentimental sides of being twins.

70 The day the train arrived by Brian Levine

November 21, 1881: a cold, snowy and momentous day in Crested Butte, as it might have been recalled by 19th-century photographer Charles F. Blacklidge.

78 Crested Butte’s Big Chill by Bonnie Chlipala

How an informal Facebook invitation turned into a reunion for the ages.

90 Local libations by Dawne Belloise

Small-batch, Crested Butte-crafted whiskey, vodka, rum and beer make imbibing more interesting.

96 Growing up Buttian by Shelley Read

The 75 best (and most gnarly) things about being a kid in Crested Butte.

103 Blood sausage

Excerpted from The Spaghetti Gang, a Crested Butte memoir by Richard Guerrieri, 86, with his daughter Cara Guerrieri.

110 Protecting our winters by Cassie Pence

Raynor Czerwinski

As researchers study climate-shift impacts in our fragile alpine backyard, our communities are taking action. You can, too.

119 Life, land, transformation by Cosmo Langsfeld

The perpetual renewal—and the timelessness—of living in the mountains.

What could mean more to the parents of a Crested Butte teen?

84 Photo gallery | 124 Calendar 129 Lodging | 131 Dining | 136 Photo finish

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Vol. XXXIX, No. 2 Published semi-annually by Crested Butte Publishing & Creative PUBLISHERS Steve Mabry & Chris Hanna EDITOR Sandy Fails ADVERTISING DIRECTOR MJ Vosburg DESIGN Chris Hanna PRODUCTION Keitha Kostyk WRITERS Kristy Acuff Dawne Belloise Beth Buehler Bonnie Chlipala Sandra Cortner Erin English Sandy Fails Cara Guerrieri Lauren Kugler Cosmo Langsfeld Brian Levine Reed Meredith Cassie Pence Arvin Ramgoolam Shelley Read David Rothman George Sibley PHOTOGRAPHERS Dawne Belloise Nathan Bilow Trent Bona Sandra Cortner Raynor Czerwinski Dusty Demerson Petar Dopchev Mark Ewing Xavier Fané Suzette Gainous John Holder J.C. Leacock Lydia Stern COVER PHOTO Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s Pond Skim

By Petar Dopchev ONLINE crestedbuttemagazine.com E-MAIL sandyfails56@gmail.com ADVERTISING 970-349-6211 mj@crestedbuttemagazine.com Copyright 2017, Crested Butte Publishing. No reproduction of contents without authorization by Crested Butte Publishing & Creative.

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Editor’s note

Putting away childish things…or maybe not

I remember long ago collapsing on the couch in the stillness that fell over the house when my toddler son napped.

Now my friends describe a similar happy exhaustion that follows the whirlwind visit of a grandkid. Yes, it’s wild and wondrous to be a child, when every moment is an exploration, a burst of playing, learning and growing.

Of course we develop filters, routines and blinders as adults. We have deadlines and responsibilities; who can dash around willy-nilly, being amazed by everyday minutia and rebooting with naps every few hours?

But sometimes we go overboard with this “grownup” thing. In seeking stability, we can cement ourselves into beliefs and behaviors that don’t evolve even when life gives us new information. With our decades of practice, patterns of thinking start to feel automatic and true, even though we made them up, sometimes out of pain or fear. We begin to identify ourselves with labels and stories until they become “who we are” – inescapable even when they no longer fit.

That’s where the child becomes the master. Children remind us to see with fresh eyes, finding equal delight in flashlights, empty boxes and mud puddles. The very young can reinvent themselves and their behaviors in a flash.

For two months after my son’s third birthday, he turned into a brat, a purveyor of tantrums, defiance and general ill temper. Then one day that persona vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

Somewhere inside he’d noted he wasn’t getting great return on his efforts, so he reverted back to his agreeable self.

Lydia Stern

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Editor’s note

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“Risk” isn’t a useful concept to a youngster. When a baby takes her first steps and then plops down on her diapered bottom, she celebrates the steps instead of judging the fall. If a toddler tries unsuccessfully to start the car by jamming a graham cracker into the ignition, it’s not a failure to him but an experiment completed.

Take away an infant’s rattle and the howls commence… for a few seconds until a spoon catches her fancy. Why cling to one thing when the world is an endless source of amazement and discovery?

Crested Butte is famous for nurturing our “inner child.” Nature serves up constant marvels – alpenglow, snowflakes, starry nights – to keep us practiced in the art of wonderment. The town specializes in playfulness, with ample opportunity to ski in a banana suit or boogie in gold-lamé bellbottoms. We encourage each other to try new things: sketching, aerial dance, Socrates Café philosophical ponderings. Even as our community grows more economically diverse, we value experiences (which tend to keep us adaptable and open) over materialism (which tends to make us closed and protective).

But sometimes we forget to bring the lessons of childhood into more “serious” contexts. As always, our community is changing in size and makeup, with impacts to nature and the social order. We have questions to ponder: How do we afford to build lives here as prices rise faster than incomes? How do we share our town and wild backyard while also protecting them?

How can we celebrate our commonalities and avoid the socioeconomic “classism” that can divide a community?

Taking some cues from our youngest teachers, may we ask our questions and live our lives with openness instead of dread. May we be willing to examine outdated beliefs and behaviors, to reinvent ourselves if we find some better fits, to try on new ideas with more curiosity than fear of failure.

May we continue to foster a place of safety and trust, awe and playfulness. May our lives be shaped less by outside expectations and insecurities than by wonder and a drive to explore.

This issue of the Crested Butte Magazine is full of kid stuff, from wee skiers to teenage twins. The subject matter brings color, energy and freshness to the pages – the same treasures our children bring to our lives. With that in mind, I’d like to dedicate this issue to the kids around us – and to the kid in each of us. —Sandy Fails, editor

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Leaping into

By Sandy Fails

the Trout Tank

Concentrating “social capital” at the ICELab.

The new ICELab at Western helps startups, like coffee entrepreneurs Mark and Ali Drucker, launch their products to a thirsty world.

Two ideas came together last summer that will 1) help you savor an easy cup of specialty-grade coffee on your next camping trip, and 2) fan the entrepreneurial fires in western Colorado.

First, about that cuppa. Mark and Ali Drucker, owners of Crested Butte’s First Ascent Coffee, greeted the day on a recent backpacking trip by bemoaning the sad state of instant coffee. So they bought a small freeze dryer and created their own gourmet soluble coffee powder, using their expertise in finding and roasting specialty coffee bean varietals. Their first tasters loved it. The Druckers wondered if their product could find a broader market beyond Crested Butte.

Consumers had been “trained” to assume instant coffee was both cheap and bad. Would they pay more for healthy, gourmet, portable coffee?

They found people to help them answer that question at the new ICELab at Western, a center designed to help business startups. In the remodeled Escalante Hall at Western State Colorado University, the ICELab (Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship) houses a café/ bar, co-working and gathering spaces, Small Business Development Center, new-business accelerator program and (soon) new-idea 10

Dave Kozlowski

incubator. The center opened in spring 2017, using a $650,000 Economic Development Administration grant.

Last summer, ICELab chose First Ascent as one of five businesses for its debut accelerator “cohort,” aimed a helping those startups prepare to take the next step toward “scaling” their endeavors.

The rigorous 12-week program included classes and workshops, mentoring, and group and individual consultations with experts in various aspects of business: e.g. market analysis, branding, manufacturing, finance, management and marketing strategies.

The entrepreneurs, who received a stipend to participate, were selected for the uniqueness/quality of their products and the potential to expand, employ others at a decent wage and contribute to the economic development of their communities. Three came from the Gunnison Valley and two from Delta County, representing ideas as diverse as a shared commercial kitchen, innovative software and a product for the fire industry.

“Cohort Uno” culminated with a November 6 “Trout Tank” (a friendlier take on the “Shark Tank” concept), a pitch session before 200 potential customers, investors and community members.

“We hope to ignite some of the dormant capital in our communities,” said Delaney Keating, who oversees the accelerator program. “We’re on the cusp of an important time. How are people going to make a living here and pay their employees a living wage? We need hubs for economic development in rural areas, and we want to be one of those.”

Delaney found a willing pool of successful experts among the

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valley’s residents and homeowners, people “who just love business and have incredible backgrounds. ICELab is like a new sandbox for them to play in, to share what they love.”

Delaney will continue to track and support the entrepreneurs of Cohort Uno while refining the accelerator program for 2018. Meanwhile, ICELab manager Dan Marshal hopes the center’s co-working and meeting spaces will become epicenters of “social capital,” where creative people will interact, rolling out new ideas and opportunities.

THE DRUCKERS’ STORY Many people know Mark and Ali Drucker from Crested Butte’s Majestic Theatre, which they opened in 2006. Mark started home roasting coffee as a hobby, enjoying the sampling of beans and the craft of roasting them to bring out particular attributes. In 2014 the Druckers partnered with Mountain Oven Organic Bakery to open The Guild Cafe on Elk Avenue, offering food and coffee.

Though the endeavor grew nicely, Mark pointed out, “Doing business in Crested Butte is challenging: the high costs, seasonal fluctuations, and the employee crisis (linked to the housing crisis). It’s not so handy to rely on local tourism and retail. We started to think about selling our product outside the valley.”

They started making instant coffee in small batches, using their custom-roasted, high-grade beans to brew a concentrate, almost like espresso. The freeze dryer then 12

Mark and Ali Drucker: introducing an antidote to “bad, cheap instant coffee.”

removed the moisture and left a soluble powder, which they hand-packaged and sold to test the market. “The feedback was tremendous,” Mark said. “People taste it and are blown away that it’s instant.”

The Druckers then pondered their possible target markets: outdoorspeople like backpackers, cyclists and sailors who want a convenient, light, no-waste way to enjoy good coffee? Or the travel industry, whose consumers might be willing to spend more money? The ICELab accelerator helped them address such questions. “It’s not just about getting capital; it’s really learning the whole process,” Mark said.

Though the Druckers are experienced with retail/service endeavors, expanding to a manufacturing business involves very different operations, financial considerations, and income and outflow of money, he said. Pricing becomes a critical element, requiring more quantitative analysis.

They would like to expand to largerscale production, which would lower the per-unit cost and customer pricing. “But we want to scale smartly, not go too big too fast,” Mark said. They plan to sell their coffee first through smaller retailers in Colorado, then expand “naturally.”

“Getting capital isn’t the sole reason we’re part of this program,” Mark said in October. “However it goes with the Trout Tank, it’s great exposure and a great learning experience. We’ve made valuable contacts, and being in an environment that forces you to focus on a startup is of tremendous value.”

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Singing of

By George Sibley

“ghosts and energies”

Mark Ewing

With support from the Crested Butte Creative District, Sophia Chudacoff writes modern folk songs that “howl to history to come show itself.”

After years of visiting a sister and friends here, songwriter Sophia Chudacoff moved to the valley a little over a year ago – and became one of the first local “creatives” to receive modest funding through the Crested Butte Creative District. Her goal: to write “modern folk songs” based on “the potent stories of humans, creatures, ghosts and energies existing in this unique environment.”

Thanks to the Creative District, Sophia said, “I can pay myself nine bucks an hour one afternoon every week to just focus on songwriting.”

The grant requires some show and tell (or sing), which began last December in conjunction with a solstice celebration. The afternoon of songs, dance, history presentations, readings and other expressions of “Crested Butte’s history and ecology” was meant to prime the pump for more stories about the town, past and present.

Sophia brought together diverse participants: from other musicians 14

like Lizzie Plotkin – seemingly everywhere in valley music today – to big-booted dancers to venerable historian Duane Vandenbusche.

Sophia has since performed at other venues in the valley, including a First Friday concert at the Gunnison Arts Center, where she and Lizzie aired some songs new since the December event. In a year or two or ten, perhaps her efforts will link up with those of other local creatives in a larger musical articulation of the soul of the headwaters region.

“Modern folk music” may sound like an oxymoron. But Sophia believes that music reveals more of the emotional content of a situation or story than just the historical rendering can, and she seeks that in her music. She said, “Original modern songs based on folk content can be a vehicle to unearth the past, as a culturally relevant piece to how we experience Crested Butte today.” She thought on that for a moment, then made it into poetry. “Maybe these songs are calling up the past, like coyotes drawing dogs out to their pack? The past has a life of its own, and I wonder if songs are just one way of howling to history to come show itself.”

We hear that in a song called “The Tailings,” which links the physical residue we still see from mining ventures with a sense that the miners and their lives and places were also “residue” to the systems that created the mines. The feeling probably resonates with many modern workers today.

Water was pure, water was clean Now the tailings are clogging up the stream Oh the tailings Some got rich, most got poor Now the tailings are knocking down the door Oh the tailings Jimmy died in the Jokerville Mine Hearts die hard and they harden with time Oh the tailings Work all day for a little pay And it’s got no end ‘cause you got no say You don’t know why and you don’t know how You got to work for a man who ain’t even around Oh the tailings Chorus: We’re gonna reach the end The end of this tale We know how the tale ends The tale ends with tailings

Sophia has fit easily into the collective of area artists who work individually and together across disciplines, in everchanging configurations that sometimes crystallize into performance groups.

Sophia shares a dance background with her sister Sasha, who also lives in Crested Butte. They both want to incorporate that into Sophia’s music, with dance forms from places as remote as Africa or Japan to fit with the stories she distills for her emotive music. She also works with Marcie Telander, Vinotok founder and recognized “wise old woman” of the valley.

Marcie gave her the story of Anna Polanka, a strong woman from the valley’s mining era who lost two husbands to the mines and ended up living alone in Cement Creek. That led to “The Horse Song – For Anna,” a song that unbinds its subject from history to a more mythic status for strong women in a man’s world: I want to ride across the west Wrapping my arms around a horse’s neck I want to move so fast Knowing this moment won’t last I want to find a song that runs Across the plains into the sun I want to sing it sweet and soft But strong enough to carry both of us Give it all that I can Feeling my freedom hand in hand Hear our voices untamed And never pull back on the reins Never pull back on the reins.

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Literature

By Arvin Ramgoolam

for the littles

Fabulous Franko’s artistic mastermind Kate Seeley.

Photos by Mark Ewing

Crested Butte inspired these three charming children’s books.

My favorite part of the bookshop is the kids’ section. Even before having children myself, I could hardly resist the bright covers, amazing interior art and simple narrative yet complicated stories contained within. So I’m delighted that Crested Butte has inspired three incredible children’s titles.

New to the shelf this year is Stranger to the Woods by longtime Crested Butte environmental advocate Sue Navy and local illustrator Suzanne Pierson. Stranger to the Woods, in which a dog named Run Around and his pals help each other through challenging circumstances, was written by Sue in 1960, then fully realized into a book in 2017. With Suzanne Pierson, Sue found the perfect partner to help illustrate a story that has stayed with her since she was 11 years old. The book tells a fun story for families to enjoy, and it also benefits the 40-year-old High Country Conservation Advocates (HCCA).

Suzanne considered it “an honor” to work on the book. “It was great snooping inside her imagination to watercolor my versions of Run Around, the happy little pup, and his forest friends. Above all, I knew the book would be raising funds for HCCA to preserve and protect why we love living here.”

Since Sue dreamed up the story in sixth grade, she always had some thought of seeing it published, but she couldn’t have imagined it coming to fruition until some “amazing synchronicity happened” 16

Goodnight Crested Butte author Danica Ramgoolam and illustrator Brent Laney.

this year. After Suzanne became HCCA’s honored Red Lady in 2016, Sue knew she’d be the perfect person to finish the illustrations for the story. Next came some prodding and help from her local bookstore owner (me) and design help from HCCA’s outreach coordinator, Mel Yemma. Thus the book turned from a young girl’s scribble to a book ready to be given to other young girls and boys who dream of making the world a better place. Copies of the book are available via the HCCA website.

Sue is surprised by her new role as a Crested Butte author. “It

Writer Sue Navy and artist Suzanne Pierson collaborated on Stranger to the Woods.

was nice to have something new and different to bring the world after forty years of HCCA,” she said.

Created several years ago and still a favorite is Fabulous Franko and His Fabulous Toys, by Jane Matlock and local illustrator Kate Seeley. Whimsical and vibrant, Franko traverses a world that is inspired by Crested Butte. Artist Kate Seeley shared with me some of the process that led to the creation of the book, starting with her overseas connection with Australian writer Jane Matlock in 2006.

“I could picture how I could draw it and envision what Franko did,” Kate explained. “Crested Butte is such an escapist place, and I was a major escapist.”

Kate has been surprised at the book’s impact on children and families. Once she was unable to sign a copy of the book because the young girl it belonged to refused to let it go. Another time, a parent

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told her they took the book on every trip because there was always something to find in its beautifully and lovingly illustrated pages. Some of those illustrations took more than 36 hours to create.

Fabulous Franko explores a world of challenges in planes, tanks and rockets of his own engineering, a lesson to children that the solutions to our problems may be at our own fingertips. Prints of these pages are available in Kate’s mobile studio, a whimsical place that feels like it was pieced together by Franko himself.

Last is my wife’s book, Goodnight Crested Butte. Written by Danica Ramgoolam and illustrated by local artist Brent Laney, the book is an ode to Danica’s hometown and a love letter to our twin girls, Anya and Sahira. Goodnight Crested Butte beautifully illustrates all the reasons we choose to visit and live in the gorgeous Gunnison Valley.

Brent describes his source of inspiration as Crested Butte and its people. “I wanted to show my experiences and love for it through the paintings.”

Danica, co-owner of Townie Books, saw the need for a book that focused deeply on the look and feel of Crested Butte. “I wanted something for my own family that I could also share with all the other families that visit Crested Butte. Something that could be a part of their memories. I wanted to pass along my love of the place where I grew up to my twin girls and others who grew up here with me and have since started families elsewhere.”

On our chilly winter nights, snuggling up with a child who loves books and Crested Butte might be the prescription for staying warm while creating lifelong memories.

Crested Butte Magazine book reviewer Arvin Ramgoolam owns Townie Books and reads to his twin toddlers, who like books almost as much as he does.

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Fifty years of

By George Sibley

Flauschink follies

Doing the chicken dance at the Coronation Ball.

Lydia Stern

The Royal Has-Beens.

Because the ski season should end with a bang…and a polka.

Spring comes slow and late, if at all, to Crested Butte, but for half a century Buttians have been trying to coax it along with Flauschink, our end-of-winter, bring-on-spring festival.

That’s right: this coming April, Crested Butte will celebrate its 50th Flauschink, a town event that is primarily by, for and of its inhabitants; anyone else is welcome, but no extra effort is expended to import a crowd.

As a “foundered” of the festival, I confess to surprise that it has continued this long; we weren’t even sure it was going to come off in 1969. The origin was inauspicious. It was a slow night in the Grubstake Restaurant in early February with the usual suspects assembled, three of whom ended up at the same table: Dr. Art Norris, a business professor at Western State College but better known locally as the silent partner in Bea Norris’s Fondue House; Chuck Wirtz, bartender and man about town all winter and commercial fisherman off Alaska all summer; and yours truly, editor of the Crested Butte Chronicle and part-time ski patrolman.

