Crested Butte Magazine - Summer 2015

summer 2015

complimentary

Custom Homes and Remodels 970.275.3462

MWeilCustomHomes.com

c r e st e d bu t te, color a do

PHOTOS: TOM STILLO

MOLLY ELDRIDGE

Owner 970.209.4234

DOUG KROFT

970.209.0373

STEVE MEREDITH

970.349.5007

MAGGIE DETHLOFF

970.209.7880

JOE GARCIA

970.209.4034

DIANE ARONOVIC

970.209.0405

SIGRID COTTRELL

970.596.2596

DEEP ROOTS ◆ NEW GROWTH You have many choices when it comes to selecting who will help you navigate the real estate market. Whether you’re buying or selling, it’s one of the largest financial decisions you will make and it’s important to choose your guide wisely.

As Crested Butte’s Oldest Real Estate company, Red Lady Realty has deep roots in the community. New growth

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CastleSummer Creek Guitar Co. Concert Series at the

JUNE 16 - AUGUST 25

7 IBARRANCH.COM Gunnison, Colorado

CLASSIC COLORADO LINE UP JULY 2

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JULY 8

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JULY 11 JULY 16 JULY 23 JULY 30 AUGUST 6 AUGUST 13

Michael Martin Murphey

Opening Act The English Brothers

Bellamy Brothers

Benefit for the Community Foundation of the Gunnison Valley 6

Cory Morrow Band

Opening Act Cameran Nelson Band A Cattleman’s Day Concert 6

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy’s 20th Anniversary Event 6

Boulder Canyon Band

John Denver Tribute Band 6 6 6

Juice Newton The Flying Burrito Brothers Shawn Colvin

Gates/bar open at 5:00p.m. Rotating local Gunnison Valley restaurants will provide dinner a la carte starting at 6:00p.m.

Ticket & food prices vary per night. Please see website.

BURGERS & BREWS LINE UP JUNE 16 JUNE 23 JUNE 30 JULY 7 JULY 14 JULY 21 JULY 28 AUGUST 4 AUGUST 11 AUGUST 18 AUGUST 25

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Harpeth Rising

in conjunction with CO Ride the Rockies

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

Whitewater Ramble Front Country Ragged Union Jonathan Byrd Mipso Free The Honey Colin Lake Kids of the Gunnison Valley Gypsy Moon Tony Furtado

Gates/bar/grill open at 5:00p.m. Food and beverages are a la carte.

Music will start at approximately 6:30p.m.

Tickets are $8/adult, kids/free with paid adult

FOR MORE INFO AND TO PURCHASE TICKETS, PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE

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IBARRANCH.COM 8 970.209.9796 8 *Lineup subject to change. See website for additional events. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

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s’15 CONTENTS

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FEATURES 36

Ranching, writing and resilience

by Cara Guerrieri A local family’s ranch journals document seventy years of births, deaths and baling hay.

42

Where did HE spend the night?

by David Inouye A Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory researcher uses tiny radios to spy on the nocturnal habits of male hummingbirds.

SHORTIES 10 Galloping gateway

by Kat Bernier Joe Bob Merritt and fellow artists carry their Wind Horse House archway sculpture to Burning Man and beyond.

14 Along for the ride

by Amy Nolan Young mountain bikers hit the trails with new “Crested Butte Devo.”

50

High roller

by Luke Mehall; photos by Braden Gunem From his wheelchair, Jake O’Connor builds hand cycles to get people back on the trail after life-altering injuries.

57

Power to the people

by George Sibley Crested Butte played a key – and curious – role in bringing electricity to the far reaches of the valley.

65

Big Earl

by Steve Church A trout of mythic proportions.

16 Community boot-scootin’

by Leia Morrison I Bar Ranch: a venue for music, horseshoes, s’mores and other simple blessings.

68

Going light

by Katherine Darrow Sage of simplicity Vinnie Rossignol offers tips for ditching your digital devices in Crested Butte – for an hour or a lifetime.

20 Backcountry world series

by Scott Clarkson Crested Butte’s mountains will test some top international Enduro bike racers.

24 A musical gift for our children

by Erin English The Crested Butte Music Festival aims to inspire young music lovers through its new SoundTrack program.

28 How trails happen

by Erica Mueller Collaborations shaped the valley’s mountain bike trail system, including a new Crested Butte connector trail.

30 If letters grew on trees

by Sandra Cortner In her Alphabet Menagerie book, artist Lian Canty and local writers play with language and tree people.

76 81

Photo break: Feast your eyes Toddler in tow

by Erin English A Crested Butte mom shares her favorite happy-kid haunts off the beaten path.

88

Steady Eddie

by Polly Oberosler A tribute to stock dogs and Edgar the three-legged ranch hand.

PERSPECTIVES 96

Why we need wilderness

by Molly Murfee Rekindling our primal connection to nature – and how not to love the wilderness to death.

111 What color are your eyes?

by Kathy Norgard Remembering why we’re here: caring connections, wild beauty, active minds and bodies.

117 Travels with Hal 124 Calendar | 129 Lodging | 131 Dining | 136 Photo finish J.C. Leacock

by Peter Bridges Good friends don’t always make good alpine travel companions.

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Vol. XXXVII, No. 1 Published semi-annually by Crested Butte Publishing & Creative PUBLISHERS Steve Mabry & Chris Hanna EDITOR Sandy Fails ADVERTISING DIRECTOR MJ Vosburg LAYOUT AND DESIGN Chris Hanna ADVERTISING DESIGN Keitha Kostyk WRITERS Kat Bernier Peter Bridges Steve Church Scott Clarkson Sandra Cortner Katherine Darrow Erin English Sandy Fails Cara Guerrieri

David Inouye Luke Mehall Leia Morrison Erica Mueller Molly Murfee Amy Nolan Kathy Norgard Polly Oberosler George Sibley

PHOTOGRAPHERS

UNCOMPROMISING ATTENTION TO DETAIL satisfied clients come from meeting schedules and budgets, communication and honesty

Matt Berglund Nathan Bilow Trent Bona Beth Carter Sandy Cortner Raynor Czerwinski Dusty Demerson Shayn Estes Xavier Fané Braden Gunem

John Holder David Inouye Kevin Krill J.C. Leacock Katie Onheiber George Post Jan Runge Lydia Stern Tom Stillo Rebecca Weil

COVER PHOTO Leaping for autumn joy Xavier Fané ONLINE crestedbuttemagazine.com E-MAIL sandyfails56@gmail.com ADVERTISING 970-349-6211 mj@crestedbuttemagazine.com Copyright 2015, Crested Butte Publishing. No reproduction of contents without authorization by Crested Butte Publishing & Creative.

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Editor’s note

Rich beyond measure

An everyday view out Paradise Divide from the Lower Loop.

John Holder

Driving down the highway last spring, I was thinking about money – not stressing really, just strategizing. Then some movement caught my eye from the still-snowy meadow to my right.

I watched as a coyote halted in mid-trot, ears pricked forward. After two seconds of stillness, he leaped high and pounced, his front paws and head breaking through the snow. I rolled past before I could see whether he’d secured his dinner. But his high-jump made me laugh out loud. My shoulders loosened and my body relaxed; I hadn’t even realized they were tight.

I don’t demonize money. I can enjoy spending, saving, earning and sharing it. But I’m no money whisperer. By itself, money doesn’t fascinate me, and I have little innate understanding of how it behaves, moves and multiplies.

So I was surprised when organizers asked me to participate in the One Valley Prosperity Project debut last March. Then I started reading and thinking about the broader definition of prosperity, more akin to “thriving” than “raking in the big bucks.” Beyond money, prosperity encompasses health, happiness and values that can even conflict with raking in the big bucks (e.g. all work and no play can pad the pockets but wreak havoc on bodies, relationships and mirth).

Maybe I had a place in the discussion after all, I thought, because I’ve spent three decades and millions of words pondering the nonmonetary riches abounding in our valley.

At the One Valley Prosperity Project launch party, almost 250 people gathered: ranchers and realtors, artists and accountants, educators and athletes. Other groups have addressed economic development in the valley. But this discussion was particularly interesting, respectful and creative because it started not with the question How can we make more money? but with questions like Who are we? What do we have?

What do we want? The answers to those will eventually lead to the trickier question How do we get there?

As I noticed when the pouncing coyote interrupted my budget-pondering drive last spring, thinking and talking about money can make us tight-shouldered and cantankerous.