We were doing what sensitive and talented CB creatives are usually doing around midnight in February: drinking and complaining. I got off on something that had bothered me about the previous two winters: the fact that at the end of the ski season, it all – just ended. “Not with a bang, but a whimper,” as the poet put it – and not even much of a whimper. The lifts just stopped running, and everybody left for someplace warmer. This made the whole 20

Paula Dietrich

business just – business. It seemed to me we were doing much more than just “doing business.” Every fall we assembled all the moving parts for an adventure to which we invited the world: the opportunity for thousands – well, hundreds in those years – to come to a rugged piece of Rocky Mountain terrain, in the most forbidding season of the year, to have a good time risking life and limb. And under the creative influence of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, we haphazardly but successfully put together the whole infrastructure for this: housing the adventurers, feeding them, equipping them, teaching them, trying to take care of them, and (the patrolman sensibility) hauling them surreptitiously off the mountain to proper caregivers when it went badly for them. Pulling all this off deserved a bang-up ending, not just an end-of-business whimper!

So, fueled with “Coorage,” the three of us pledged that night to put together a proper ending for the winter, and had another Coorage to seal the deal. The festival name emerged that very evening, as if by destiny: from the nexus of our table’s location (near the bathrooms) and the idea of winter going “down the drain” and Dr. Norris’s vague

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Photo : Jeremy Armstrong

recollection of a Germanic carnival called Fasching, which originally had something to do with driving out winter. The name was handed to us as if on a silver salver – Flauschink.

It actually came together that year, 1969, with King Whitey Sporcich and Queen Cathy Wertz reigning as the town celebrated itself with numerous events and a great dance at Starika’s. And it happened again the next year – and just hasn’t stopped. When the original “foundereds” jumped ship, others came along to carry it on, some of them Has-Beens (former royalty). Among the stalwarts: Denis Hall, “Texas Jane” Dunbar, Marlene Stajduhar, “Diner” Theaker, Terry Vaughn, LaDonna Largo, Dana Bradley, Steve Snyder and Corky Racek, who has maintained a huge photo archive of the celebration.

Sherrie Stupple Vandervoort, the 1988 queen, joined the Royal Committee in 1989 as a new Has-Been, and she has since been the principal co-organizer, first with her high school friend Michelle “Lipstick” English and now with Paula Dietrich. For the past quarter-century, Sherrie has written poems to announce the new royalty; this year as part of the 50th celebration, she will publish all those poems along with some other Flauschink memories.

Flauschink carries forward the Old Country roots of Crested Butte in its music, with natives the Mraule Brothers and then Chris Rouse playing the polkas and waltzes in the early years. For most of the past quartercentury, local Air Force retiree Pete Dunda and his accordion band have kept the music alive.

Held the last week of the ski season, Flauschink includes an evening of history, a royal ski run with the outgoing Flauschink king and queen, Coronation Ball for the (secret) incoming king and queen, parade and dinner/promenade to honor the new royalty (and merry-making Has-Beens) and on-slope social time on the ski area’s closing day.

The main funding for the celebration has always been the sale of Flauschink buttons – a full collection gracing a Flauschink exhibit in the Mountain Heritage Museum.

Surplus funds above expenses have provided scholarships for local youth, medical help for locals, and contributions to other local celebrations like the Memorial Day dance.

But the purpose of the celebration is raising fun, not funds. As Sherrie Vandervoort said, “It’s mainly just a great big celebration of life and the town we all adore. When it’s time to flush the winter, it’s time! Roll out the barrel!”

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21

A Grand

By Kristy Acuff

finale

Traverse teammates Dan McElroy and grandson Daniel with their family.

Lydia Stern

Dan McElroy, 71, has skied the Grand Traverse with all five of his children, one of his grandkids, and two new knees.

At age 71, Dan McElroy was by far the oldest competitor at the 2017 Gore-Tex Grand Traverse. It was his seventh time to finish the grueling backcountry ski race, always with a family member as his teammate. This year he made the 40-mile nighttime trek from Crested Butte to Aspen with two new knees and his 21-year-old grandson Daniel.

The Traverse is no small feat for skiers half McElroy’s age. Starting at midnight, racers ski uphill 7,000 vertical feet to Star Pass and then Taylor Pass before descending into Aspen. They travel in pairs through avalanche terrain and rugged backcountry, carrying enough food and supplies to sustain themselves for 24 hours.

The race attracts professional athletes from across the West.

Winning teams can complete the race in less than seven hours, but most teams finish in around 12 hours, battling the elements and the dead cold of the March night at 12,000 feet elevation. The race began in 1998 with just under 50 competitors, but last year’s event attracted 200 skiers.

“I’ve raced with every one of my five kids as my partners, a few of them more than once. After last year, I can say that I’ve raced with one of my 15 grandchildren as well,” McElroy said.

In 2017, the next oldest racer after McElroy was more than a decade younger, yet McElroy didn’t win his age group for the race.

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“Race organizers combine the ages of a team’s two participants, and because I was with my grandson, our combined age was not the oldest,” he explained.

The 2017 Traverse came after an 11-year hiatus for McElroy; the last time he’d raced was in 2008 with his daughter. He thought he’d hung up his racing skis for good until an unexpected call from his grandson, who was adamant about McElroy entering the race with him.

“He called me and said, ‘We’re doing the Grand Traverse this year.’ And I said, ‘No, we’re not.’ But he persisted, and finally I gave in,” McElroy said. “I just got new knees last year, so I figured what the heck. Why not see how it goes on my new knees?”

The first of many challenges for the grandfather-grandson team was finding gear large enough to fit the young man’s 6’7”, 210-pound frame.

“We couldn’t find alpine touring boots large enough for Daniel’s size-15 foot!” McElroy recalled. This forced the team to use more traditional Nordic boots and skis, which put them at a disadvantage because of the boilerplate crust on the high mountain passes. Lacking

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the metal edges of alpine touring skis, their Nordic skis were no match for the icy, windscoured slopes.

“Daniel and I started out across Star Pass, and it was some of the worst snow conditions I’ve ever encountered,” McElroy said. “The weather was warm and not windy, but the snowpack had been hammered by wind the week before, and a bulletproof crust stretched across the pass for 30 yards.”

To traverse such a slope, skiers must dig in their ski edges and push themselves across. Just ten feet after he stepped onto the slick surface, Daniel’s skis slid out from under him, and he took a harrowing slide down the barren slope for a couple hundred yards.

“Poor Daniel had to hike back up and do it all over again,” McElroy said.

Other delays faced the team en route to Aspen. McElroy’s legs started to fade just past the Barnard Hut, and he was forced to get a tow from his willing grandson. Daniel, who arrived in Crested Butte from Alaska just two days before the race, had no trouble with the endurance required for the race.

According to McElroy, “Daniel could have gone a lot faster. He got a taste of the race with me, and I think he might come back for another.”

Not only did Daniel pull his grandfather for a good distance; he also carried the bulk of the required equipment. When asked if he looked out for his grandson during the race, McElroy answered, “Daniel carried most of the heavy gear, and, if anything, he was looking out for me. I was the more experienced racer, sure, but he’s a young college athlete at the peak of his conditioning.”

By the time the two reached the top of Aspen Mountain, they’d been racing for 15 hours. What should have been an easy downhill ski on groomed slopes was anything but. Standing at the top of the ski run, the two saw nothing but a minefield of enormous re-frozen slush bumps. It took them nearly two hours to ski to the finish, and McElroy admitted his legs were “nonexistent”’ at that point.

“I would make one turn and fall, another turn and fall, hitting these enormous slush bumps on skinny Nordic skis. It was agonizing, but we got there eventually.” They crossed the finish line after an arduous 16 hours and 20 minutes.

When asked if he plans to do the Traverse with another grandchild, McElroy didn’t hesitate. “I’m finished. That is a young man’s sport.”

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Kids in

By Cassie Pence

the kitchen

Through Kids Cook!, young chefs learn to prepare food and make healthy lifestyle choices.

Asher Arell, a sixth grader at Crested Butte Community School, cooks for himself several times a week using knife skills, safety procedures and recipes he learned at Kids Cook!, an after-school culinary class taught by Mountain Roots. He might not always make dolmas (stuffed grape leaves) or the classic Indian dish saag paneer – two of his favorites from the course – but he’s learning to feed himself using healthy, whole foods.

“Cooking is a central skill for life, and I love being in the kitchen. I love my peers that are working with me. It’s fun to be in that kitchen environment and create something,” Asher said.

“Life skills” is a central theme for Kids Cook!, which is part of Mountain Roots’ Farm to School program. A nonprofit based in the Gunnison Valley, Mountain Roots works to create a sustainable local foodshed through education, food production and food security programs.

In partnership with the Gunnison School District, Kids Cook!

26

Lydia Stern

teaches young chefs different recipes each week using food grown in the Crested Butte and Gunnison school gardens and the farmers’ markets. In the eight two-hour sessions, the students also learn knife and safety skills, shopping and nutrition basics and tips for making healthy lifestyle choices.

“We’re teaching kids where their food comes from and how food and health are interrelated. We’re teaching them that what you

choose to put in your body impacts how you feel,” said Luisa Naughton, a certified holistic chef who volunteers for Kids Cook!, creating the standards and lesson plans for the course. “We talk about processed foods versus whole foods. I ask them to think about the difference between opening a bag for food and eating an apple that doesn’t have an ingredient list.”

Last fall’s class was all about harvest.

Naughton focused on one ingredient, like spinach or kale, and taught the new chefs three ways to prepare it, with different cooking methods and flavor profiles.

“The kids learned that they liked at least one of the ways,” Naughton said. She noted that many parents arrived at the end of each class and got shocked looks on their faces watching their youngsters devour eggs or tomato soup “because they didn’t think their kids liked those foods.”

Even more shocking for parents was watching their children begin to cook for them.

“I’ve made biscuits in the morning and I’ve also made Asian peanut noodles for my family,” said fifth grader Elise Hanna. “I like the independence of it.

You aren’t relying on someone to make you food if you’re hungry. You can make yourself food.”

Naughton noted that in our fastpaced lives, we’re forgetting the art of cooking and the importance of spending time in the kitchen with whole foods.

“This skill carries us through life,” she said. “For kids it’s empowering. The kitchen can seem daunting if you’ve never picked up a knife, but once you learn some basics, and especially if you start young, you feel comfortable in the kitchen, which leads you on a path to healthier choices and confidence.”

With youngsters in the kitchen, mistakes are bound to happen. But that’s part of the learning process, Naughton said — and part of the fun. Elise and Asher agreed that one of the funniest moments in class was when a boy thought a jar of bacon grease was vanilla pudding the class had just made. He took a big spoonful and “almost threw up,” Asher said. But the mistake quickly turned into one of the students’ favorite memories.

For more information, visit mountainrootsfoodproject.org or email Tracy Borden at tracy@mountainrootsfoodproject. org.

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United we

By Lauren Kugler

skate

Photos Lydia Stern

Even competitive athletes fare better when they work together, a lesson taught by our valley’s thriving hockey culture.

Back in December 1997, I was halfway through eighth grade in the new Crested Butte Community School. A good friend wanted to play hockey but didn’t want to be the only girl on the team (yes, there was just one team for both girls and boys), so I joined her.

Crested Butte’s ice rink had no roof then, and Gunnison didn’t yet have an indoor facility. Our season lasted only as long as the days were short and cold, mid-December to early February if we were lucky. Practices and games were cancelled whenever fast-falling snow made the ice un-skateable.

Throughout the mid-nineties, hockey enthusiasts at either end of the Gunnison Valley scraped together very basic youth and adult programs on these outdoor, uncovered rinks. People bought used 30

skates and equipment from family friends. They took turns driving kids to tournaments. They got used to games being cancelled when too much snow covered the ice. The programs squeaked by at both ends of the valley, powered by many hours of volunteer time and passion for the sport.

Fast-forward twenty years. Local hockey camps now take place in October on indoor ice. During the 2016-2017 season, 194 kids, ages 4-18, played hockey in the Gunnison Valley. More than 200 adults participated on multiple teams in various leagues. In a community full of individuals who love adrenaline, competitive sport and pushing themselves to physical limits…hockey’s a no-brainer.

The transition to thriving hockey culture happened because competitors became collaborators. A few years ago, discussions between hockey fans in Crested Butte and Gunnison made it clear that local hockey programming would be much more efficient and effective with a unified, valley-wide effort. In a large, diverse valley where people too often think, “But we’re so different,” local hockey stood up to the plate…or puck.

In 2014, the Gunnison Valley came together to create the West Elk Hockey Association (WEHA), forming a nonprofit to oversee programming previously managed by the respective municipalities.

Those early conversations weren’t always easy. The Gunnison program was bigger and had more money. There were a lot of details to iron out. Who would serve on the board? How would practices work? But as hockey star Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the

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shots you don’t take.” So Gunnison Valley hockey players, parents and fans took a shot.

WEHA Director Wendy Buckhanan has been playing hockey for 13 years, and her kids have been playing for eight.

“Bringing the valley together is absolutely beneficial,” Buckhanan said. “We have a bigger pool to field teams. My kids feel that playing with Crested Butte kids just doubled their friends. They love it. My husband and I have really enjoyed getting to know the Crested Butte families.”

A bigger pool means athletes get more ice time at an appropriate skill level.

GJ Santelli, long-time coach, parent and player, explained, “Think of it like a high school sport with varsity and junior varsity.

If you don’t have enough kids to field a JV team, there are often athletes who hardly get to play, or when they do, the skill level is way over their heads. As our kids work on improving, they can play with the team best-suited to their individual skill level.”

Since Gunnison built an indoor rink in 2008, hockey participation has exploded.

With only one indoor rink in the valley, Crested Butte and Gunnison hockey players got to know each other. Leagues formed, and people from all walks of life tried their hand at the game.

These one-on-one relationships create a solid foundation for WEHA, Santelli noted; getting to know each other is the best step toward getting along. When discussion started about merging all local hockey, youth and adult, under one strong nonprofit organization, “it was a nonissue,” said Santelli. “There were a few kinks to work out, but the hard work was done.”

Similar to Mountain Roots Food Project and the Community Foundation of the Gunnison Valley, local hockey fans saw the benefit of embracing the “One Valley” concept. People from both ends of the county serve on WEHA’s board of directors, and their meetings switch between Gunnison and Crested Butte each month.

Youth practices split the difference. A typical schedule is Monday and Tuesday practice in Gunnison, Wednesday practice in Crested Butte, and weekends often occupied by travel, tournaments and games.

High school players act as mentors and role models for the younger kids, with no consideration of who lives where. On the rink and in the locker room, they share one valley and a love for the game.

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Romp

By David J. Rothman

stomps it

Romp’s Morgan and Caleb Weinberg: making skis for the Army’s Tenth Special Forces Group A.

Trent Bona

How local custom-ski entrepreneurs Caleb and Morgan Weinberg became unexpected defense contractors.

When brothers Caleb and Morgan Weinberg founded Romp Skis in Crested Butte in 2010, they probably didn’t dream that just a few years later they’d be supplying hundreds of boards for the U.S. military, serving their country and boosting their bottom line for the foreseeable future.

In 2010 the Weinberg brothers were working construction. They didn’t have a house to build that winter, so they were doing something they both do well: skiing a lot.

When Caleb and Morgan were growing up in Bath, New Hampshire, and ripping Cannon Mountain, their contractor father had a woodshop in their home, and the boys learned their way around it. In that winter of 2010, between making turns, Morgan read online about ski technology and then – using their construction tools – they built eight pairs of skis in their garage, for fun.

They gave their skis to friends to try out, and, this being Crested Butte, those friends were pretty strong skiers. “The skis were really ugly and they fell apart, but people loved them,” Caleb said.

The Weinbergs took that encouragement and founded Romp Skis that spring. “We liked the name because the best definition we found was ‘to play boisterously,’” said Caleb. He laughed. “It took a year before we had a product to sell. There’s a big difference between an art project in a garage and a business.”

Romp slowly grew, but every business needs a little luck, and in 2013, Romp got lucky. Five retired members of the Tenth 32

Special Forces Group A (for Airborne) were looking to make a commemorative ski, one of them found Romp on a vacation to Crested Butte, and he asked the Weinbergs to create a ski with a custom graphic. The brothers did the commemorative design, and the sponsors made the skis available to anyone who was current or retired from the Tenth. So far, Romp has produced more than 50 pairs of these boards.

Then, in fall of 2014, when Tenth Group was ready to replace their regular skis, the Army put the contract out to bid. “One of the guys had been skiing on our skis,” Caleb said. “He notified us that they were testing skis, so we sent a pair of skis and they gave us the specs they were looking for.”

The Weinbergs bring a hands-on ethic to all their work, and they took the opportunity seriously. Instead of sending existing skis that were similar to the specs, they actually built a new, customized ski.

“We understood that most skis are designed for enjoyment, but these had to be designed as a tool, so that’s what we did,” Caleb said. The ski had to be light, like a touring ski, but it also had to be able to bear a lot of weight. “Most of these guys are pretty big and they carry a lot of

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gear. So basically we took one of our models and modified it. We stiffened it up, but kept it light and made it durable for strong guys who might not be expert skiers.”

Romp won the test. Then came the hard part: becoming a defense contractor. The paperwork alone took almost a year, and it was so intense that the brothers relied heavily on the Colorado Procurement Technical Assistance Center (CPTAC), a nonprofit that helps Colorado companies become Department of Defense-approved military contractors. “They were pretty excited to work with us,” said Caleb, “because it’s rare for businesses as small as ours even to get invited to bid for such contracts.”

All of that paperwork was just preparation to enable the contract bid, a process that took another couple of months. But the brothers obviously did their homework, as they won the contract in October 2016 and delivered 350 pairs of skis to the Tenth last June. As a result, they more than doubled their production in one year, and may come close to tripling it, from a total of 220 pairs of skis in 2016 to more than 500 by late August of this year. Which means yearround jobs at the Romp facility here in town.

Of course, winning the contract with the Tenth once doesn’t mean Romp will win it again. But the mechanics of bidding should be easier next time. And now that the Weinbergs have some experience, they are putting in bids for the National Guard and other Special Forces groups. But, they insist, “The focus is still on the best custom skis for individual clients.”

The Weinbergs’ favorite part of this process has been interacting with members of the Tenth. One soldier told the brothers: “There’s no piece of equipment in the military that everyone likes….except your skis.”

By making skis for the Tenth, Romp is returning some of the legacy of American alpine military to Colorado, where it began at Camp Hale. When the soldiers of the Tenth Mountain Division returned from World War II, they gave birth to much of the modern ski industry, cutting trails, founding and managing ski areas, developing the sport and the businesses that support it to this day.

Perhaps something like that will happen again, when another wave of skier soldiers returns from their own tours of duty on their custom-crafted Romp skis. If that’s the case, the Weinbergs will have a place in the history of that ski renaissance, sparked by ingenuity, craft, commitment – and some construction tools in a Crested Butte garage.