Perhaps that’s because we’re working so much from our brains, from a protective “gotta-get-

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Editor’s note mine” viewpoint. But when we consider our lives as a whole, using the broader definition of prosperity, we engage our hearts along with our brains. We seem to be more willing to listen to each other, consider many perspectives and act for the collective well-being as well as our own.

The One Valley Prosperity Project discussion certainly identified some economic challenges in our backyard, including our remoteness, seasonal economies and high cost of living in relation to wages. But you can’t beat our assets: such vast natural beauty, distinct and “non-generic” communities, healthy lifestyles (low crime and traffic, high fitness and caring), ranching heritage, art/culture/education opportunities and fantastic recreation, to hit some highlights.

We have what the harried, crowded world needs. So we should share it, and figure out how to support ourselves in the process. We should also take care not to abuse, exploit or ruin it in our pursuit of pay.

Money only becomes a problem when we get so obsessed by it that we de-value all else. Most of us who live, visit or invest here realize money isn’t our only priority. We enjoy so many other priceless experiences: encountering a fawn on a morning walk, getting swept away by a world-class opera in a 200seat auditorium, riding a bike from the front door to a high, wild trail through wildflowers. Yes, our January heating bills are expensive, but stargazing, wading in a stream with a child, and Alpenglow concerts are free.

For almost four decades, the Crested Butte Magazine has been a tribute to our valley’s non-financial wealth. This issue illustrates it by fun specifics: e.g. tales of Steady Eddie the three-legged ranch dog, a Burning Man community art installation, a fly-fishing surprise, a retreat into wilderness, and a maker of hand cycles who works from his wheelchair.

I’ll be cheering the progress of the One Valley Prosperity Project. Perhaps the ongoing discussions will generate action toward a more sustainable local economy.

May they also remind us to value the nonmonetary side of the prosperity equation.

In so many ways, we are rich beyond measure. —Sandy Fails, editor 8

The Mountain Office Team Charlie Farnan and Joel Vosburg

Long Standing Producers-Committed to Excellence and Service

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Galloping

By Kat Bernier

gateway

The Wind Horse House archway traveled from the Crested Butte Arts Festival to Burning Man in Nevada.

Joe Bob Merritt and fellow artists carry their Wind Horse House archway sculpture to Burning Man and beyond.

If this arch could talk, it would tell tales of stilt-walking marching bands, blinding white dust storms and a wedding filmed by a drone.

This arch would boast of suspending aerial dancers as they swept the sky. It would describe L.E.D.-lighted bicycle hordes and fire-puffing art cars shaped like dragons and pirate ships. And an 80-foot wooden effigy of a man going up in flames before an eager crowd of 65,000 people. This arch went to Burning Man. This arch would also tell of the time, energy, love and community that shaped it.

As a fabricator, I joined the summer campaign to build, weld, cut, bend, wire and adorn the Wind Horse House archway sculpture. The work finally paid off as our ship of artist fools sailed the desert sands, caravanning to last year’s Burning Man. Straps affixed the disassembled gateway to the flatbed trailer towed by artist mastermind Joe Bob Merritt of Gunnison. Ladders and tipi poles topped his truck’s lumber rack, and the truck bed was filled with plastic gearboxes of power tools, furry outfits, hardware, silk tapestries and late-night snacks. We had poured into this project our hearts, money, free time and collective belief in art as a unifying force of community.

Our ragtag caravan eventually stabled the Wind Horse in the 10

GeorgePostPhotography.com

Black Rock Desert of Nevada. With wind stinging our sunburned faces, Merritt, lead constructor Stephen J. Pierotti and I spent days reconstructing the archway in the sandy, ancient lakebed. Artist Tom Cross adorned the columns with forms in paint.

As an Honorarium Grant recipient, the Wind Horse House welcomed visitors to the Souk, the inner circle of this temporary city of art and possibility. The archway sat at the very feet of the iconic Burning Man. Whinnying and stamping hooves attracted an audience and heartened the Butoh-inspired performance of Crested Butte Dance Collective members Sasha Chudacoff, K.T. Joy, Laura DeFelice and Joanie Patrice. Using rigging and contraptions such as a humansized crescent moon (fabricated by Crested Butte’s Tucker Roberts), the collective performed graceful aerial dances suspended from the archway. Wind and white dust painted their faces and bodies for three nights of performances.

ORIGINS K.T. Joy, co-founder of the dance collective, planted the seed for the Wind Horse House in 2012. Inspired to put on an aerial dance performance for the opening ceremony of the Crested Butte Arts Festival, she asked for Merritt’s help. She needed an outdoor apparatus from which to perform her somatic art, and she wanted something to match the elegance of a dancer suspended from the hanging silks. The Crested Butte Arts Festival committee gave Merritt a grant and plenty of artistic liberty. Thus sprouted a simple yet elegant first iteration of the Wind Horse House.

Constructed from locally collected salvage materials, the Wind Horse House espouses Merritt’s philosophy that “matter matters.” He commented, “Every part of her has a story, a lineage, an ancestry, a material reality, a maternal reality.” The steel support columns originated in the famed La Veta Hotel in Gunnison; the wooden bases were reclaimed from the old Mt. Crested Butte bus station. Old electrical conduit became the singing wind chimes.

The piece was “made in adoration and as an articulation of the fact that all that matters will in time matter again. Nothing lasts. This house is portal, nothing remains, meanings change.”

By giving the old components a new purpose, Merritt created the passageway from our valley’s discarded debris.

In 2013, the Crested Butte Arts Festival welcomed the archway back to the four-way stop as the “Inspiration Gate” entrance. Merritt, with the help of his father and a few friends, spent the summer re-working and adding detail to the piece for its second appearance. Again, the community enjoyed aerial dance as part of the inaugural ceremony for the weekend of art.

Even after last summer’s deconstruction and reconstruction for Burning Man, the archway wasn’t finished. Human hands shaped Wind Horse House once again for a trot to the first annual Telluride Fire Festival in January 2015. Hours of re-wiring and welding helped the piece withstand the wind and frozen water of winter. In Telluride’s Mountain Village, the Wind Horse House welcomed onlookers to music, a spectacle of kinetic fire art, fire dancers and “El Pulpo Mechanico,” a giant metal octopus that puffed fire from its tentacles and crown.

Wind Horse House has evolved over three years with the support and encouragement of the Crested Butte Arts Festival, the Burning Man organization and the Telluride Fire Festival. It has attracted attention from neighbors and inspired passers-by. Moreover, this piece has built and strengthened a community of artists, welders, painters, fabricators, dancers and sculptors. Like any great work, the piece is never finished; it remains alive.

Soon the arch will welcome friends and visitors to Merritt’s South Main Studios art complex in Gunnison, but who knows where the Wind Horse may blow next. In Merritt’s words, “This gateway, this gaiting way, this house, that is not like a home forever for a ‘one’ but more like a home for all that stands but for a moment in this threshold of form…to become some being in formation yet again re-membered by the whispers of winds and words.”

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CrestedButteNow.com 11

The artist behind the archway As a child, Joe Bob Merritt vacationed in Gunnison with his family every summer, escaping the heat of south Texas. He remembers the awe and the pull toward art he felt at one of the first Crested Butte Arts Festivals.

Having long enjoyed building things, Merritt pursued a career in architecture, earning a bachelor of environmental design from Texas A&M and a master of architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. In 1997, he moved to Gunnison. He founded Sol Space & Light, Inc., his design, planning and construction office, in 1998.

Merritt has been a “community conspirator” for the last 18 years, designing the Gunnison Valley Observatory and the courtyard at the Gunnison Arts Center and, for four years, creating the “Grump” for Crested Butte’s Vinotok fall festival.

A visionary “artkitect,” Merritt seeks to involve community and develop living/working art space on revitalized industrial ground at South Main Studios in Gunnison.

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“Artkitect” Joe Bob Merritt tinkers with an archway detail.

Along for

the ride

Photos Torrey Carroll

The Crested Butte Devo way: learning through fun.

Young mountain bikers hit the trails with new “Crested Butte Devo.”

The new Crested Butte Development Team won’t just encourage children to explore trails on their mountain bikes; it will also help them stay healthy, have a great time, maintain their bikes and be good biking citizens.

“Crested Butte Devo is a non-competitive youth mountain bike program that prioritizes safety and fun,” said founder/director Amy Nolan. “If a child feels safe and is having fun, his or her skills will develop as a natural progression rather than being pushed into something prematurely.”

This summer will bring programming for children eight to fourteen, with plans to incorporate younger children next year.