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By the light of

By Sandy Fails

the moon

Diners at Uley’s Cabin, chauffeured by snowcat-drawn sleigh.

Trent Bona

Winter outdoor fun doesn’t have to stop when the sun goes down.

Winter evenings seem perfect for curling up inside by a crackling fire, sipping a hot toddy after a day playing on the slopes. But Crested Butte offers some unusual ways to continue the outdoor fun even after the sun goes down.

When the moon is full, moonlight reflecting off of snow adds its own mysterious beauty to the slopes. With no moon, stars brighten the sky. Either way, winter nights offer a deep contrast to the gleaming white of daytime in the mountains.

ON THE SLOPES Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR) hosts on-slope evening parties celebrating the winter solstice, full moons, holidays, spring sunsets and everyday winter magic.

For the Full-Moon Dinners (January 1 and 31, March 1 and 31), Winter Solstice Party (December 21) and New Year’s Eve Aprés, diners take a self-guided skin tour (with adhesive skins on the ski bottoms so they don’t slip backwards) or snowshoe tour up to Ten Peaks, at the top of the Painter Boy Lift. The heated, glassenclosed Umbrella Bar lets celebrants warm up and toast the day, followed by the evening’s cuisine and beverages, often served outside 36

by moonlight. Guests should bring headlamps and ample winter clothing to ski or snowshoe back downhill after the festivities.

The Ten Peaks Sunset Soirees happen March 14, 21 and 28, when the days are growing longer and warmer. These evening events include a sleigh ride from the base area to Ten Peaks, buffet dinner in the Umbrella Bar or outside on the deck, wine or beer, and a sleigh ride back down the hill.

Ten Peaks and the Umbrella Bar showcase spectacular views of the summit of Crested Butte Mountain and northward toward the East River and the alpine wilderness beyond.

Throughout the winter, CBMR also offers Uley’s Sleighride Dinners, a fine dining experience on the ski slopes. Guests take a snowcat-driven sleigh up the mountainside to Uley’s Cabin, with its blazing fireplace and elegant food and spirits. The five-course dinners happen Wednesdays through Saturdays all season, plus holiday dinners with special menus.

AT THE YURT The Magic Meadows Yurt also combines excellent dining experiences with a touch of moonlit adventure. The yurt, a canvas-sided cabin heated by wood stove and lit by solar-powered lights, is accessed

by Nordic skis or snowshoes via a one-mile groomed trail from the Peanut Lake Trailhead. It serves as a venue for hosted dinners, private parties and a Backcountry Bistro.

The Crested Butte Nordic Center hosts full-service gourmet

dinners at the yurt several times a month (see cbnordic.org for dates). At the Nordic Center, guides help guests select crosscountry ski equipment or snowshoes, organize transportation to the nearby trailhead and lead the way along the torchlight-marked trail. The course is mostly level, with a few small, rolling hills.

Beginner skiers might take 30-45 minutes to meander to the yurt; more experienced skiers will reach it in 15-20 minutes.

At the yurt, diners are greeted by live music, wine and specialty cocktails, then Colorado-inspired cuisine by celebrated chef Tim Egelhoff. At the end of the evening, guides accompany guests back to the trailhead.

People can also reserve the yurt for private events and arrange Nordic Center staff help with wood-stove heating, cleanup, snowmobile transportation of equipment and other logistics. On Sundays, the yurt hosts Backcountry Bistro, with pastries, soup, pie, coffee, chai and other treats.

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SPECIAL EVENTS The winter calendar holds other invitations to venture out after the sun disappears behind the mountains.

For Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, the ski resort celebrates with evening torchlight parades, best viewed from the base area. Ski and snowboard instructors wind down the slopes with their torches, tracing a line of light down the mountainside. Santa will join the Christmas Eve action, and fireworks will light up New Year’s Eve.

On March 23, well-wishers will gather at the base area before midnight to cheer on the racers in the Grand Traverse, the overnight backcountry ski race from Crested Butte to Aspen. At the stroke of midnight, skiers click on their headlamps and fire up Warming House Hill, with 40 rugged miles to go, over two major alpine passes, before they slide across the finish line at the base of Aspen Mountain.

February 2, the night before the Alley Loop Nordic Marathon, brings the unique Pub Ski. Since Elk Avenue is covered by snow then in preparation for the next day’s race, Pub Ski competitors can ski between drinking establishments. At each, they answer trivia questions, undertake a challenge or “do something plain nutty” to earn points, according to Nordic Center organizers. Costumes earn bonus points in the quest for the Pub Ski Championship.

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CrestedButteNow.com 37

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On day two of Little Red Schoolhouse’s ski program, the preschool’s cubby room bustles with organized chaos. Kids dressed in colorful snow clothes perch on a low bench, banging their snow boots back and forth. A dad bursts through the front door clutching a pair of miniature skis and a half-zipped kid’s backpack stuffed with gear. But where is his daughter’s ski pass? He dashes back out to grab it from home, promising to return in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, preschool director Jessica Rutherford kneels beside a tearful boy whose parents have just dropped him off. She gives him a comforting squeeze and says, “You’re going to have so much fun today. Do you know what? Not too many kids in the world get to go ski as part of their school day. But you do!” The little guy’s face brightens, as parents start corralling groups of children for the short ride to the mountain.

Indeed, it can’t be too common for youngsters to ski during preschool. Even in Crested Butte, Little Red is the only preschool offering such a program.

“In 1994, my first job was teaching at kids’ ski school,” Rutherford said. “I taught skiing for maybe eight years. So when I opened Little Red, I thought, ‘We have to have a ski program, of course.’ It was kind of a no-brainer.”

She loves watching people’s reactions to the wee skiers on the slopes. “We don’t even think twice about it, but people are like, ‘Oh my god, they are so teeny’.”

Last winter, a record 34 preschoolers took part in the program, which is offered one morning a week for four weeks in conjunction with Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s ski school. Through multiple emails to parents, Rutherford outlines every aspect of the program so it runs as close to clockwork as possible. Parent volunteers—essential to the program’s success—help with transportation, lugging equipment, fitting up youngsters and supervision during the lunch hour.

“My main duty was being a driver and a gear hauler,” said parent Jen Laggis. “It was so fun. I would be a fly on the wall and listen to the kids’ hilarious conversations. On one of the drives from Little Red, the conversation was about skateboarding. During another drive, they pointed out the peaks as we drove up Highway 135. There was talk about skiing 42

Whetstone and Teocalli Mountain, and whether or not either would be too steep.”

Too steep? Yes, probably. A significant portion of Little Red’s skiers, who range from three to five years old, spend most of their time on the gentle slopes of the Aspen and Pine magic carpets. Others with more advanced skills venture up the Red Lady lift—perhaps catching some air on the Hippo Humps or navigating their way through Bambino Glades. A smaller group is capable of pointing it down “blue” (intermediate) runs.

Wherever the mini-skiers are romping on the mountain, their instructors use snack breaks, spontaneous snowball fights and fun banter to keep them motivated.

“With this age group, you can’t just say, ‘Ski, ski, ski,’” said instructor Mark Berens.

“They need some play time.”

On this particular day, ski instructor Heather Edmiston urges her three-year-old students, Ellen and Zoë, to go potty. “We have a rule at ski school: no pee, no ski!” A few minutes later, she teases, “Zoë, if you don’t keep your goggles on, your eyeballs will turn into meatballs!”

Giggling ensues.

Later, over at the magic carpet, Edmiston has Ellen look back up the hill from the bottom of the ski run. “You can see your tracks. It looks like a unicorn tail or something!” With eyes gleaming under her goggles, and with a renewed sense of purpose, sweet Ellen clomps back over to the magic carpet entrance to ride up and slide down, practicing her “pizza slice” and “French fries.”

With each run, the youngsters improve as skiers, whether they realize it or not.

“It’s the mileage that’s super important,” Edmiston said. “Every time we ski down, they get a little more muscle memory. That’s important for this age.”

Each winter, Little Red teacher Amanda Bade witnesses marked improvement in the children’s skiing skills over the course of just four sessions. It’s not all about physical accomplishments; it’s also about little ones gaining confidence and independence. Bade is especially attuned to these benefits because she, like Rutherford, taught at ski school before working at Little Red.

“The program changes kids’ opinion of skiing… because for many of them, it’s the first time they aren’t skiing with their parents,” Bade said. “Skiing with their friends, they push themselves harder. They last a little longer because their parents aren’t there.”

By week four, the ski program is a well43

Instructor Mark Berens, keeping it fun for the tinies.

Jessica Rutherford, director of the Little Red Schoolhouse, sits with Stella Artale during snack time.

oiled machine. Children, parents, teachers and ski school instructors slip into their respective roles with ease. Little ones more easily clip into their skis and, with a little help, don their helmets. On this final day of skiing, Ellen and Zoë have their sights set on the Peachtree lift.

Two hours later, the threesome returns to Camp CB, chattering about their accomplishments. Both Ellen and Zoë have skied down the hill without any wipeouts. “Ellen has become so much braver since week one,” Edmiston observes proudly. “It used to be super scary for her to ski down without holding anyone’s hand. And Zoë is getting up on her own [after falls], and that’s been awesome. Mostly it’s been great to see them have more fun as they get more comfortable with skiing. When they are super happy, it’s mission accomplished.”

Parting ways on this last day is bittersweet.

The children bestow ski instructors with chocolate chip cookies, handcrafted thank-you cards, hugs and high-fives. It’s farewell for now, but many of these pint-sized shredders will return to the slopes through the next year’s Little Red ski program or, if they’re graduating to kindergarten, through the Crested Butte Community School’s Ski PE program.

This is, after all, a ski town, where so many local kids master buckling their ski boots long before tying their shoes.

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In 1973, 50 of the 89 residents living near the ski area “seized control of their own destiny� by incorporating a new town called Mt. Crested Butte.

Words and photos by Sandra Cortner

An elevator disagreement helped to launch the Town of Mt. Crested Butte in 1973.

Of course the town’s story began long before that. In the 1880s, Mathias and Mary Malensek and their son Matt, immigrants from Yugoslavia, took up adjoining 160acre homesteads on the hillsides and valleys at the base of Crested Butte Mountain. Matt and younger brother Rudy inherited the cattle ranch. More acreage acquired over the years extended the property north and east, from the Washington Gulch road to the base of Snodgrass Mountain. Gunnison National Forest surrounded much of it.

To Kansans Dick Eflin and his business

partner Fred Rice, the lush ranch of 2,000 acres looked like the perfect place to site their new ski area. In 1960-61, Eflin negotiated its purchase over homemade wine at the kitchen table of the Malensek brothers and their wives, Ann and Margaret.

Where cattle once grazed on U.S. Forest Service land above the ranch, Eflin and Rice obtained a permit to carve ski trails among the trees. The Malensek barns, homestead cabin and corrals at the foot of the mountain became the base of the Crested Butte Ski Area. The rest of the ranch acreage was divided into chalet and lodge sites, the sale of which would help

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fund the ski area’s day-to-day operations.

During the next 11 years, the ski area added lodges, ski lifts, condominiums and homes, survived a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and in April of 1970, acquired new owners— Bo Callaway and his brother-in-law Ralph Walton. The pair immediately began enlarging the facilities at the base area. Forming the Crested Butte Development Company (CBDC), they proposed four of the largest structures in the county at the time, the multi-storied Whetstone, Axtel, Emmons and Gothic buildings. The elevator slated for the three-story Gothic would be the first in the north end of the valley, maybe in the whole county; most buildings had only one or two floors. The county commissioners had never before been asked to consider a building with an elevator. After resort officials’ many trips to the commissioners’ office, 32 miles south, to dicker over plan approval, the seed for incorporation began to grow in Walton’s mind, an idea shared by his general manager, Gus Larkin.

Despite all the growth and its status as the largest employer in the area, the ski area at that time remained a mere subdivision in Gunnison County. Allen Cox, owner of the Nordic Inn from 1969 until 2012, recalled, “You had to go to Gunnison for everything— banking, laundry, building approvals—and if you needed the sheriff, you’d wait an hour or two before he showed up. There were only two officers covering all of Gunnison County.”

Rix Rixford, now of Gunnison, managed the Crested Butte Lodge. “I was the self-appointed chief of police,” he said, laughing. He and Cox once immobilized an obstreperous drunk on the Nordic Inn porch with duct tape while they waited for the sheriff. “It took so long for the sheriff to arrive that the guy sobered up and we just let him go,” said Allen.

The owner/managers of the four lodges at the ski area became a tightly knit group, taking turns hauling their collective trash to the Crested Butte town dump. They often took their cash receipts in envelopes fastened with rubber bands down to Tony Mihelich’s Hardware and Conoco station to be stashed in his safe. Anyone making a trip to Gunnison would stop by and take the envelopes to the bank for deposit.

These inconveniences aside, the planning and construction hassles of the four big base area buildings clinched the campaign to incorporate the ski area into a town.

“Anything we tried to do as a ski area 48

Opposite page: Rudy, Margaret and Matt Malensek (top) sold the family ranch to ski resort visionary Dick Eflin (shown in middle photo with wife Liz). In 1970, brothers-in-law Ralph Walton and Bo Callaway (bottom photos) purchased the Crested Butte Ski Area, launching a time of growth that led to the municipal incorporation of Mt. Crested Butte. Other major players in the town’s early years: Gus Larkin, Allen Cox and Jeff Jacobson (this page, top row); Steve Lokey, Rix Rixford and Bob McDaniel (middle row); Betty Aitken and Helen Maynard (bottom).

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was fought by the county commissioners and a group of people in Crested Butte who wanted to limit growth,” said Jeff Jacobsen, a homeowner and one of the principals of Crested Butte Realty Company.

Bill Allen, co-owner of the Artichoke Restaurant at the base area, added, “Gus Larkin was the catalyst for incorporating the area as a town. He realized that we now had the tax base, what with the new base area buildings and businesses, to incorporate as a Home Rule town, which meant that the tax money we collected would be available strictly for town use instead of being dispersed throughout the county.”

At the time, there was $10 million in construction underway, $4 million of that at the base area. Cox, Allen and Jacobsen agreed, “We wanted to control our own destiny.” For Callaway and Walton’s CBDC, incorporation was a way to have control over zoning decisions affecting their investments.

According to Jacobsen, there were enough people living at the ski area that they should have a say in how their community was governed.

On Sept. 12, 1973, he and fellow realtor and neighbor Steve Lokey began circulating a petition among ski area residents calling for the incorporation of the area as a town, named Mt. Crested Butte. Forty qualified electors of the population of 89 signed the petition before it was presented to the district court judge. He appointed five commissioners to set up an election regarding town incorporation: Larkin, Jacobsen and Rixford, plus Ralph Clark, Jr., a retiree and one of the few homeowners who did not work for the ski area, and Bob McDaniel, employed by the ski area’s water and sanitation district.

Annexation to the Town of Crested Butte was considered and rejected because state law required that the proposed annexation area be contiguous. Two miles of privately owned land separated Crested Butte and the ski area.

“Walton came up with the name ‘Mt. Crested Butte’ probably because they were so invested in the name ‘Crested Butte.’ I suggested ‘Oh-Be-Joyful’ to separate the new town,” recalled Jacobsen. Years later Rixford declared vehemently, “For God’s sake, it’s NOT Mount Crested Butte! It’s Mt. Crested Butte.” (Yes, it’s pronounced the same but spelled differently. We who have lived here since before incorporation still refer to it as “the hill”.)

Those opposed to incorporation claimed it would create a “company town,” yet the majority of the residents came to realize the 50

Janis McDaniel in 1973, casting her vote (by pen and paper) for the incorporation of the new town.

The growing base area, 1973.

benefits of having their own tax base and police protection, with zoning decisions made by the people who would live with the results.

“We were all connected to the ski area in one way or another,” Jacobsen said.

On Nov. 6, 1973, the vote was 50 to 12 to incorporate. The Town of Mt. Crested Butte was the first municipal incorporation in the state since 1920. Other ski areas such as Snowmass and Vail eventually followed suit.

Two months later, on Jan. 7, 1974, Gus Larkin was elected the first mayor, receiving 36 of the 59 votes cast. Cox, Jacobsen, McDaniel, Rixford, Lokey and Betty Aitkin won council seats. The following week the new council faced a myriad of tasks, the easiest of which was opening a checking account that would contain what was left of the $14,000 Larkin and Lokey had personally borrowed for operating expenses. Each council member also kicked in money. No cash would show up to pay them all back until April after the approval of a 4% sales tax.

The town coffers wouldn’t see property tax revenue until March 1, 1975.

In the meantime, the town would be responsible for many tasks then being performed by the county, including snowplowing, road maintenance, police protection, zoning and building inspection and dog catching. The council had to hire an attorney and building inspector, appoint a planning commission, submit a budget, buy insurance, pass the Model Traffic Code, create zoning ordinances, plat maps and pass the Uniform Building Code, name streets, plan for an election for the Home Rule charter commissioners, and even choose an official town newspaper. That was just for starters.

Jacobsen had graduated from Western State College ten years prior with a stint as student body vice president and a degree in political science. He immersed himself in the process. “It was great to be able to use my education.”

At first volunteers pitched in. Helen Maynard, an unsuccessful mayoral candidate, became the town clerk/recorder, asking for donations of office equipment and serving several months without pay. Rixford kept his informal chief of police position until the first professional law enforcement officer, Len Martin, was hired that summer. When asked at an early meeting for his proposed budget, Rixford read his list of needs: “Three cases of mace, three shotguns, one case of pepper spray and 12 pairs of handcuffs. Just can’t get along without that stuff.” His fellow council members gaped, and then all broke into

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laughter.

“We were young and it was new to all of us,” added Rixford. He was 30 at the time and doing everything at the Crested Butte Lodge— cooking, shoveling snow, bartending, cleaning, handling reservations. “But we usually had only 20% occupancy,” he admitted. His bar hosted ski area employees and incorporation principals at a small table each afternoon to brainstorm over a few après-ski drinks.

The council passed its first budget of $17,800 in August of 1974. “The property owners didn’t want to be penalized heavily, so the emphasis was on the sales tax,” Jacobsen explained. “CBDC fought a lift ticket tax.”

A year later, the town passed a budget of $81,250. By contrast, Crested Butte’s budget was $780,000. That year Jane Wiley was hired as Mt. Crested Butte town clerk and Jim Dean as town manager. The summer of 1975 marked the first town picnic.

The next several years brought intense growth for both the town and the county, including the formation of a fire protection district and the chartering of the Crested Butte State Bank. CBDC began constructing the Crystal Apartments for employee housing. The county hired its first planner. Mt. Crested Butte annexed Crested Butte Overlook and the North Village. From its original 854 incorporated acres, the town grew to 1,138 acres. Soon, a free bus system would connect Mt. Crested Butte with its southern neighbor, Crested Butte, and eventually with Gunnison.

From cattle ranch to ski area to town, Mt. Crested Butte encompasses one of the largest ski resorts in the state. Its population of 89 has ballooned to almost 1,000, including second homeowners, service employees and local business owners. The town has its own 81225 postal ZIP code but no post office. With each year, the Town of Mt. Crested Butte has grown more independent of Crested Butte Mountain Resort, and it even managed to enact that lift ticket sales tax that Jacobsen advocated so many years ago.