Two years ago, Nolan raced in the 12 Hours of Mesa Verde mountain bike race in Cortez, Colorado. Along the course, she noticed so many young riders wearing Durango “DEVO” jerseys.

“Not only were these kids having a blast, but their trail etiquette was remarkable, and many of them proudly stood on the podium for their division,” she said. “After the race, a few friends and I sat around the campfire and asked, ‘Why can’t we do this in Crested Butte?’”

Nolan quickly learned that running such a program on the trails around Crested Butte would require permits from several local land agencies. Daunted, she didn’t pursue the idea. But last year, as her three children got older, she decided the time was right. “I convinced myself I had nothing to lose, so I faced my first hurdle and walked 14

Lydia Stern

in the U.S. Forest Service office in Gunnison to meet with the permit administrator.”

In January 2015, as Nolan walked her dog at Hartman Rocks, the Forest Service representative called to say, “This is a done deal.”

After a moment of shock, Nolan had the exhilarating but intimidating thought, “Now I really have to do this.”

From that point, she said, “Everything has fallen into place, with local and industry support hugely surpassing my expectations.”

Response to the website launch (crestedbuttedevo.com) was so positive that the website manager had to increase the bandwidth.

Crested Butte Devo is an IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, with the goal of offering an affordable, high-quality program for local children. Its priority is education, Nolan noted. “While these young athletes are certainly going to experience how much fun it is to ride, we’ll also provide them with the tools they need to keep their bodies healthy so they can enjoy riding throughout their lives.”

The team will draw from Crested Butte’s community of parents and professionals “who have been eager to be involved,” Nolan said. A strength and flexibility program will focus on functional movement to help keep the young athletes strong and decrease the risk of injury; a nutritionist will emphasize hydration and good eating habits; and a skills coach will lead both riding technique and bike maintenance clinics.

Nolan praised the coaching staff of Crested Butte Devo: head coach Jason Lakey, Andy and Heidi Shabo, Bart Hemminger and Janae Pritchett. “We’re one hundred percent dedicated to the young riders of our valley,” she said.

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15

Community

boot-scootin’

I Bar Ranch: a venue for music, horseshoes, s’mores and other simple blessings.

It starts with a few little people who notice things more easily than the rest of us. Then a more diverse crowd gathers around the fence. As Bill, one of the I Bar’s four-legged summer residents, leans toward his admirers, many hands take turns caressing his muzzle: palms wrinkled by time and hard work, fingers bedecked with diamonds, and little hands adorned with plastic bangle bracelets and Sharpie nail polish.

The stressors of the day melt away as we run fingers through Bill’s wiry mane, look into his soulful brown eyes and scratch the bridge of his nose.

Scanning the scene, I use all my senses to savor this moment. The harmonies of the band performing on stage behind me, the smell of burgers and brats sizzling on the 16

By Leia Morrison The I Bar’s converted hay barn just east of Gunnison hosts concerts, weddings and multi-generational shindigs.

Photos by Francie Ivy

charcoal grill, the laughter of children playing horseshoes, and the light breeze approaching from Blue Mesa combine in this simple, perfect moment. As the evening sun lingers on the motley crew circled around Bill, a sense of gratitude washes over me.

This is why we live in this valley or spend our free time here.

We love this place for its simplicity. For its authentic nature. For the uncontrolled beauty everywhere. Settings like the I Bar Ranch remind us of what’s important. Little complaints shrink to nothing when you’re enjoying the company of good people in a venue that supports community, creativity and culture.

Nestled among the hay meadows east of Gunnison, the I Bar Ranch offers one of the

county’s most picturesque, family-friendly summer venues. Creating a western-flavored space for music, celebrations, community gatherings and fundraisers, this locally owned business involves much of the valley’s summer population. At any given concert, you’ll run into long-time residents, second homeowners, tourists, college students and children of all ages.

The I Bar Ranch isn’t open every night; but in the summer it buzzes with musical performances at least twice a week.

Concertgoers enjoy top-notch performers in a laid-back family atmosphere with the surrounding mountains as backdrop. In addition to dancing, guests can ride the hay wagon or make s’mores by the campfire.

Owners Bryan (“Wick”) Wickenhauser

and wife Jennifer Michel opened the I Bar Ranch in the summer of 2013. They wanted to add an economic driver to the county and bring people together in a way that supported arts, culture and the way of life here in the Gunnison Valley.