After Callaway and Walton sold the ski area, by then named Crested Butte Mountain Resort, to the Mueller family in 2004, the Gothic Building and its controversial elevator made way for new base-area plans, including the Mountaineer Square. Nearly every commercial building at the resort now has an elevator.

For more stories and photos about the ski area and Crested Butte from the 1960s-80s, see Sandy Cortner’s books, Crested Butte Stories...Through My Lens and Crested Butte...Love at First Sight.

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Photos by: Dusty Demerson

focus Dusty Demerson plays with light and color to tell his photographic stories.

By Dawne Belloise Photographers see the world in light and shadow, color and context. They insinuate borders on the world, but they can also hint at the infinite that stretches beyond the edges of a photo. These are the specialties of Dusty Demerson, master of the digital shutter.

Dusty’s photography work tells stories of limitless aspen groves bathed in gold and green, as well as solitary objects sewn to their shadows in glistening fields of winter white.

Dusty moved from Duncan, Oklahoma, to Crested Butte in 1987, having spent his childhood vacations here since 1968. He’d always loved the mountains and all the Gunnison Valley had to offer – fishing, camping, hiking and later, learning to ski.

After growing up in Duncan, he earned a bachelors degree in 54

photojournalism from the University of Central Oklahoma. After graduating, he took a job with a not-so-worthy newspaper, which folded within three months of his hiring. It was the oil boom of 1978, and Dusty latched onto the abundant work in the fields, buying and selling oil field equipment. When an opening came up at the Duncan Banner newspaper, he grabbed it, staying on for five years. He mostly loved the work—photojournalism was his dream job—but not at that particular publication. “Diplomacy is a skill I’ve since learned,” he said with a chortle.

“I’d been looking for another newspaper job, but newspapers were closing left and right. So I went to work at a one-hour photo lab.”

One night, while he was having dinner with his parents, they suggested that he open his own portrait studio. “I wasn’t particularly passionate about the idea at the time, because I still wanted to be a photojournalist. But those jobs were disappearing, just like they are now. So the portrait thing seemed like the best logical next choice.”

He opened a studio in Duncan in 1984, with a tiny camera room, office and good-sized darkroom. But he quickly realized he needed to hone some business skills, like marketing and sales. “At the time, Oklahoma City University had come to town with a new MBA program for people like me who were employed, and they offered evening classes with the prerequisites cut out.”

Dusty signed up for the expedited degree and earned his MBA. He had a concept he wanted to pursue, a business model that combined a portrait studio and photo lab. About the same time, he had the opportunity to buy Color West Photography, a commercial color photo lab in Crested Butte. He’d loved the area since childhood, so he bought the lab in 1987 and arrived on Halloween day.

Because of space restriction in his new lab-studio, Dusty worked outside, doing portraits and wedding photography outdoors.

After nine years on Fifth Street, he moved the lab to the Majestic

Plaza in 1997. With aging equipment, and digital photography coming of age and killing the photofinishing business, he closed the doors of Color West in 2004 (also on Halloween day). He parted out the equipment on eBay, with some of it going as far away as Guatemala.

“This was a huge benefit, for me to get out of it,” Dusty said. “All of a sudden there was forty hours a week available for me to be a photographer.”

He took advantage of that and put his name out in the marketplace for freelance photography. “I developed a website and a greater presence for wedding and portrait photography. I took every job that was offered to me, and I liked my job.”

His portrait business became Demerson Photography, and he separated it from the landscape photography, which he named Images Colorado. Having two names better represented the different work he was doing.

In addition to his studio and landscape photography, Dusty also teaches photography in both group and private lessons. As part of the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival, he conducts classes in wildflower landscapes and close-ups, plus a more advanced master class that’s limited to six people to facilitate more detailed instruction.

He said of that class: “It’s more about seeing how good of a photo we can make in the four hours of instruction. It’s more concerned with exposure and composition rather than quantity. It dives into finding out what you really like about that columbine and how to make it stand out.”

Dusty’s photography is bought and shipped all over the world.

“I do a lot of panoramas; I like that format and it seems to fill a need from a decorator’s standpoint as well,” he said. “Half of my sales are

panoramas.”

He composes enormous triptychs that can span eight feet, like an endless spring aspen forest, thick with trees. No sky, no ground, just green or gold trees. This is his most popular image, tree trunks and green leaves, with one specific composition entitled Into the Forest.

Lately Dusty has utilized a drone to capture aerial views, lowaltitude visions of mountain landscapes. He submits his art to local publications (including this magazine) and nonprofits, and his work is also published as stock. That means it’s on the Adobe Stock website, where people can buy and license it to use for their websites, greeting cards, phone cases — “or shower curtains,” he said with a laugh.

“Whatever... that’s the nature of stock; you don’t really know how it’s going to be used.”

In addition to his online galleries, Dusty’s work is featured at the Grubstake Gallery, Paradise Cafe and other venues.

“My inspiration comes from interesting light and weather on familiar subjects, like a rainbow over Mt. Crested Butte,” he said. “I also look for intimate compositions, like perhaps a single pine tree in an aspen forest at the peak of fall color, a contrast of color, trees and shapes; that’s the kind of thing that inspires me.”

Dusty admitted, “I can’t go anywhere without a camera.”

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Looking through that lens gives him a special perspective.

“Photography for me is a way to sort of own a space or an event. Once I take that picture, it becomes mine; I own the scene, the place, the event.”

And he’s always in pursuit of that evocative, stop-you-inyour-tracks photograph. “I have images in mind that I want to create that require the clouds, the stars and the sun to all align,” he said with a smile. “Ansel Adams called this ‘previsualization,’ where you see the finished picture before it’s actually made.”

Meanwhile, he sees – and teaches others to see – not only the obvious elements of a scene but also the subtleties. Then he can use the camera to coax them out.

“I like to contrast, like the devil’s advocate: What if a white object were viewed as black? In terms of imagery, how can I make it stand out, not blend into its surroundings? One of the things I talk about when I’m teaching is: exactly what made you stop the car, grab your camera and jump out? Was it the flower at the side of the road, specifically the shape, the color, the light falling on it, the contrast with its surroundings, the music on the radio, what you had for breakfast? What made you get out of the car? Because once you decide what attracts you to the subject, then you know how to emphasize that and to deemphasize everything else.”

Over the next few issues, the Crested Butte Magazine will profile some of its long-time contributing writers and photographers like Dusty.

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Welcome Home Custom design-build on Elk Avenue, Town of Crested Butte

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Words by Beth Buehler // Images by Dusty Demerson

For a small hamlet, Crested Butte has more than its share of twins. The Crested Butte Community School’s 721 students (kindergarten through high school) include 32 twins. Of those 16 sets, some are eerily identical and some are quite different from each other.

Three pairs of twins—the O’Neills, Petersens and Wiggins—gave us their take on twindom in a Colorado mountain town. As they gathered for a photo shoot, their banter made clear the twins keep track of each other and their antics. “It was great when Montana and Dakota traded places at graduation,” Katie O’Neill observed. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Twin tower: Katie O’Neill atop Sydney Petersen and Piper O’Neill, atop Dakota Wiggins, Turner Petersen and Montana Wiggins. At least we think that’s who they are.

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In-house playmates Katie and Piper O’Neill.

KATIE AND PIPER O’NEILL Giggly seventh graders Piper and Katie O’Neill entered the world one minute apart in Denver. Their mom, Jordan, describes the birth as “a very exciting, last-minute C-section where Katie instantly became the oldest child, when she was supposed to be the youngest. There began the fun.”

Some refer to the duo as Thing One and Thing Two, a nod to the twins in the wellloved Dr. Seuss tale “Cat in the Hat.” Another pseudonym pops up on occasion. “People think we are one person named Katiepiper— or it’s a cover for not knowing which is which,” Piper suggested.

Being Katiepiper isn’t all bad, as the 12-year-olds always have someone to play with. Handily, the girls enjoy the same sports and help each other study. “Together, we bike, swim, ski, play tennis and ride horses,” Katie said. Individually, she enjoys track and cross-country and has a fondness for reading and art.

Doing mostly the same things is 62

“sometimes annoying but not that bad,” acknowledged Piper. “I used to be the cake baker, but now she does it, too. We also make really good videos with props and scripts.”

The word “annoying” also came up in reference to being in the same grade at school; however, in Katie’s words, “it’s mostly great because we have lockers next to each other, so if I forget something I can just borrow hers.”

Being the same age comes in handy during fun time with parents Jordan and Pat. “Our family makes an instant sports team,” said Piper. “We’re at the same level in activities, so we can ski the same runs and bike and hike the same trails without splitting up the family.”

Twindom can also make it easier to be away from parents in this small town, Katie pointed out. “You can do things around town together and your parents don’t worry quite as much because you’re with someone to help be careful. The bad thing is that people mix up our names, and we don’t often even know who they are.”

Other benefits: “I can always ask my sister for advice, and she’s super kind to me even when I annoy her,” Katie said. Yes, that word again. Piper’s take: “There’s always someone to help you, and she’s always so cheery and loving.”

The O’Neill twins are big fans of their life-long home. While Piper gives kudos to Crested Butte for the mountains and friendly people, Katie’s list is very specific. “My favorite things are, in this order, Third Bowl homemade ice cream, People’s Fair dog show, and Strand Hill, my favorite trail to bike!”

She looks forward to taking her dad’s English classes at Crested Butte Community School and going to the Great Sand Dunes near Alamosa for the annual eighth-grade trip.

DAKOTA AND MONTANA WIGGINS Adventure and big grins are hallmarks of the Wiggins twins, who came into the world six weeks early after their mom was flown on AirLife from Gunnison to Denver. Montana and Dakota, now 22, spent 40 days in the

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Identical (but different) twins Montana and Dakota Wiggins.

hospital before being introduced to the higher elevation in Crested Butte. To get some outside time in those early days, their mother placed Dakota and Montana in their stroller— alongside their oxygen tanks.

Ever since, the identical twins have kept parents Greg and Kathy on their toes and the Crested Butte community charmed with their gregarious personalities. Both graduated from Crested Butte Community School a few years ago and joined our twin discussion while they were home for the summer. Montana taught junior golf clinics and worked in member services at The Club at Crested Butte, and Dakota managed a crew of friends doing lawn care and outdoor projects for his parents’ business, PR Property Management.

Dakota, a senior at the University of Colorado, headed back to Boulder in the fall to wrap up a degree in economics. Montana, the “older” of the two, attended Colorado State University for a year and plans to pursue a career in golf and education in business management through the Professional Golf 63

Association (PGA).

As identical twins, the two grew up being mistaken for each other.

“My name is one of three options: Montana, Dakota or just Twin. I’ll respond to anyone yelling that,” said Montana.

Dakota added, “From as far back as I can remember, I’ve been called Montana by people who know of the Wiggins twins. Sometimes they get my name correct, but most often my name is Montana. I don’t correct people, unless it’s my dad.

I usually just respond and pretend like that’s who I am.”

That didn’t work in the classroom, so Montana and Dakota were generally put in different classes from second grade on.

Eventually the teachers Sydney Petersen strong-arming learned to tell them apart, her brother Turner. “so we didn’t really get the opportunity to switch classes,” Montana noted. he said. “We had no idea what kind of paradise we were privileged to grow up in.

“Our classmates always knew who was Once I was 15, I wanted to check out some who. In high school the teachers could tell of the rest of the world, so I spent six months based on our personalities,” Dakota said. “I loved the high school—the teachers are better living in Sweden. Then it was time to come back to paradise. It’s a great feeling to come than most of my college professors.” home to Crested Butte because it’s more than

The Wiggins brothers played almost every sport together growing up. “We learned a small town; it’s a small family.” to ski together when we were two. We learned Though they live in different towns to bike together when we were four. We were nine months a year, the twins play together always interested in learning a new sport, and in Crested Butte town league softball each we loved playing outside. Once we started summer. “I like how our community is playing hockey, we found our favorite sport,” very close and similar-minded toward being Dakota said. active,” Montana said.

Montana added, “It was never hard

Since going different directions after high finding something to interest both of us. My school, the Wiggins brothers have found it brother and I work well together on any team. easier to develop their individual identities.

We both put the hard work into it and expect “I was no longer a twin in college. Only a few results.” of my college friends know my twin brother,” Dakota said. “It’s awesome when Montana

The first time the brothers didn’t comes to visit. Most people are shocked to see participate on teams together was the year Montana decided to play baseball and golf another Dakota!” for Gunnison High School, while Dakota ran track and played soccer for Crested Butte.

SYDNEY AND TURNER PETERSEN

The Rotary Youth Exchange Program Brother-and-sister duo Turner and Sydney Petersen were born just over the mountains also gave the twins some space—an ocean’s in Aspen and moved to Crested Butte with worth—when Dakota went to Sweden at age their parents, Kirk and Stacey, at age six.

16. “I loved everything about my childhood,” 64

Now seniors at the Crested Butte Community School, the 17-year-olds have no idea who is older. “Our parents didn’t want us to fight about it when we were little, so we’re going to find out on our 18th birthday. I think Turner is older,” Sydney guessed.

Fortunately, the two get along well, since they have several classes together and share a love of the outdoors. “When a class is hard or we both do bad on a test, our parents get double the amount of complaining! We have a lot of the same friends, so we see each other a lot during the day,” Sydney said. “Like any other Crested Butte kid, we learned how to ski at around two years old, learned how to bike around four, played on the same baseball teams and went to the same basketball camps.”

Turner agreed. “When we were younger, we did everything together. We used to ski a lot, but now we do almost totally different sports. But we’re still very close and love to get competitive with each other.”

Acknowledging her twin’s skiing prowess, Sydney used to do her best to keep up on the slopes. “A few times he’s led me onto really hard ski runs like Body Bag, Dead Bob’s, High Life, etc., and I’ve gotten stuck in really

sketchy spots with mandatory airs.”

Other than skiing, the Petersens’ sports interests hit a fork in the road during middle and high school. Sydney danced and played volleyball through her freshman year and now focuses on basketball, track and crosscountry; she hopes to run at the collegiate level in Colorado or on the West Coast.

Meanwhile, Turner focuses heavily on skiing, plays on the Crested Butte soccer team and works alongside his sister at Marchitelli’s Gourmet Noodle. He’s considering Montana State University and a career in skiing for his future.

Being in the same grade, sharing friends and dealing with the same “gossip and drama” have their drawbacks, but the Petersens see the positive side of having a twin. “It’s really hard to keep a secret from the other person. However, because of this we have a lot of inside jokes,” Sydney said.

“Even though we annoy each other some of the time, it ends up bringing us closer in the long run, and I’m really thankful for that.”

For Turner, being a twin in a small town “can get to be a little too much. It’s awesome to have a sibling in all of the same classes, sometimes, but it gets interesting when you have similar friend groups.”

Still, he said, “being a twin is a unique experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

It helps when your twin also is one of your biggest supporters. “Turner’s the most driven person I know,” Sydney said. “He’s extremely outgoing and has a gift for talking with people. I’m shyer, and I applaud his ability to meet new people without thinking twice. Finally, I’m so thankful for his sense of humor (even though most of it involves making fun of me). When I’m with Turner, I’m always laughing.”

Turner returns the respect. “Sydney is ambitious, most of the time friendly, and helpful with many things. I definitely look up to her,” he said.

From their upbringing in Aspen and Crested Butte, the Petersen twins share a connection with the landscape and the small-town vibe. “The mountains and the people make this place special. Pretty much everybody here is super friendly and down to earth. I’ll rarely walk down the street without talking with somebody I know and love. The entire community is amazingly supportive,” Sydney said. “I’m also grateful that I can walk out my back door and find endless trails to run, hike and bike. It’s hard to find that anywhere else!”

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William Jackson Palmer

By Brian Levine

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Documenting the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad’s arrival in Crested Butte, 1881.

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The Jokerville Mine 1880s.

It was the time of the first wave, eight years since Ruffner’s Ute country reconnaissance and the subsequent mineral rush into the Elk Mountains. Silver and a tad of gold had been discovered, as well as massive seams of bituminous and anthracite coal. All were significant minerals to the new civilization expanding west across the continent, and more specifically to the development of the town of Crested Butte.

Unfortunately as we newcomers buffaloed our way into the West, the native Utes were suppressed and forced onto land ill suited to their centuries-old society. My role in this “Century of Our Dishonor,” as Helen Hunt Jackson called it, was to document its major events: generally through photographs, occasionally with engravings, and always in words. Hence my presence in the Crested Butte train depot on November 21, 1881, awaiting the appearance of the first train and one of the historic figures who’d brought it to town.

First, a little background. What I mean 72

by this first wave was the arrival of people, mostly of western European descent, who spread American ideals via their actions: entrepreneurial activities that included exploration, exploitation, town building, mining, ranching, farming, transportation and promotion. The first wave included people like William Jackson Palmer and William Abraham Bell – men who drove growth and productivity through innovation; capitalists who recognized a new country’s needs and proceeded to supply those markets for profit and accomplishment.

Who were Palmer and Bell, and why were they interested in Crested Butte?

William Jackson Palmer apprenticed in the engineering department of the Hempfield Railroad of western Pennsylvania in the late 1850s. Railroads fascinated him, and he believed them the future of transportation.

He traveled to England to study European progress with railroading and coal mining.

After Palmer’s return, he served in the Civil War, despite being a Quaker. Palmer

adamantly opposed slavery and believed it his duty to help eradicate the heinous practice in the United States. His heroic deeds lent to his rapid advancement in the officers’ ranks. In March 1865, President Lincoln nominated him for Brigadier General. Two years later, Palmer was managing director and construction superintendent for the Kansas Pacific Railway. While surveying in eastern Colorado, Palmer encountered Dr. William Bell, an English explorer, railroad surveyor, photographer and entrepreneur who also worked for the Kansas Pacific. They quickly discovered they shared similar ideas.

In 1868, Palmer and Bell conceived of a railroad that would run north and south, as opposed to transcontinental east and west.

They also envisioned this railroad as a narrow gauge: one with track 3’ 6” apart instead of the standard 4’ 8 ½”. This modification, they believed, would allow greater maneuverability in Colorado’s steep mountains and tight canyons.

With dedicated belief in their new concept, Palmer and Bell quit the Kansas Pacific. In 1869, Bell published New Tracks in North America: A Journal of Travel and Adventure Whilst Engaged in the Survey for a Southern Railroad to the Pacific Ocean during 1867-8, published in London by Chapman and Hall, 1869. The two-volume set included numerous plates, several folding maps and lengthy narrative detailing the surveying work he and others had accomplished for the Kansas Pacific Railway. This publication provided insight into what Bell and Palmer were planning. And much of it, at least indirectly, pertained to Crested Butte.

In 1870, Palmer and Bell incorporated their concept as The Denver & Rio Grande Railway (D&RG). Palmer became the railroad’s first president; Bell the chief financial agent. Palmer’s dream was to own and operate a company beneficial to all involved – a type of “family-oriented business.” His first action was to hire those he trusted most, starting with men who’d served with him in the Civil War. Next, he endeavored to have as many as possible of the company’s employees live and work together.

Then, to further strengthen his “family company” concept, Palmer established a new town in which his employees would reside.

This was Colorado Springs, platted July 31, 1871, at the base of Pike’s Peak.

The dream evolved smoothly… until Palmer and Bell deviated from their original plan and in 1878 turned a branch of the D&RG northwest toward the new Leadville

Silver Mining District. That action drew the competitive attention of Jay Gould and the board of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Not long after setting rails toward Canon City, the D&RG ran into discord. The most opportune route to Leadville lay through the Royal Gorge; but this narrow, tall canyon was also the focus of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. A legal battle ensued for the right-of-way through the gorge. Both Palmer and Gould fought ruthlessly for what they wanted, but the D&RG emerged the victor.

Unfortunately, victory came with significant expense, and Bell soon traveled to Europe to acquire more funding for the D&RG.

Perhaps that’s why it was so cold that November day in 1881 in the Crested Butte train depot – some accountant trying to save money. Despite the chill and my empty belly, I intended to witness the arrival of that first D&RG train. Snow filtered through roughly set doors and window frames, amassed a quarter-inch or so along the outlines of rectangular shadows. I’d gathered with Howard Smith, a founder of Crested Butte; John Phillips, editor of the Elk Mountain Pilot; and Rush Warner, one of the first men to claim a coal bank in the Slate River area. But they decided to retreat to the Pacific House.

“It’s warmer there,” Phillips said. “Food’s decent. And the whiskey’s tolerable.” They trundled out.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t afford to miss this photographic opportunity. Palmer and Bell had become central to mining in the Elk Mountains, so documenting Palmer’s arrival was paramount.

Over the years, mining had become vital to the D&RG’s business. During an 1878 surveying trip into the Elks, Palmer and Bell purchased a silver lode near Irwin, in the Ruby Mining District. They formed the Forest Queen Mining Company and were soon extracting native and ruby silver.

After learning of Rush Warner’s 1,250 acres of bituminous coking coal contiguous to Crested Butte, as well as Howard Smith’s 940 acres of anthracite, Palmer and Bell promptly purchased both concerns. Crested Butte coal was soon powering train engines, warming homes and fueling steel smelters.

Competition for these minerals quickly emerged in the forms of John Evans and the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad (D, SP & P).

Palmer had learned from his experience with the Atchison-Topeka. It was critical to cut off the D, SP & P from the optimal route through the Collegiate Mountain Range. He

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Denver & Rio Grande train at Mear’s Junction, 1880s.

did so by purchasing Otto Mears’ Poncha, Marshall and Gunnison Toll Road. The D, SP & P was then forced to survey a route from Buena Vista up Chalk Creek and through Alpine Pass. In January 1880, Evans’ first survey crew gathered on the snow-laden ground to begin work on the Alpine Tunnel, approximately 11,600 feet above sea level. By November 1881, the Alpine Tunnel was still not completed, yet it was already more than 1,700 feet in length.

The survey for the D&RG route between Gunnison and Crested Butte was finished in August 1881. Tracks were completed to the Crested Butte depot on November 18. A day later, ice, like glass cullet, froze around the metal. Then the snow deepened, like foam rising on hastily poured beer. Most of the silver mines near Irwin, Ruby, Gothic and Schofield had closed due to transportation difficulties, avalanches, blocked tunnels and such. But winter hadn’t slowed coal mining.

Mounds of bituminous rose at the Jokerville like enormous black pyramids. Nor had winter deterred the 800 or so folks in Crested Butte from ecstatically celebrating the arrival of the first D&RG train.

So there I stood in the depot, drawing warmth from the fire in the cast-iron stove.

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I wanted a photograph of General Palmer disembarking from this first train. Nothing would deter me. Outside, on the depot’s platform, my Scoville camera was mounted and ready on its tripod. Inside, I had a number of glass-plates in a wooden box by the stove. I was concerned my photographic emulsion might freeze and make developing pictures impossible. I moved the box, and another filled with chemical baths, closer to the heat.

What a memorable image it would have been if Dr. Bell had also been able to be here for this occasion! But Bell was in Europe, again, raising capital on the exchanges. Bell had wealthy contacts in Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, people who’d long recognized the benefits of the narrow gauge concept, especially in relation to tall mountains and hard-rock mining. The first narrow gauge rail of note was detailed in Agricola’s De re Metallica back in 1556. But those were simply mining handcars. The first actual narrow gauge steam locomotive was constructed in Britain in the late 1820s for factory use. In 1856, the Welsh Ffestiniog Railway first used a narrow gauge train for passenger transport. By 1881, European capitalists had embraced the narrow gauge for

travel through the mountains.

Suddenly, an unfamiliar noise thundered up the valley. I stopped breathing warm air into my frigid hands. At first, it sounded as if part of Wheatstone Mountain had tumbled from its 12,000-foot peak to the valley floor.

But the noise grew louder. Curious faces appeared in frosted windows and aside creaking doors. A few more minutes and I both heard and felt the noise rumbling through the ground. The distinct whistle of a train echoed loudly between Lone Mountain and Wheatstone.

I leaned over, opened the wooden box and lifted out a glass-plate negative. It wasn’t quite as frigid as I’d feared. Still, it needed some warming up. I held it close to the stove.

But shouts from the crowd outside reminded me I’d left my photographic wagon behind the depot. I could only hope my horse wasn’t going to get spooked. It’d never heard the crushing sound of heavy industry before.

The train was nearing rapidly. I hesitated before spreading the argentiferous emulsion over the clear glass-plate. I had but 15 minutes to develop and fix an image after it was exposed. There was little room for error.

More people gathered on and around the depot’s platform. I recognized Thomas

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Skinner, the town’s recorder. James Stearns from the Forest Queen Hotel saloon. Mrs. Songer, who owned the Songer Hotel. Dr. R. N. Hall, one of the few physicians in town.

George Holt of the Crested Butte Republican.

Half-frozen talk floated about: D&RG rails were going to head up through the Iron Swamp to Ruby Camp; rails were already on their way to Pittsburg, but stopping first at Anthracite Mesa; another miner had been killed in a snow slide. I wasn’t concerned about more rail lines. Not at that moment.

I wanted to see that first train roll into Crested Butte.

I was looking through my camera when I heard John Phillips’ voice. He and Howard Smith had returned from the Pacific House and were talking about how the Colorado Coal and Iron Company was buying up everything. The CC&I was another of Palmer and Bell’s ventures. Consolidation, Phillips speculated, might be good for Crested Butte, especially if the town became a major supply center. I didn’t take in their whole conversation. I was focused on the train nearing the platform. Smoke, ash, steam and people all clouded the scene.

Realizing I was trying to take pictures, Phillips and Smith attempted to steer people out of my line of sight. But Palmer would have to appear soon or the emulsion on the glass-plate would freeze.

Someone bumped a leg of the camera’s tripod. Fortunately, Rush Warner was there to steady it. Anticipation evolved into celebration. A makeshift band attempted to play a Sousa tune. Someone lit off a line of firecrackers. I asked Warner to check on my horse and wagon, and as he did smoke and steam began to dissipate.

People gathered all around General Palmer. His people: D. C. Dodge, R. W. Woodbury, B. F. Woodward, A. H. Danforth.

Palmer wore a herringbone frock coat, canvas double-breasted vest and dark wool trousers. He stood out from the others but didn’t look the part of a railroad baron, at least not like those Gothic engravings of Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Palmer evoked an aura of integrity, a man with a true interest in Crested Butte. I could see the influence of Quakers Grubb and Rowntree in him. General Palmer was definitely different: an enlightened and natural capitalist.

I triggered the Scoville’s lens just as my horse and wagon rushed into the amassing crowd. All faces turned west, and I just missed one of the best photographic images of that first wave

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Robert J. Conaway (shown performing in Crested Butte in 1979) got the reunion cogs turning.

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Sandra Cortner

Suzette Gainous

Among celebrants at the High Country Conservation Advocates’ 40th anniversary dinner during the reunion weekend: former mayor W Mitchell and a dozen-plus Red Ladies.

By Bonnie Chlipala

It was a simple enough idea: a reunion of old friends who had shared a magical experience of time and place four decades earlier.

A time when Crested Butte had fewer houses, fewer people and almost no rules or regulations. If you were fortunate enough to have experienced the intimacy of Crested Butte in the 1970s and early 1980s… well, you’re a very lucky person.

Former local musician Robert J. Conaway, with his perpetually boyish good looks, came up with the idea to reconvene the clan. Now a resident of Madison, Wisconsin, he planned to visit Crested Butte with his wife and two younger children. He wrote to me in a February 2017 Facebook message, “1977 is the year I moved to Crested Butte.

That’s 40 years ago, the perfect time for a reunion. It would be like a 40-year high school reunion.”

Four decades ago, Crested Butte was a dusty town, its unpaved streets exhibiting mostly dilapidated little houses with unkempt yards. Rent was cheap, and people were friendly. The population was egalitarian; maid or mayor, dishwasher or restaurant owner… everyone belonged to the same tribe. For this uncensored group of young, middle-class-suburban refugees on the same get-back-to-nature

express, Crested Butte was the Promised Land.

Would any of those former refugees be interested in a reunion?

Robert J. asked me.

I had no idea, but I offered to create a Facebook page to see what kind of response we got. From day one, it seemed the reunion would be a success. Of course, at that time we had no idea how successful, but successful enough to keep going.

I started priming the “social media” pump and filling the reunion’s new Facebook page with photographs from 1978, when my sisters and I first arrived in Crested Butte. I encouraged others to do the same. Soon Crested Butte ex-pats were posting pictures and sharing stories. Former residents Tapley Dawson, Debbie Hooks and Marie McHale Drake became early believers, which offered much moral support to my, so far, singular endeavor. Soon dozens of old photographs appeared, stirring the cauldron of nostalgia for the evergrowing number of people joining the reunion Facebook group.

People had an added incentive to attend when they learned that Robert J. would perform and that Darkstar, a popular local band from back in the day, would reunite especially for the event. Messages trickled in of flights booked and lodging secured. A whole group was flying in from Hawaii, and someone was coming all the way from New Zealand. We seemed to be on an unstoppable roll.

About this time, I realized that Rainbow Park, which I’d reserved 79

David Bachman in a 1975 ad for the Bistro.

Photos by: Sandra Cortner

Former Mountain Theatre actor David Conner at the 2017 reunion.

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for our major reunion gathering, wouldn’t be large enough to handle the escalating number of reunion attendees. So I booked the Town Ranch and took the risk of creating a much more expensive event. To pay for it all, I set up a GoFundMe account. The tribe did not disappoint; they were more than generous.

Meanwhile, activity on the Facebook page reached a fevered pitch. People posted more than old photographs; there were posters promoting fundraisers and concerts from 1977 plus newspaper clippings from the local weeklies of play reviews and softball games. Ultimately about 1,500 people joined the Facebook group, which tallied 3,000 funny and touching posts leading up to the reunion. The most important outcome of all this virtual reminiscing was the very tangible result of old friends connecting with one another and making plans to meet up back in Crested Butte.

One of them was David Bachman, who lived in Crested Butte from around 1973 to 1980 and was best known, along with his partner Sonia Saint, for operating the Bistro, the restaurant connected to the Grubstake on the corner of Third and Elk. Back in the early ‘70s, David and Sonia were working in Aspen when, through a friend, they met Grubstake owner Judy Naumburg, who was looking for someone to run the Grubstake

restaurant. “A few weeks later we headed to CB,” David recently shared with me. “I’ll never forget driving over Kebler Pass for the first time and dropping into town…. What had we gotten ourselves into? I mean, it was beautiful, but it was a tiny little town with a dirt main street and no trees and seemed hardly big enough to support any kind of business.

But without realizing it, we were falling in love with Crested Butte. There were so many places to explore here in CB that weren’t crowded like Aspen. We were so excited. I put my wanderlust on hold. I had found such a Shangri-La.”

David Bachman was one of the early enthusiastic contributors to the Facebook page and made plans to come to the reunion from Phoenix with his wife and grandchildren. He hadn’t set foot in Crested Butte for 36 years.

Another David planning on attending was David Conner, who lived here from 1986 to 1995. A talented actor with the Crested Butte Mountain Theatre, David now tends bar in midtown Manhattan, is a family man with a wife and two daughters and had not been back since he left 22 years ago. “I’d begun to think that maybe I’d romanticized my memories of our town,” David confessed, “but the reunion was proof that it is truly special.”

Many of us celebrated the news that Sunshine Williams would be making her way from Texas for the gathering. Sunshine was the proprietor of Crested Butte’s infamous, co-ed Paradise Bath and Sauna, where naked hippies soaked in the warm waters. A little older than many of those young hippies, she was a wellrespected businesswoman. Now in her eighties, Sunshine’s endorsement was a major coup for the reunion.

Though appreciative of the reunion’s mounting popularity, I began to worry about the increasing number of people who claimed to be attending. Might there be too many? How do you control an open and free event like ours?

The day Glo Cunningham showed up at my house was a good day for the planning of the reunion. We spent the afternoon strategizing, then Glo, a seasoned veteran at organizing events, took on a whole list of details, from obtaining the special events permit to ordering portable toilets.

As the big weekend approached, I had more and more assistants: Glo in Crested Butte, Margrett Geist in Alamosa, Pat Crow in Grand Junction, Shawna Sprowls in Louisville, and Dee Buckstaff in Jackson, Wyoming. Noel Adam set to work organizing a softball game.

Were we ready? We’d acquired a special

events permit and purchased insurance. We’d rented 2,500 square feet of tent space, with 17 round tables, 200 folding chairs, a stage, a dance floor, rain gutters and lighting. We’d staked out a tent camping space, designated an RV/camper area with port-a-potty at the gravel pits, purchased 600 tie-dye-bordered nametags, provided materials for an “In Memoriam” display, and so many other things.

Besides the originally planned potluck on Saturday, the weekend schedule had ballooned: music at the Eldo and dining at Donita’s on Friday night; the Summit Hike on Saturday morning; the Town Ranch potluck and musical gathering Saturday afternoon/ evening; and a writer’s forum at the Union Congregational Church, hosted by the McHale sisters, on Sunday afternoon. Also, High Country Conservation Advocates held its 40-year anniversary shindig at the Depot Sunday night to dovetail with the reunion.

The day arrived, and although weather forecasts two days prior had predicted 100% chance of rain for the entire day, the first raindrops didn’t fall until around 4:00 p.m., after everything was set up and well underway. And nobody cared anyway. It was a jam-packed party of dancing, conversation and 700-800 smiling faces. Though I felt a little overwhelmed by it all, I loved seeing people dancing, looking so happy and having so much fun. That was worth all the work that went into organizing it.

So, what did people say about the gathering?

Though David Bachman loved his time in Crested Butte and has vowed to return to what felt like heaven, he also added, “My first impression on driving into town itself was that I made a wrong turn and somehow ended up in Vail.”

Dave Conner believes the return to Crested Butte after 22 years has imparted a new level of peace and clarity in his life. He treasures the close friends that still live here, and he’s proud to continue membership in the CB community.

Robert J., the Founder of the Feast, had this to say: “I’m proud that my friends from my Crested Butte days are still near and dear to my heart. Although time and distance have kept us from being close, we still hold the magic of true friendship. For me the whole experience was somewhat surreal. Going back to Crested Butte is about connecting with a time in my life where I held a sense of freedom, a time when all dreams were still possible and, although we may not have been that innocent, a time of innocence.”

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A chat with reunion organizer Bonnie Chlipala

Bonnie Chlipala, Vinotok Harvest Mother (early 1990s) turned reunion organizer.

Sandra Cortner

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Q: Why do you think there was such a phenomenal response to the reunion invitation?

A: Facebook. This is, I believe, the biggest reason reunions are growing: people are more connected through social media. When people start posting 30- and 40-year-old photographs of you and your friends that you’ve never seen, it can take you back to a time when you were younger, healthier, thinner… and it can be irresistible.

I also think age has a lot to do with it. If you were part of the scene in the 1970s, you’re more than likely in your sixties or seventies.

That means you’re dealing with your own mortality. You may have lost your parents, or friends, not to an avalanche or motorcycle accident but to a heart attack or cancer. The fact that we’ve lived more years than we have left has changed many of us, made us more comfortable with ourselves and willing to allow ourselves some sentimentality. We’re

not afraid to admit we have feelings for one another because it is pure, not tainted by romantic nonsense that can get in the way.

This allows us the freedom to admit that we want to see one another again.

Also, those of us living in Crested Butte in the 1970s were truly a part of the counterculture, which felt pretty cool. Being able to connect with that lifestyle through our experiences here created a special bond to this time and place. I think when the possibility presented itself, people were very happy to come back and see if the magic was still here.

Q: What was a favorite moment from the reunion?

A: Sunday afternoon at the Writer’s Forum.

This was Kate McHale’s idea, and she and her sister Marie hosted the event. We’d expected a handful of people, and there were so many more. Many were former colleagues of mine from the various Crested Butte publications I’ve worked for since I arrived in 1978. It was very special to be with this group, a time of fellowship in a quiet setting. I laughed and I cried at the stories people told. Afterwards no one wanted to leave. People congregated in front of the church for a long time.

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By Dawne Belloise

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Coal Creek Whiskey: Bryan Phillips’ one-man distillery.

Karen and Brice Hoskin and their rum stills overlooking Montanya’s tasting room.

Dawne Belloise

Crested Buttians love their libations, and imbibing is all the more fun with two breweries and rum, vodka and whiskey smallbatch distilleries in town.

Of course, at one time the U.S. had its own dark ages concerning the consumption of alcohol. Prohibition lasted almost 14 tumultuous years after the 18th Amendment passed into law in 1919, prohibiting the production, sale and transporting of any intoxicating liquids for consumption. The outlawing of alcohol resulted from a war waged by the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union movements, and the U.S. government lost billions in tax revenues because of it.

The booze-free frenzy came out of reasonable enough ideals.

Drunks would come home from the bars and beat their wives and kids. Employers noted that drinking was cutting production at work. Outlawing it seemed patriotic enough. But people liked their traditions and the taste of their alcohol, and ale and liquor were pretty easy to make at home or in the speakeasies that popped up.

Tragically, an estimated 10,000 people died of alcohol poisoning during Prohibition, not only from bad bootlegging but also from a federal government program that added poison to alcohol to dissuade people from drinking. Interestingly, the enforcement of Prohibition was originally assigned to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which explains a lot about the agency’s continuing crusadelike practices.

The good news: you can thank Prohibition for the perfection of

mixed cocktails – combinations of spirits, sugars, water and bitters originated to hide the unsavory-tasting bootleg creations. Prohibition officially ended on December 5, 1933, an event celebrated robustly across the nation; even President FDR that day joyously sipped his favorite drink, a dirty martini. (Another point of interest: Mississippi was the last dry state in the Union, only ending Prohibition in 1966.)

So, 85 years after alcohol became legal again, tip a glass and enjoy our locally made small-batch liquors and brews.