Like so many drawn to this valley and its lifestyle, Bryan and Jennifer don’t sit still very much. Bryan co-owns Gunnison’s new High Alpine Brewery (opening this summer) and is a multi-sport athlete and ski race director. A three-time Grand Traverse champion, he serves as the backcountry ski race’s co-director.

Jennifer is the head men’s and women’s cross country and assistant track coach at Western State Colorado University. She’s a three-time NCAA Division II national 17

Bryan and Gianna Wickenhauser

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T he

Trailhead

children’s Museum

champion and two-time Division II men’s coach of the year. She holds the women’s record for the W Mountain running race (in the “backyard” of the I Bar Ranch). Bryan and Jennifer’s two daughters, Gianna and Eliza, are often found kicking up their boots on the I Bar dance floor.

The I Bar Ranch land and brand are entrenched in the valley’s ranching history.

Although the barn was built in the 1990s, the I Bar brand dates back to the late 1800s, when it was used for cattle ranching by the Howard family near Powderhorn.

When the Wickenhausers toured the 14-acre property, with potential seating room for more than 500, they saw its potential.

Hartman Rocks, Monarch Mountain and other peaks rise on the horizon – beyond the campfire ring where people can gather to roast marshmallows or sip cold drinks.

“Its unique setting is part of what makes it so special; just on the edge of town, but deep into the quiet spaces of agriculture and recreation,” Bryan said.

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I BAR AT A GLANCE

where playful adventures begin.

OPEN WED-SUN 10 AM-4 PM AT THE BASE AREA • HOLIDAY BREAK CAMPS • AFTER SCHOOL CLASSES • FAMILY MEMBERSHIPS

open daily 10 am-4 pm

WWW.TRAILHEADKIDS.ORG • 970.349.7160 18

Location: 850 County Road 49, off of Highway 50 just east of Gunnison.

Head to the I Bar for: Gunny Grass Bluegrass Festival July 17-18, Castle Creek Guitars concert series June through August; Burgers and Bluegrass on summer Tuesdays; Classic Colorado Country series mostly on Thursdays. Reservations recommended.

Food: Burgers/brats on Tuesdays; catered food by local restaurants for other events.

Cash bar for wine, spirits and beer.

The venue: a converted hay barn with stage, lighting and sound, rentable for private parties, weddings and community events.

While the sides are open to provide fresh air and scenery, there are curtains that can be closed for inclement weather.

More information: ibarranch.com.

WrightAngleConstruction.com 970.596.1039

Bob Brazell Photography

A backcountry

By Scott Clarkson

world series

Enduro mountain bike racers: lung-busting uphills and fearsome timed downhills.

Crested Butte’s mountains will test some top international Enduro racers.

Who’ll win the World Series? In any other American town, this would be a baseball discussion. Only in Crested Butte would it involve bicycles.

Crested Butte will host the Enduro World Series (EWS) July 31-August 2. The only U.S. stop of the 2015 tour, this three-day event will blend high-altitude backcountry climbs with some of the biggest descents in the region. The EWS will be part of the Big Mountain Enduro Series overall rankings. The promise of a big payout will lure an international field to this hamlet in the hills.

“This will be the largest mountain bike event to ever happen in Crested Butte, bringing the legends of the sport to our town and local trails and garnering immense international exposure,” said Brandon Ontiveros, owner/organizer of the Big Mountain Enduro Series.

Enduro is a form of uphill/downhill mountain bike competition that combines a minimum of four timed downhill 20

Trent Bona

stages that exceed the length of the untimed uphill and cross-country sections. The winner is the rider with the lowest cumulative descent time over the multi-day race. The format tests a rider’s technical handling skills on the downhills and endurance on the uphills.

Brought to Crested Butte through Ontiveros’ efforts, the Enduro World Series will encompass more than 21,000 feet of descents over three days. Riders will endure more than 25 miles each day, with climbs to elevations surpassing 12,000 feet. The routes, kept secret until the night before the race, will encompass above-tree line terrain, plunges where racers will surpass 40 miles per hour over highly technical trails (read: rocks and roots), and steeper raw sections that will keep the cyclists on their toes. In between adrenaline jolts, the riders will take in some classic flowing Colorado singletrack, river crossings and expansive alpine vistas. Toss in unpredictable mountain weather and you have a demanding test of mental strength and fitness.