COAL CREEK DISTILLERY

Bryan Phillips’ passion is whiskey. He smiled and explained that he came from a family that used to make moonshine, a good clear, white mule, white dog or, as he jokingly called it, a block and tackle, meaning you drink your fill, stagger a block and tackle the first guy you see.

Phillips set up his operation in late 2013, with the first batches of his Coal Creek whiskey aging and ready in the spring of 2017.

The one-man distillery produces 12 gallons of whiskey a run, and in 2015 he distilled 350 gallons of 130-proof, which he refined down to 80-proof whiskey. His recipe has been around for hundreds of years.

Coal Creek Distillery also produces a corn-based vodka. Both the vodka and whiskey are done in copper stills and stored in drums, although the vodka is processed quite differently from the whiskey.

Copper is the traditional metal for stills, Phillips explained, because it removes many of the impurities and sulfites during the distillation 91

Irwin Brewing Co. brewmeister Dave Nornes.

process to produce a cleaner alcohol at the end of the run. Phillips uses water from the Whetstone aquifer, which is high in magnesium.

Coal Creek Distillery also makes a batch of the only federally approved hemp whiskey in the country. The hemp gives it a nutty, smoky flavor. Hemp contains no THC, so don’t expect a buzz off anything but the fine whiskey flavor. Small Batch 64 is the only whiskey made by Coal Creek that contains hemp.

Phillips pointed out that all bourbon is whiskey, but all whiskey isn’t bourbon. He makes both, and the magic takes place in the barrel. The oak used for the barrels is American white oak, charred to the specifics of what the distillery bottles. A light to medium charred barrel gives a beautiful amber-colored whiskey, while a more heavily charred barrel yields a darker, more robust bourbon whiskey. This year, Phillips even experimented with Gunnison crab apples, making a small batch of whiskey that had an apple essence.

You can visit the small distillery; taste its products at The Public House, Soupcon and Bonez; or buy your own bottle at Mountain Spirits Liquors.

MONTANYA DISTILLERS Montanya makes its award-winning rum right on the premises, handmade from scratch in a traditional way using alembic copper pot stills that the owners, Brice and Karen Hoskin, imported from Portugal.

The Elk Avenue tasting room serves well-crafted, elegant 92

Celebrating the day and small-batch brews on the Eldo deck.

Photos Dawne Belloise

cocktails, accompanied by farm-fresh appetizers and small plates.

Crested Butte’s high-alpine location positively affects almost every aspect of fermenting, distilling and aging rum, Karen Hoskin said. Montanya uses non-GMO sugar cane grown and milled by family farmers in Louisiana, and the rum’s water comes from one of the purest spring- and snowmelt-charged aquifers in the country.

Montanya boasts green energy with 100 percent wind power and carbon offset, too.

You can find tours, tastings, live music and a gift/bottle shop on site.

BEER, BEER, BEER In the late 1800s, British poet A. E. Housman declared, “And malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.” We say, “Amen.” The art of brewing can be traced back between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, when grain became the first domesticated crop.

Through hieroglyphics and other written accounts, brewing was linked to ancient African, Egyptian and Sumerian tribes. Closer to home, when Prohibition drove many U.S. breweries out of business, the only alcohol legally produced and sold was “sacramental wine” for church use. Even more recently, breweries consolidated for growth and survival, making beer more uniform and mild, which awakened the upstarts who wanted more variety.

The upstarts learned to brew for themselves, launching a trend and sprouting breweries attached to pubs where the crafted

brews were sold. At the end of 2013, there were 2,822 breweries in the United States, including 2,768 craft breweries subdivided into 1,237 brewpubs, 1,412 microbreweries and 119 regional craft breweries.

The number of breweries in America just crossed the 5,000 mark, reviving the tradition of brewery taverns like those of early Americans William Penn, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. Beyond the love of beer, brewmeisters and pub owners love the craft itself, the challenge of making a fine, tasty beer. The pungent hops, sweetness of malt, odiferous fermenting yeast along with palate-tickling combinations of chocolate, coffee, berry, honey and vanilla, steeped into amber, red, gold, brown, stout, pale, wheat, ale, IPA... the choices are endless and tantalizing.

With its love of extremes in everything, this town savors its beer diversity.

Fortunately, we have two remarkable brewpubs crafting award-winning microbrews for us.

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THE ELDO BREW PUB AND TAP ROOM The “sunny place for shady people,” now in its twentieth year, has been described as the crazy drunken uncle that you’d rather hang out with, a little rough around the edges and a lot more fun. The Eldo cooks up six different brews on tap including a kolsch, blonde, brown, stout and IPA. It won “Best Lager 2015” at the Crested Butte Beer and Chili Fest, where brews from around the state competed.

The Eldo features tasty pub food and live music. The bar has ten taps and a nitro tap available and sports a small, seven-barrel brewing system, with limited distribution beyond its own customers.

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IRWIN BREWING COMPANY AND THE PUBLIC HOUSE The new kid on the block, Irwin Brewing Company, this year began creating an impressive variety of beers: IPA, double IPA, session IPA, English brown ale, oatmeal stout, Mexican lager, kolsch and pilsner.

The beer is on tap at the new Public House, which also offers cocktails made with Montanya rum and Coal Creek Distillery vodka and whiskey.

You can purchase growlers and kegs at the brewing facility at Belleview and Fourth Street. Irwin Brewing cranks out beer two to three times a week, with ten different brews, some ready in ten days and others taking more than a month. The brewery opened 93

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January 2017 with four fermentation tanks producing 30 barrels, or 1,000 gallons. Each tank has a different beer brewing. Although it’s considered small-batch, the facility is impressive with its enormous stainless steel tanks.

Brewmeister Dave Nornes uses malt to vary his flavors; roasted malts can lend a chocolate to coffee flavor to the batch, and he even brews a coconut beer. Some brews are made seasonally, like the Oktober Fest beer on tap this fall. Nornes explained that for the past five to eight years, American ales have been the rage all over the world, mostly because there are so many different flavors, and people want a change from the German beers.

Lining a white-tiled wall is a row of taps that fill the growlers. Eventually, the beer will be canned as well, which will allow Irwin brews to be sold in liquor stores and venues that don’t have draft beer. The brews are currently available in many restaurants: Coal Creek Grill, Secret Stash, Elk Avenue Prime, The Last Steep, The Public House, plus Tully’s and the General Store in Crested Butte South. They’re also distributed in Gunnison, Telluride, Ridgeway, Carbondale, Aspen and Basalt and will be in Denver next summer.

Nornes noted that the best-selling beer in almost every microbrewery across America is an India pale ale, because the public likes hops; however, some of the more classic styles are coming back, like the German pilsner and the Mexican lager. Some Bud drinkers are discovering tasty, small-batch brews, and those drinkers are leaning toward the pilsner.

From the popular beer Corona, people know they like a light Mexican lager, so that style is the fastest growing in sales. Basically, a pilsner is a lager but more hoppy.

There are two overall categories of beer – ale and lager – and yeast differentiates the two, Nornes explained. Historically, ale is warmer-fermented because, before refrigeration in England, the ale makers developed yeast conducive to brewing in their warm cellars. In Europe, the cooler German cellars required different yeast.

The brewing community is more like a fraternity, according to Nornes, and no one really has secrets; even the recipes are all over the web. It’s more about meticulousness, good ingredients and cleanliness, he said.

With all these options, enjoy the character and flavors of Crested Butte this winter – and remember to drink responsibly, take the free bus or call the Late Night Taxi to get you home safely. Bottoms up!

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By Shelley Read

You hear it in the giggles rising from under the Rec Path bridge and the whoops of joy from the sledding hill. You see it in the proud smiles crossing a finish line, taking a bow on stage and nabbing first chair. You feel it as they freewheel down Elk Avenue, pound the Headwall, build forts in the forest, and sit long and welcome in the coffee houses after school. No doubt about it—it’s darn good to be a kid in Crested Butte.

To understand just how good, I went straight to the experts. From skate park to aprés ski, from the Rainbow Park boulder to the hockey rink, good luck getting a word in edgewise once a group of local kids

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starts in on why they love this place. I just sat back, listened and took notes, basking in the enthusiasm pouring from our baby Buttians. The little polar bears are quite convinced Long Lake is not really that cold and wearing shorts to school in sub-zero weather is perfectly reasonable. Traffic lights and elevators are weirder to them than a bear on the front porch or their teacher skiing in a banana suit. They mostly talk about jumping off stuff, but they also celebrate big mountains, good food, feeling the love and, of course, all things hilarious.

Oh, they’re an opinionated bunch of sun-bleached little rascals, each with his

or her favorite story about growing up where everybody knows your name. The kindness and care shown to them by the adults in our community certainly does not go unappreciated. And as much as they may compete or tease, these kids love and watch out for each other. As one kid put it, “We’re in it together from diapers to graduation. That’s pretty cool.” Like a rowdy bunch of cousins, the older ones watch out for the little ones, and when the little ones grow up, they do the same.

“This town is like one big, wacko but really chill family,” one goggle-tanned fourth grader beamed. “It’s gnarly, dude.”

Lydia Stern

THE 75 BEST (& MOST GNARLY) THINGS

Trent Bona

ABOUT BEING A KID IN CRESTED BUTTE: SENDING IT! (AND WE’RE NOT TALKING POSTCARDS HERE…) Off the rocks into Lake Irwin Gunsight Bridge into a June pool Smith Hill jump The rock drop on Hot Rocks (to cheers from the lift!)

Blue Mesa cliffs The Peak on a powder day Hucking the second big jump in the Terrain Park Backyard decks into neck-deep powder The new dirt jumps Walking to school (super-duper fast) at -30 degrees

NAILING IT! Teo Bowl First tracks down Rabbit Ears Dropping the 9 Biking Snodgrass Taking the podium for Mountain Sports Getting funky with Adge Hitting the trails with DEVO Catching a lunker at Blue Mesa Celebrate the Beat Nathan Bilow

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THE 75 BEST (& MOST GNARLY) THINGS ABOUT BEING A KID IN CRESTED BUTTE:

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BIG NATURE

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POWDER DAYS Hiking Mt. CB for the first (or twentieth) time Elephant heads!

Watching hawks circle the autumn sky The stripes on Teo (the mountain, not the burrito) Body surfing the Slate Wicked blizzards Catching an elusive spring peeper on the Town Ranch Classes at RMBL (marmots, mayflies and bats—oh my!)

View from top of the Headwall Sunset over Red Lady Full-moon campouts on Paradise Divide Tubing and paddle boarding from the Rec Path

Grabbing a slice at Mikey’s Biting into Teo (the burrito, not the mountain) Scoring a donut AND a cone at Third Bowl Crack fry dates at The Stash Nachos at Donita’s Gourmet Noodle (Eat pasta, ski fasta!)

Anything at Ryce Camp 4’s hot chocolate with whipped cream Aprés-ski dollar slice at the Bakery A tall stack at Paradise Café Waffle Cabin, extra chocolate

FREEDOM Bench sittin’ Biking everywhere Ski for P.E. Sleepovers in snow caves Riding all night long for Bridges of the Butte “Laps on the Poop Loop with my dog” Reading on the couch at Townie Books “Choosing the perfect bead at Winnie’s shop, even if I have to look at them all” Hanging a hammock in Town Park and just chillin’ “As many books as I want from the library!”

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FUNNY STUFF Mr. Jingles Pat O’Neill The butt bus Yelling absurdities off the chairlift

“Hey! You dropped your pocket!”

Underwear on the bead trees Bob The Gronk Dogs being dogs Al Johnson costumes A cow sticking her head in the car during a highway cattle drive Tourist questions

“Where do you store the moguls in the summer?”

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FEELING THE LOVE Our school and our awesome teachers and coaches Stepping Stones, Little Red, Paradise, Miss Jenny’s Cruisers Wish lists at Pooh’s Corner Bake sales for PAWS Riding the bus with Tuck or MJ “A high school graduation card from my preschool teacher” Learning to ski Peachtree between Mom’s legs Birthday parties at the Majestic “I always hear, ‘Hi, I know your mom’ or ‘I know your dad.’ People care about me.”

Lots of hugs (“It’s a really huggy town”)

When I ask the kids if they’ll ever leave this place, they say, sure, for college or adventure somewhere down the line, but they feel certain they’ll always come back, for a lot more than jumping off of stuff.

“It’s so good to know that when we’re older, we’ll always have this place to come home to,” one child said.

Another, a teenaged Buttian with that launch from the nest on the near horizon, added wistfully, “I went to Miss Karen’s music classes as a toddler, now I take the kids I babysit to Karen’s music class, and someday I’ll take my own kids. That’s pretty special.”

Make that 76.

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Richard Guerrieri (also shown below) at a 1940s pig roast with family, including Pauline, Paul, Lucille and Ernest Guerrieri and Kathy, Jimmy, Anton, Tony and Donna (Sneller) Christoff.

Excerpted from The Spaghetti Gang, a Crested Butte memoir by Richard Guerrieri, 86, with his daughter Cara Guerrieri.

Oh, how those old country Crested Butte women could cook!

The homemade blood sausage from my early days in the 1930s was out of this world, but it was quite a process to make sausage starting from a live pig.

My family and others around town bought a few weaner pigs each spring to fatten up. Pigs couldn’t be kept in town too easy, so we’d find a rancher to leave them with all summer. Our family kept pigs with Sid Niccoli, whose ranch was close to what is now Crested Butte South. Since all the ranchers back then had a milk cow or two, they had plenty of leftover whey from making cottage and ricotta cheese to feed the pigs. A month before the butchering, the ranchers fed the pigs grain, too, so by late fall those animals would weigh 250 pounds or more, no problem.

Keeping the family fed was a full-time occupation, and fall was a busy time. We didn’t run to the store for every little thing we needed

like people do now.

Mom kept an old cook stove boiling all fall for canning fruits she picked in Paonia and vegetables from our garden. Like everybody else in town, she grew potatoes, turnips, carrots and cabbage. She made her own sauerkraut, just like they did in the old country back in Croatia, in big crocks that were two feet high and a foot in diameter. We didn’t eat fancy, but at the very least we always had coffee and eggs for breakfast, and peanut butter and homemade jam for noontime dinner. We ate sauerkraut at almost every supper, along with potatoes and meat.

We ate a lot of wild game, but we also depended on that homecured pork, which was a lot of work, especially on butchering days.

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Richard’s grandparents, George and Frances (Mance) Sneller, and his twin sisters, Pauline and Lucille, at their White Rock Avenue house in the late 1930s.

We’d get together with the friends and extended family—the Niccolis, Snellers (also spelled Sneler), Rozmans, Christoffs and Veltris—to share the chore. Me and my sisters and all the other kids, including a good portion of my 24 first cousins, trotted along, too. Our job, for the most part, was to stay the hell out of the way.

The families gathered up at the rancher’s place, where the men built a fire underneath a couple of metal half-barrels. The barrels had welded legs attached and stood two to three feet off the ground. The barrels were filled with water and there was a large wooden table close by.

Once the water was good and boiling, a few of the men went in the pigpen and dragged a squealing pig next to the fire. Oh, 104

Neighbors convened at ranches like Sid and Justina Niccoli’s place to butcher and prepare the pigs.

what a painful racket them pigs made just before they got shot in the head.

The men immediately hoisted the dead pig up a tri-pod scaffold using a rope and pulleys. Here came the women, scurrying in with buckets to catch the blood for making blood sausage. Blood gushed out for several minutes, and not a drop of it was wasted.

After the pig was pretty well bled out, it took four men to lug the carcass over and drop it into the boiling water, which was mixed with ashes to help loosen the hair.

As soon as the hair started to slip, the pig was lifted out of the water and moved to a wooden table. That’s where the real work started. With big sharp knives, the adults took turns scraping the hair off. All around the table they’d work like mad to get every

hair off before the pig cooled and the hair set back into the skin. By the time they were done cleaning the hide, that hog would be slick, not one hair left, even on its nose or anywhere.

Then back to the scaffold went the pig, raised up high to be dressed out. Here came the women again with their buckets, this time for saving the heart, the liver and all the intestines. When that was done, we grabbed clean blankets or sheets, covered the rest of the pig, and loaded it into the back of a pickup truck. Sometimes we’d go have a big picnic and roast the pig whole on a spit, but usually we’d head off to my Grandma Sneller’s house at 117 White Rock Avenue for the butchering and curing.

What a scene in the Sneller dining

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room. Me and my sisters watched the whole goings-on and tried to stay out of the fray, but curiosity got the best of us now and again and we’d get hollered at. Standing around the dining room table, my Grandma Sneller, Aunt Katherine, Aunt Donna and Mom cut the hams, the ribs, and the chops off the carcass. All those parts were for smoking. Anything left that couldn’t be smoked got made into sausage. The feet they pickled, which was the only thing they made out of the pig that I truly hated.

The sausage making, now, that was quite the deal. The intestines got washed until there was nothing left but the casing. Meat and the pork fat were put into a big hand grinder which had a round metal tube about eight inches long sticking out of it. A piece of the 105

The Guerrieris butchering a pig to keep the family fed over the winter.

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clean pig gut got pushed onto the outside of that tube. One end of the gut was tied in a knot, and the women would go about pushing the meat into the grinder and out the tube. The ground-up concoction filled the intestine, and when about five inches of casing was crammed full, the women tied a string around it, then pushed more meat.

This continued until there was a string of sausages two or three feet long, just the right length for hanging in the smoke house. The kids’ job was to carry the strips of links to the smoke house in the yard behind the house.

We made two kinds of sausage, a spicy kielbasa with caraway seeds in it, a recipe from my mom’s side of the family, and old country blood sausage from the Italian side.

The mix for blood sausage included the fresh pig blood they’d collected, plus rice and spices, all stirred up in a big vat. The mixture sat while the blood cooled and absorbed the rice and thickened. Then my ma and the women pushed that blood and rice mixture

through the grinder and into the intestines, too.

All the hams, ribs and sausages got hung up high in the smoke house, probably about 15 feet off the ground. Underneath the meat, on the ground, Grandpa Sneller built the fire. He kept it small and smoky, just right so the flames were low but the hot smoke cured the meat perfectly. Those old country people had the whole system figured out down to a T.

This slaughtering, butchering and curing went on for several weekends in a row, folks and neighbors gathering up to butcher at various ranches, and houses all over town processing the meat. In those days, folks didn’t worry about getting sick from the blood or the meat the way we do now. The women knew how to clean and cure the pork properly, and I didn’t think to question it.

It’s been many decades since I tasted Grandma’s blood sausage, but all these years later my mouth still waters thinking about it.

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Wildlife patterns are changing, too, as observed by researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory north of Crested Butte. Marmots are coming out of hibernation much earlier, for example.

Scientists project other changes, like declining snowpack, more wildfires and lower water quality—not to mention the unprecedented number and severity of extreme weather events we’re already witnessing.

Snow is currency in Colorado, and climate change is expected to contribute to warmer winters, reduced snowfall and shorter snow seasons. According to a report funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and conducted by a group of Colorado scientists, ski resorts are projected to see reductions in ski season lengths of 50 percent by 2050 and 80 percent by 2090 for some downhill skiing locations.

Amid these projections, what do we do?

We can help by reducing our own greenhouse gas emissions, changing wasteful everyday habits, and encouraging policy support from our local, federal and world governments.

Protecting our

LOCAL INITIATIVES

winters

AS RESEARCHERS STUDY CLIMATE-SHIFT IMPACTS IN OUR FRAGILE ALPINE BACKYARD, OUR COMMUNITIES ARE TAKING ACTION. YOU CAN, TOO.

By Cassie Pence

Everything we cherish about the mountains—e.g. skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, ice fishing, ice climbing, wildlife, majestic pines, fresh air and clean water—is at risk because of climate change. Mountain regions are particularly vulnerable due to their complex water systems and ecology. And mountain communities are vulnerable because their economies are driven by outdoor fun, which is driven by climate.

The high stakes have prompted research specific to our state and our valley – and inspired action by government agencies, businesses and individuals. The news may feel disheartening, but we can each take action to help.

LOCAL IMPACTS According to “Climate Change in Colorado,” a report written by Jeff Lukas, University of Colorado, our state’s temperature has risen by 2.0 degrees over the past 30 years. That warming, accelerated by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, might not sound significant, but it’s changing the mountains’ ecosystems.

Spring snowmelt and peak runoff have shifted earlier by one to four weeks across Colorado’s river basins over the past three decades (also from Lukas’ report). This affects rafting and fishing and impacts the overall health of the rivers and reservoirs, including the spread of disease and increase in non-native species.

Xavier Fané

Dr. Abel Chavez is assistant professor of Environment and Sustainability and coordinator for the Master in Environmental Management’s Department in Sustainable and Resilient Communities at Western State Colorado University. He partnered with Gunnison County to develop a robust GHG emissions baseline and forecast for our rural community from 2015 to 2030.

“I take my expertise in climate mitigation and develop a set of protocols and procedures for communities to take, using global best practices, which I helped develop through my scientific research, to reduce GHG emissions via a suite of actions. Such actions may be voluntary, market-based or regulatory,” said Chavez, who came to Western from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

The study took a snapshot of Gunnison County’s carbon footprint, how much GHG emissions we’re producing and where it’s coming from. Chavez said the single largest source of emissions, at 27%, is residential buildings (consisting of electricity use and liquefied gas). Next is on-road transportation at 23% (17% gasoline combustion and 5% diesel combustion) and finally 20% from commercial and industrial buildings.

The study also discovered that 30% of our emissions are happening beyond the boundaries of the county. These 111

Julie Donohue turns the compost bins at Guerilla Composting near Crested Butte South.

“trans boundary emissions” are coming from things like fuel refining, building material production, food production and transportation, waste generation and landfilling.

“As a community we have an opportunity to consider pretty deep cuts in our energy use and GHG emission based on the activities we’re conducting within the county and the GHGs being emitted beyond the valley,” Chavez said.

The study, presented January 2017, inspired county commissioners to pledge a 20% increase in energy efficiency by 2030.

Western, Chavez added, has pledged to be zero waste by 2020, which means the university is pushing to divert 85-90% of its waste.

WHAT WE CAN DO From simple lifestyle adjustments to larger investments to contacting legislators, each person can make an impact. Together, we are climate; we are change.

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Consumers pick up bags of locally grown food, delivered by Farm Runners to Misty Mountain Floral each week through the harvest season.

Being the change at home: The largest source of GHGs within our county is generation of electricity used to power residential and commercial buildings. So making our homes and buildings more energy efficient could dramatically cut our carbon footprint.

The lowest hanging fruit is switching all incandescent bulbs to LEDs. Switch 25 bulbs and you cut one ton of carbon pollution.

A hot air balloon is the equivalent of one ton of CO2. Visualize 25 hot air balloons rising above Gunnison County, lifting away pollution, just because you changed some light bulbs.

Beyond that, Chavez recommends getting an energy audit, and Gunnison County Electric Association (GCEA) does them for free.

“Usually people come in because they think their bill’s higher than it should be and they can’t figure out why,” said Alantha Garrison, GCEA energy use specialist. “So we do a visit and do a lot of detective work as

P{hotos: Petar Dopchev

to where that energy is being used. It’s often not so obvious. It might be a bad element in a water heater, or heating that they don’t realize is running, like in-floor heat, or even a pressure pump.”

During an energy audit, Garrison measures the energy use and then recommends how the client can cut it.

After ruling out the energy suckers, like the ones above, Garrison looks at the building envelope and overall efficiency of the home to create a list of ways to tighten up energy use. Common improvements include sealing cracks, adding insulation in the attic and crawlspaces, and upgrading appliances and boiler systems with Energy Star or other efficient models. Some of these come with rebates and tax credits, and Garrison can help navigate those benefits. Rebates also help pay back the investment sooner. With GCEA’s rebate for replacing inefficient commercial light fixtures with new LEDs, the payback can be just six months, she said.

Of course using renewable energy is a

great way to reduce overall energy demand.

Solar is getting cheaper, and installing 1KW of solar electric, about three panels, cuts one ton of carbon pollution.

The trouble with trash: What you throw in the landfill has huge impacts on the climate.

Methane, the greenhouse gas that results from anaerobic decomposition of organic waste, is 84 times more potent than CO2 in the first 20 years it’s released. Translation: Methane is even better at warming the planet than CO2.

The best way to reduce methane is to remove organic waste — things like food scraps, yard waste and wood — from the landfill through composting.

If you have enough land, you can start a backyard composting pile. But many of us don’t have space or do have concerns: it might smell, annoy the neighbors or attract bears.

Julie Donohue, a California native, saw these misconceptions and created a composting service. Guerilla Composting picks up clients’ food scraps weekly or biweekly and composts them south of Crested Butte South throughout the year. She has about 30 residential clients, and she also composts the food scraps from Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s restaurant operations. She’s hoping to attract more commercial clients.

“Everyone is looking at farm-to-table and where their food is coming from. This is the next step. This is full cycle. Food from the restaurant is going back into the soil that the farming is using to produce the food,” she said.

Another local grassroots organization, Sustainable Crested Butte, helps cut trash through “waste-free events.” People hosting events can rent the organization’s reusable plastic plates and cups, along with silverware, wineglasses and cloth napkins collected from thrift stores.

“Instead of people using paper or plastic for their barbeque or birthday party and then throwing it away, they can rent from us. It’s affordable, too, a requested $30 donation for a 100-piece set, and we’ll deliver and clean,” said Kelli Jones, board president.

Sustainable CB helped get a town ordinance passed banning single-use plastic bags as of 2018, and with its Boomerang bag program, retail stores can send their customers away with reusable bags (returnable at participating stores or the chamber’s bag tree).

The group also got a grant to install a refillable water bottle station at the Second and Elk bus stop to reduce the waste of single-use plastic water bottles.

Saving energy on the road: Twentythree percent of the county’s GHG emissions 113

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are from on-road vehicles. With our smaller communities, that could be cut by more people walking, hopping on bikes or using the free bus system.

Greener plates: Growing your own food or buying locally grown food at the farmers market in summer is a tasty, healthy and relatively easy lifestyle change that lessens your carbon footprint. Mountain Roots, a Gunnison-based nonprofit, helps people eat locally by teaching them to grow, connecting them with their farmers, and producing food for the community food pantry. Farm Runners, a farm delivery service, is another resource for eating locally year round.

The voice of change: To make a massive impact around climate change, Protect Our Winters (POW) encourages people to go beyond individual actions to influence governmental decision-making.

POW is a crew of professional athletes and industry representatives working to mobilize the outdoor sports community to lead the charge toward positive climate action, since snow sports are at risk. The team includes Auden Schendler of Aspen Ski Company and outdoor pros like Gretchen Bleiler, Conrad Anker and Jeremy Jones, POW’s founder and president.

They focus on education and communitybased activism, but first on the take-action list is “get political.” Lindsay Bourgoine, advocacy and campaign manager for POW, said calls to legislators are more effective than emails – even if the caller simply expresses concern about climate change and loss of snowpack. She noted, “It can feel intimidating to call your congressman, but he’s not going to debate you on the phone; you are leaving a message.”

POW makes it easy by providing scripts and numbers to call. On POW’s radar is budget – making sure agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency have funding to carry out the climate protections already in place. POW is also minding potential administration proposals to roll back transportation and fuel economy standards, since in 2016 transportation surpassed electricity as the biggest source of carbon pollution in the U.S.

Individuals and organizations like POW must continue to express their concerns and let the government know they’re paying attention, Bourgoine said.

In this beautiful, fragile alpine setting, we have a lot to lose. May we use that as motivation to honor and protect the snowy mountains we love.

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HIGH STAKES, BIG CHANGES CRESTED BUTTE’S SKI RESORT MOVES TOWARD ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY.

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Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR), the valley’s biggest energy consumer, also faces big consequences from climate change. So the ski resort is making changes, bit by bit. Matt Feier, director of planning and sustainability at CBMR, explained how the resort is greening its operations.

• CBMR’s strategic plan for the next three years prioritizes reducing its energy consumption.

• After hiring two Western graduates from the Master in Environmental Management program to do an energy audit, CBMR is making its buildings more energy efficient. The focus is “upgrades that have the quickest payback,” Feier said: from switching to LED lights to adding insulation and installing new boiler systems.

• The ski resort launched a composting program for its restaurants with Guerilla Composting.

• CBMR created an environmental stewardship committee to determine how to fulfill its green initiatives.

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John Holder

• CBMR worked with Tesla to install 16 new electrical vehicle-charging stations, 10 of which are universal charging stations.

HANNAH HANNAH MONTOYA MONTOYA

75+ ACADEMIC 75+ ACADEMIC PROGRAMS PROGRAMS 16 STUDENTS: 16 STUDENTS: AVERAGE AVERAGE CLASSCLASS SIZE SIZE THIRD THIRD LOWESTLOWEST TUITIONTUITION IN COLORADO IN COLORAD

Business Administration Business Administration with emphases with emphases in Marketing in Marketing and and Innovation,Innovation, Creativity &Creativity Entrepreneurship & Entrepreneurship MARKETING MARKETING INTERN FOR INTERN NESTLÉ FOR PURINA NESTLÉ PURINA Hannah spent Hannah the summer spent the insummer Bogotá, Colombia, in Bogotá, Colombia, where where she workedshe on worked two major forprojects Nestlé for Nestlé on marketing two major projects marketing Purina PetCare Purina Co.—and PetCareexercised Co.—andher exercised Spanishher skills.

Spanish skills.

She also went Shethough also went company thoughstructure companyand structure operations and operations training, focused training, onfocused marketing, on marketing, sales, finance sales, & control, finance & control, and factoryand functions. factory functions.

A Western education on focuses unlocking A Western focuses education on each unlocking each student’s fullest student’s potential fullestand potential ensuring andthey ensuring they graduate prepared graduatefor prepared an ever-changing for an ever-changing world. world.

We believeWe thatbelieve necessitates that necessitates going beyond going beyond knowledgeknowledge learned in alearned classroom in a setting. classroom setting.

Here, applied projects give students hands-on Here, applied projects give studentsexperience hands-on experience while building while their building communication, their communication, project-management project-management and problem-solving Plus, internships and problem-solving skills. Plus,skills. internships connect connect students within the professional world and enable them students within the professional world and enable them to apply coursework to real work. to apply coursework to real work.

When our students leave campus, When our students leave campus, they are they are prepared and ready to contribute to their prepared and ready to contribute to their company, organization or nonprofit. company, organization or nonprofit.

SCHOOL OFSCHOOL BUSINESS OF BUSINESS 117

Randall Gee

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Life, land and transformation

Dusty Demerson

By Cosmo Langsfeld

In late July, the wild grass along the trails has bolted, the seed heads turned brown, even with all the rain that has bolstered and extended the wildflower bloom. The tips of skunk cabbage leaves look burnt, and cattle graze the high country. Afternoon sun takes the angled repose of encroaching autumn, and I feel the urgency that comes with this time of year: the end is nigh. All too quickly, summer will fade, crowds will dwindle, town will mellow down. Soon it will be fall. The days will shorten. Cows will be pushed down out of summer grazing in the National Forests, the cattle drives choking traffic along the highway. The elk will go into rut and it will be hunting season. Visitors and residents attempting to fill their freezers with meat. Then a drop in temperature, freezing precipitation, and before long, winter will be here, and with it a sense of quiet.

Snow transforms the mountains. Everything goes white. Sound travels differently in the cold. The possibility of avalanches restricts backcountry travel (hopefully) to those with the experience and knowledge to navigate ever-shifting conditions. The spread of masses across the land is condensed to a few drainages, the groomed tracks of Nordic trails, and the ski area. Even the cattle are confined, huddled in lines beside the ruts of tractors in the snowy pastures

where hay is spread daily. Without the option of comfortable camping, people are constrained to the towns and houses along a tributary system of roads.

All my life I’ve looked forward to the transition of seasons, when I can see and feel everything changing. In fall there are still elements of summer: occasional warm days great for longer backcountry excursions, without the mid-summer threat of afternoon thunderstorms. And I turn giddy when the sky spits the first bits of snow. It’s like I’m simultaneously holding onto the past with one hand, reaching toward the future with the other, while attempting to keep my mind planted somewhere in the middle.

For the past two years this seasonal shift has been correlated with my own transitions: spending summers outdoors doing manual labor, moving inside as the temperature cools. A perfect balance really: my livelihood dependent at different times of the year on the land itself and the people who use it. It’s good to get a view of the community from different perspectives. Observe how things morph throughout seasons, adding up to years.

I’ve moved away from the valley and come back four times in my life, most recently for a three-year stint away, returning in November 119

of 2015. It’s true; the changes are palpable.

The house in Crested Butte South where I lived until I was seven, at the time the fifth house on the left, is now the twelfth or fifteenth. When I drive past that subdivision on Highway 135, I’m always amazed at how it continues to grow.

But whenever I move back to town, I notice more than anything how much stays the same. The town. The people. What people do and say. What and whom they love. The things they complain about. The reasons people continue to live here.

Then there’s the land. Yes, there are new scars, maybe houses where there weren’t before. New trails where once there were none (either positive or negative, depending on your perspective). The beetle kill, so prominent in other parts of the state, has crept into Taylor Canyon and the Jack’s Cabin area. Yet in the end, the mountains are still the same mountains I grew up with. On any given day of the year, there are places I can go where I won’t see another soul, and those places remain much as they’ve always been. A reassurance amid the uncertainties of a world in flux that some things remain constant.

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Transformation is subtle, susceptible to undercurrents in our subconscious.

Sometimes the changes don’t become obvious until after they’ve taken place.

Shifts in thought process are affected by the outside world and in turn affect the way we view the world.

For example, I tend to organize my music into playlists, compiling songs that strike some kind of chord with how I’m feeling. I put them together and listen to them obsessively until the feeling fades.

Some songs are new to me. Others are older ones that I rediscover. There’s no set amount of time, months or weeks, that a list will last.

It happens naturally. I find other songs that resonate more soundly with what is going on in my life and a new list begins.

I go back to lists from time to time, and it’s always interesting to see what I was into a month, six months, a year ago. A glimpse of my psyche at a specific moment. A window into past chapters. Like staring at a picture of town from the seventies and picking out the things that are still recognizable today.

On July 29 this year, I saw fresh white on the peaks up Paradise Divide – either snow or a heavy hailstorm. Either way, a

reminder in the heat of summer madness that all things must come to an end. The long days of summer, the warmth and the green. A few days later it grew a little cooler. The sun began to wane in strength.

My forays into the wilderness digressed.

Whereas before I had missions, specific bike rides or runs I wanted to get in, now I rambled. Within a week I’d begun a new playlist.

In nature there are no clear boundaries between seasons, only a continuous state of transformation between what was and what is yet to come. That holds true in the human world as well. The community today still has elements familiar from my childhood, while present-day residents look toward how things can grow and change in the future. But in matters of the unpredictable forthcoming, as in all things out of my control, it’s a comfort to remember that life contains certain inevitabilities. As summer dissolves and plant life begins to die off, winter sits on the horizon. The long, dark nights, woodstoves and warm drinks. And I know that after that the days will lengthen, and as the world begins to thaw, springtime will herald another opportunity for renewal.

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Reed and Laura Meredith with son Gage.

The

By Reed Meredith

gift

What could mean more to the parents of a teen?

The winter-solstice sun shines in my eyes on a brisk December day as I spy him across the parking lot. His long blond “flow” waves with the wind, and his eyes sparkle brilliant blue. As he jokes with his friends, a smile spreads across his face and his head tilts back, eyes closing as he falls into an easy laugh. The freezing temperatures have somehow failed to prompt the use of a jacket. Beneath his favorite threadbare T-shirt, a firm posture and broad shoulders emanate a quiet confidence that draws others toward him. Sprouts of facial hair on his chin signal the edge of manhood quickly approaching. He walks to the car and slings a backpack into the back seat with a thud that betrays its weight. As he collapses in the passenger seat, “Hi Dad” is all I get from my 122

now quiet teenager as he buckles up for the ride home.

How did six pounds of pink, rubbery flesh turn into a young man overnight?

Have I entered some time warp that has transported me 18 years into the future?

While I still feel like I must be in my thirties… a quick look in the rearview mirror reveals the face of an older man, with wrinkles, gray hair and eyes that reflect the wear of years.

Senior. A term used to describe his final year of high school and my AARP card.

When everyone tells you the years will pass quickly, you smile and acknowledge… but you can’t really comprehend it until this moment. And then, it takes your breath away. For a dad, the first years crawl slowly

by as you’re relegated to the “second” parent position of “not mom.” Around the age of five, your charge becomes self sufficient and you gain a “mini-me” buddy. And then the teens hit and you struggle to encourage his independence, knowing that you’ll never be “cool” in his eyes again.

As I drive home, the flashbacks come in quick one-hitters. Strapping a squirming blue footie pajama into a car seat. Chasing a two-foot lightning bolt through the woods and teaching him how to pee outside. Hearing the laughing joy and seeing the thrill of skiing down the North Face. Learning that schools no longer teach long division like they did in the sixties as I try to help with homework.

Consoling the heartbreak of a stinging hockey loss. Pedaling as hard as I can… to catch up,

the wisps of trail dust showing which way to follow the Tasmanian devil ahead of me.

Catching a glimpse in the mirror of the two of us and wondering how it is that I have shrunk below his height. Holding my breath while trying to lift my end of the heavy load as he casually chats on as if it’s nothing. Making him play ping-pong with me… because it’s the one thing at which I can “usually” still beat him. Wondering if he’ll ever beg to “play” with his parents again. My wife and I have lost him to the teenage years.

And then it happens. Christmas. Filled with meaningless gifts that of course we don’t need. All the presents opened, wrapping paper in piles on the floor. As we start to clean up the mountain of colored paper, we hear, “Wait, I have one more present for you…. It’s stupid, so don’t get too excited.”

What could it be? We’re well past the years of school art projects. A gift certificate?

A photo? He disappears for a moment and then emerges from the guest room where the computer printer lives and presents us with two crisp white pages filled with singlespaced lines of text. He’s already retreating as he hands us the pages, moving quickly to the kitchen table so he won’t have to view our reaction.

We huddle together on the sofa and begin to read the words he’s crafted. Reading the first sentence, I realize that we’ll both be in tears before the end of the page. His “gift” is a letter of loving gratitude to us, his parents, thanking us for all we’ve done for him in the past 18 years.

Embarrassed by our show of emotion, he puts on his headphones and stares at his laptop. But his printed words belie his indifference, filling our hearts with realization that our loving little boy is still in there, lurking below the bravado of a distant young man.

With teary eyes we hug the author, hoping to express our love in a way that words cannot. I doubt he truly understands the magnitude of the gift he’s given us. A gift that hasn’t come from a store, a gift that comes from the heart.

Years from now he will find his original text, tear-stained and tattered from repeated readings, stored away in his mother’s box of treasured memories. I hope that perhaps one day, long after he has buckled his own squirming six-pound blue footie pajama into a car seat, he’ll receive his own gift of love that takes his breath away… and then he’ll comprehend the enormity of his gift to us this Christmas.

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Winter events

NOVEMBER

2017-2018

11

Opening day for Crested Butte Nordic Center (CBNC)

16

Historic Pub Crawl, Crested Butte Mtn. Heritage Museum

20-22

Trailhead Children’s Museum Art Camp

22

Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR) $15 donation ski day

23

CBMR official opening day of the ski season

23-26

Thanksgiving Nordic Ski Camp, CBNC

25

Winter Kick-Off Party

25

Warren Miller’s “Line of Descent,” Center for the Arts (CFTA)

26

Alley Loop Race Series

DECEMBER 2, 9, 16

Crested Butte Mountain Theatre Holiday Extravaganza

3

Santa Night, Crested Butte Mtn. Heritage Museum

8

Avalanche Awareness Night, CB Avalanche Center

9

Santa Ski & Crawl

9

Light Up Night, Mt. Crested Butte

15-16

COSMIC Ski Mountaineering races

15

Speaker Series at the Museum

15

KBUT Bingo Night

16

Alley Loop Race Series

21

Crested Butte Film Festival (CBFF): “13th”

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“How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” CFTA

23, 26, 27, 30

Yurt Dinner, CBNC

24

Torchlight Parade & Santa’s Sleighride, CBMR

26-29

Trout Steak Revival, CFTA

29

CBFF: Warren Miller’s “Line of Descent”

30

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Trailhead Holiday Art Camp

28 29

Lydia Stern

Winter Solstice at the Umbrella Bar

21

ArtWalk at galleries and studios Lao Tizer Band, CFTA

31

New Year’s Eve Aprés at Umbrella Bar

31

Torchlight Parade and Fireworks, CBMR

31

New Year’s Eve Yurt Dinner

JANUARY Trent Bona

1, 31

Full Moon at Ten Peaks

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ArtWalk all month with scavenger hunt

2, 3, 12, 19

Yurt Dinner, CBNC

5

Jack Gwydion (Jackson Melnick), CFTA Alley Loop Race Series

7

Food Pantry donation day, CBMR

10, 17, 24, 31

gO Ski Mountaineering Series

15

Nordic Jr. National Qualifier, CBNC

11-13 18 19-21 19-21 20

Mountain High Music Festival CBFF: “Patti Cake$” Elan Women’s Weekend, CBMR gO SkiMo Academy training camp Victor Wooten Trio, CFTA

21

Butte Banked Slalom Race, CBMR

21

Magic Meadows 7 Nordic Race

24-28

Nordic Skiing/Yoga Retreats, CBNC

25-28

Fat Bike World Championships

26 27 J.C. Leacock

6, 15

Movie Night at the Museum The Drunken Hearts, CFTA 125

Winter events 2017-2018

FEBRUARY 2-3 2

Alley Loop Nordic Marathon, CBNC

MARCH 1, 31

Full Moon at Ten Peaks

2-4

USASA Boardercross & Skiercross

3, 10, 14, 17, 23, 24 Yurt Dinners, CBNC

3

Crafted Tasting Event, CBMR

9

2 Star Freeride World Qualifier

3, 10, 17

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Red Lady Ball

8

10

Miner’s Ball for the Museum

9

KBUT Bingo at the Yurt

10-11

4 Star Freeride World Qualifier

9-11

AFSA Jr. Nationals Freeskiing Competition

10-11

USASA Slopestyle & Rail Jam

14, 21, 28

3-4

11 12-16 13 15, 16

Head for the Hills, CFTA

Xavier Fané

IFSA Jr. Regional Freeskiing Competition

Zoso, CFTA

15

Ten Peaks Sunset Soirees CBFF: Oscar-nominated live-action short films

Backcountry Powder Camp, Irwin Guides

16

ArtWalk at studios and galleries

Mardi Gras celebration

16

Speaker Series at the Museum

Chris Robinson Brotherhood, CFTA

18

16

ArtWalk at studios and galleries

21, 22

16

Speaker Series at the Museum

23-24

17

Yurt Dinners, CBNC Keller Williams, CFTA

CBFF: Oscar-nominated animated short films

24

Al Johnson Uphill-Downhill Telemark Race Elephant Revival, CFTA GORE-TEX Grand Traverse backountry ski race Winter Chainless Downhill Bike Race

19-23

Trailhead Art Camp

30

22-25

Prater Cup Jr. Olympic qualifier

30

KBUT’s Soul Train

24

Gothic Mountain Tour backcountry ski race

31

Get the Girls Out, SheJumps women’s ski day

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Mark Rapp Group, CFTA

APRIL

1 Easter Egg Hunt, Mountaineer Square 7 Pond Skim, CBMR 4-8 50th Flauschink celebration 8 Closing day, CBMR and CBNC 29 CB3P: Pole, Pedal and Paddle

Nathan Bilow

Trent Bona

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LODGING ALPINE GETAWAYS Vacation Rentals 510 Elk Avenue Crested Butte

AD PAGE 33

OLD TOWN INN

J.C. Leacock

Hotel & Family Inn PO Box 990 708 6th Street, Crested Butte

ELK MOUNTAIN LODGE

Cozy B&B with European ski lodge charm.

Homemade Continental breakfast. Hot tub with mountain views. Private baths. Near free shuttle; walk to shops & restaurants.

1.800.824.7899 cristianaguesthaus.com info@cristianaguesthaus.com

Historic inn located in a residential neighborhood of downtown Crested Butte.

Just two blocks off the main street. 19 rooms individually decorated. Some with balconies.

1.800.374.6521 elkmountainlodge.net info@elkmountainlodge.net

Bed & Breakfast Hotel 621 Maroon Avenue PO Box 427, Crested Butte

Crested Butte’s premium vacation rentals. We work with each client to provide the perfect vacation -- arranging accommodations, activities, tours and more.

1.800.260.1935 alpinegetaways.com

CRISTIANA GUESTHAUS

The warmth of a family inn; value, convenience & amenities of a hotel. Home-made afternoon snacks, yummy breakfast. Rooms with two queens or one king bed. On shuttle route, stroll to shops, restaurants & trailheads.

1.888.349.6184 oldtowninn.net info@oldtowninn.net AD PAGE 129

Bed & Breakfast Lodge PO Box 148 129 Gothic Avenue, Crested Butte

AD PAGE 129

AD PAGE 130

PEAK PROPERTY MANAGEMENT & SALES Vacation and Long-term Rentals PO Box 2023, 318 Elk Avenue

Crested Butte’s premier provider of vacation rentals, long-term rentals, property management services and real estate sales.

Specializing in one to four bedroom private vacation rentals in historic Crested Butte, the mountain and the Club at Crested Butte. Call or email us today.

1.888.909.7325 info@peakcb.com AD PAGE 130

PIONEER GUEST CABINS Cabins 2094 Cement Creek, South of CB

Established in 1939, inside National Forest, only 12 minutes from town. 8 clean and cozy cabins, with Cement Creek running through the property. Fully equipped kitchens, comfy beds, fireplaces and more. Dog friendly, open year round.

970.349.5517 pioneerguestcabins.com pioneerguestcabins@gmail.com AD PAGE 130

The warmth of a family inn; the value and convenience of a hotel.

FREE WiFi • Continental Breakfast • Afternoon Cookies Organic Coffee All Day • Hot Tub • Pet-friendly Non-smoking • Eco-friendly Products & Practices

Call 1(888)-349-6184 to book!

A Distinctive, Unique, Historic Inn Downtown Crested Butte

800.374.6521 ElkMountainLodge.com 129

Op e n Ye a r R o u n d • Po o c h e s We l c o m e

VIEW OUR CABINS INSIDE AND OUT AT PIONEERGUESTCABINS.COM | 970.349.5517

Luxury Vacation Home Rentals & Real Estate Sales

PEAK PROPERTY MANAGEMENT & SALES 318 Elk Ave. 130

Crested Butte

970-349-6339

peakcb.com

DINING

Petar Dopchev

9380’ • (970) 251-3000

BUTTE 66 ROADHOUSE BAR & GRILL 349-2999

COAL BREAKER COFFEE CO. (970) 349-2229

A contemporary spin on the ski lodge. Serving something for everyone, all with subtle twists to intrigue your palate and keep you coming back for more. The large deck with its slopeside fire pit and outdoor bar is the perfect location for an après drink.

Serving up casual lunch and dinner classics, along with delicious libations (including full strength milkshakes for those 21+), live music and the best deck in the base area! skicb.com

Named after the local 1890’s Floresta coal breaker, the largest facility in the west. Featuring espresso drinks, breakfast sandwiches, crepes made to order, bagels and hand-scooped ice cream. skicb.com

Open Seasonally Year-Round

Open Seasonally Year-Round

Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner

Lunch / Dinner

Elevation Hotel, Mt. Crested Butte Spirits and food with altitude.

Treasury Center, Mt. CB Base Area

Ad pg. 135

Ad pg. 134

Treasury Center, Mt. CB Base Area

Breakfast / Lunch

THE ICE BAR AT ULEYS • 349-2275

LAST STEEP • 349-7007

The creative cuisines and cozy atmosphere makes for a great lunch at Uley’s Cabin. Don’t miss the legendary bar made out of ice! At night enjoy a sleigh ride dinner featuring a handcrafted five course dining experience, well-chosen cocktails, and impeccable service. skicb.com/uleys Open Throughout the Winter Season

Sandwiches/soup/salads. Casual family dining.

Affordable menu with Caribbean island flair; Cajun chicken pasta, curry shrimp and coconut salad, artichoke-cheddar soup in bread bowl. Happy hour and daily specials.

411 Third Street, Downtown

Lunch / Dinner

Lunch / Dinner

Dinner

Slopeside Below the Top of the Red Lady Lift

Ad pg. 132

PARADISE ON CRESTED BUTTE (970) 349-2333

Slopeside at the Bottom of Paradise Express Casual mountain dining in the heart of the Rockies with grill, pasta and salad stations, a huge sun deck, great music and a lively bar. Plus, check out our brand new pizza station!

MARCHITELLI’S GOURMET NOODLE • 349-7401

208 Elk Avenue, Downtown

Ad pg. 135

SOUPCON . 349-5448

Off Elk Avenue on Second, Downtown

Ad pg. 124

UMBRELLA BAR AT TEN PEAKS 349-4673 On Mountain at top of Painter Boy Lift

Welcome to our 35 ft. umbrella bar with spectacular 360 ° views. You’ll be refreshed with access to a full bar, local Colorado beers on draft and plenty of food options to keep the whole family happy. skicb.com

Ad pg. 135

SPELLBOUND PIZZA CO. (970) 349-2998

Treasury Center, Mt. Crested Butte

Dinner

Lunch

Ad pg. 133

Fast, friendly counter service pizza and deli. Try out the “Grab & Go” menu featuring creative wraps and salads for when you’re on the move. Domestic and microbrews now available. Call in advance to order your pizza! skicb.com Open Throughout the Winter Season

Ad pg. 124

WOODEN NICKEL • 349-6350

WOODSTONE GRILLE • 349-8030

Steaks, prime rib, king crab. USDA Prime cuts of beef, Alaska King crab, ribs, pork and lamb chops, grilled seafood, burgers, chicken fried steak and buffalo burgers. Reservations accepted.

Come and enjoy our alpine menu and new look, featuring custom stone oven pizza, pasta and signature grill items. Play billiards on our open table! skicb.com

222 Elk Avenue, Downtown

The Grand Lodge, Mt. Crested Butte

Open Seasonally Year-Round

Open Seasonally Year-Round

Lunch

Italian. Offering generations of family recipes in a cozy, relaxed atmosphere. Featuring unique pasta sauce combos, traditional and regional Italian, seafood, veal and elk. Reservations recommended.

Romantic, petite bistro featuring traditional French technique using local ingredients married with the finest cuisine from around the world. Open seven nights a week. Two seatings nightly. Reservations recommended.

Open Throughout the Winter Season

Lunch

Ad pg. 124

Ad pg. 132

Dinner

Ad pgs. 75

Breakfast / Dinner

Ad pg. 134 131

Fun for foodies These winter events celebrate food and drink.

In the 1880s, prospectors and miners gathered in Crested Butte for supplies and great grub. Today hungry diners still find fine, fun and sophisticated cuisine rare for such a small town. Beyond its reputation for excellent restaurants, Crested Butte also honors the taste buds with food-related events throughout the year. Here are three winter headliners.

CRAFTED, MARCH 3, 2018

Crafted participants will get to sample some of Colorado’s best craft brews and spirits and local food fare at the base of the ski area in the spring sunshine. Ski the slopes if you want, then in the afternoon listen to live music and taste the libations and treats beneath the summit of Crested Butte. Hosted by the Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce.

MINER’S BALL, FEBRUARY 10, 2018

Don your historic duds and dancing shoes and bring your appetite for feast and merriment at the Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum (CBMHM). The Miner’s Ball starts with appetizers, a cash bar and live music. Then diners enjoy a gourmet catered meal and entertainment, followed by a polka in grand Crested Butte tradition. Costumes from the old West/mining era are highly encouraged.

HISTORIC PUB CRAWL, NOVEMBER 16, 2017

Another festivity hosted by the museum, the Pub Crawl mixes history with treats and liquid refreshment. Crawlers start at the CBMHM, enjoying appetizers and receiving a commemorative pint glass, which they take with them for a free drink at each of the three historic pubs. At each site, participants sip on wine or beer while local historians entertain and edify them with stories about the colorful old buildings and town. For some added fun, play a little poker, collecting cards at the museum and each bar. The best hand will split the pot with the museum.

SKI, SNOWSHOE OR SLED TO DINNER For information on culinary events at the Nordic Center yurt, Ten Peaks/the Umbrella Bar and Uley’s Cabin on the ski slopes, see story on page 36.

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A French American Bistro

Seatings nightly at 6:00 and 8:30 For Reservations Call 970.349.5448 On Coal Creek in the alley behind The Forest Queen 127 Elk Avenue #A soupรงon-cb.com

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Summer’s culinary bounty Crested Butte food-related events worth booking a return trip.

Tour de Forks. These dining opportunities combine catered cuisine by celebrated local chefs, cultural or educational elements, and unusual settings, like unique mountain homes, wildflower meadows, historic sites or riverside backyards. Proceeds benefit the Center for the Arts.

Crested Butte Wine and Food Festival. Seminars, fine winemaker dinners and food demonstrations lead to the Grand Tasting, with more than 500 select wines from 25 wineries. The Center for the Arts partners with Larimer Associates to create this popular annual fundraiser.

Farmer’s Markets. Regional farmers, bakers and crafters ply their food wares each week in Crested Butte (Sundays), Mt. Crested Butte (Thursdays) and Gunnison (Saturdays), often with live music and entertainment for a festive atmosphere.

Feast in the Field, a true farm-to-table experience on nearby ranchlands, showcases Gaucho-style wood-fire cooking and locally grown foods. Mingling in the meadow, diners can talk with the farmers, vintners, ranchers, distillers and chefs who raised and prepared the evening’s offerings. Mountain Roots Food Project hosts this elegant, open-air feast.

Chefs on the Edge. In this rowdy gastronomic game show, three top chefs battle at their on-stage cook stations for the valley championship, preparing three courses with the provided basket of groceries and the unveiled Secret Ingredient. The MC keeps the Center for the Arts crowd laughing and cheering. To fuel up before the action, the audience samples small plates created by local restaurants.

Chili & Beer Festival. Held in September at the base of Crested Butte Mountain, this giant party brings together craft brewers, pro and amateur chili cooks, musicians, quaffers and connoisseurs. Hosted by the Crested Butte/ Mt. Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce, it has introduced to the world such chili concoctions as Mango Dango, Build Me Up Butternut, and Gunni Green Chili, plus craft beers, ales and ciders.

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970.349.7007

208 Elk Avenue, Crested Butte

www.TheLastSteep.com 135

PHOTO FINISH

Nathan Bilow

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Locally Owned

Locally Operated

Locally owned and operated for 12 years, Black Tie Ski Rentals is proud to support local businesses. When we recently updated our vans, we chose to feature the work of local photographers JC Leacock and Trent Bona. We also had the decals installed in the Gunnison Valley. When you support local business, you support local business owners, their staff, and the local economy. Thanks for visiting Crested Butte.

- Roman Kolodziej, Owner, Black Tie Ski Rentals of Crested Butte

free delivery + in-room fitting / slopeside service / complimentary return

R E S E R V A T I O N S

BlackTieSkis.com

970-349-0722

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AMENITIES + ACCESS

SITE PLAN

▶ Home sites ranging from 0.32 to 0.96 acres. Contiguous to the Town of Crested Butte

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Slate River

▶ Water and Sewer service provided by Town of Crested Butte

B

Pavilion

C

River Park

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Wetlands

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Recreation Path

▶ Owners may build up to 5,000 sq. ft. of finished space with an extra 750 sq. ft. detached/accessory building for garage or additional living space ▶ Amenities will include private homeowner river park with grilling, fire pits, covered pavilion, recreation lawn and river access for water activities. ▶ Entrance is from Gothic Road (CR 317); the future Pyramid Avenue Bridge will span the Slate River leading into a private neighborhood that is walkable to town.

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▶ A landscaped pedestrian trail along the west side of the Slate River will provide a connection at the Mt. Crested Butte recreation path

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▶ A decorative fence and landscape buffer will screen the service yard enhancing the view across the river ▶ Approximately 2.5 miles from the Crested Butte Mountain Resort and less than 4.0 miles from The Club at Crested Butte

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▶ Only 29 miles from the Gunnison/Crested Butte Regional Airport

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(2.5 mi to base area)

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Aperture Recreation Path Proposed Recreation Path

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CONTACT: 970.349.6692

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LEARN MORE AT A P E R T U R E C B .C O M

Proposed / Future town of CB Slate River Roads

Charlie Farnan cfarnan@mountainoffice.com Joel Vosburg jvosburg@mountainoffice.com

Proposed Roads

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