Enduro requires huge athleticism to maintain stretches of full-bore pedaling stamina, along with concentration to keep your attention and eyes far down the trail instead of looking down at your feet. Lapse for more than a second and you’ll end up on the ground and further down the finish list.

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WHY HOST THE WORLD SERIES HERE Crested Butte is one of the birthplaces of mountain biking, and that history makes it especially appealing. The riding will speak for itself, but the diversity and quality of trails, big descents, surreal-looking mountains, and endless valleys with hundreds of miles of singletrack make it one of the best places in North America to hold a true point-to-point Enduro race.

WHY HE GOT INVOLVED IN ENDURO All of this stemmed from my passion of riding bikes and shredding with my friends. Enduro is simply that: going out on big rides, climbing whatever it takes to get to the best downhill tracks, then ripping huge descents. The discipline truly showcases the best all-around rider, technical skills and fitness.

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Enduro brings back camaraderie to our sport.

It pieces together the most fun elements of riding bikes. You get to ride many of the best trails in a given area, whereas cross-country and downhill focus on the same track for the entire race. Some of those old races were so competitive that it sucked the fun out of racing.

You go to any Enduro these days and everyone is having fun, mingling, drinking beers, talking about their race runs.

It’s the fastest growing discipline we’ve seen in over a decade. It’s catching on with the entire industry, top corporate sponsors, and most companies are building their products around this all-mountain movement. You no longer need multiple bikes; it’s a one-bike quiver sport that top bike companies love because it’s streamlining their product mix.

Most importantly, it’s back to the roots of riding bikes. Courses are not announced until the day before the event, so racers have to ride trails “blind” and adapt to whatever terrain is thrown at them.

HOW TO WATCH THE ENDURO WORLD SERIES In the sponsor village/pit area in town to see live results and interact with the athletes, sponsors and vendors. Since the event is so deep into the backcountry, the Forest Service wants to keep on-course spectators to a minimum.

Follow the action online at enduroworldseries.com.

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Jame s Ray Spah n

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A musical gift

By Erin English

for our children

Alex Fenlon

The Crested Butte Music Festival aims to inspire young music lovers through its new SoundTrack program.

A random act of kindness by a patron of the Crested Butte Music Festival (CBMF) was the driving force behind SoundTrack, a new program that will expand the variety of musical experiences available to local and visiting children year-round.

Two years ago, on the first night of the CBMF’s opera performance, a delighted patron spontaneously offered to purchase any remaining tickets for youth that wanted to attend. In the end, 60 kids ages 18 and under attended the opera free of charge. For many, it was their first opera.

“I took my granddaughter…hoping to last until intermission,” said visitor Virginia Kerwin. “At the end of the performance, she told me she would like to be in an opera some day.”

From there, the staff and Festival Director Alexander Scheirle were inspired to create a comprehensive program that would expose young people to the many genres of music the Festival presents.

24

SoundTrack came to life in early spring, thanks to several donors.

“We are primarily targeting local kids and trying to give them a diverse experience with music…from classical to bluegrass to opera; all the genres the Festival stands for,” Scheirle said. “We’ll do that not just with performances, but with presentations, workshops and camps. No other classical festival in Colorado gives free tickets to kids. It’s our goal to play a part in changing their lives.”

Initially, CBMF will provide offerings in three age groupings: TrackMan’s Apprentice Program (ages 2-6), TrackMan’s Passport to Music (7-12) and TrackMan’s Beat (13-18). The Festival staff will work in partnership with local schools to coordinate and promote participation.

“If you give kids a ticket, it’s just a one-time thing,” Scheirle said. “We want to engage kids with a complete program to have more impact.”

SoundTrack will encompass favorites such as the Divine Family Young People’s Concerts and subsidies for the Swallow Hill Music Kids Camp. New offerings include youth-targeted interactive talks with featured artists, admittance to music lectures and master classes, and introductory music lessons by members of the Festival

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Symphony Orchestra. With additional program funding, CBMF will increase the opportunities available and eventually provide the young people with “passport” books to track their participation.

The Crested Butte Community School’s music director, Lauren Ryals, expects SoundTrack to open up huge opportunities for her students, particularly the Children’s Orchestra and Choir. Even before SoundTrack, the collaboration between the school and the Festival has been a huge asset for her classes.

“Just this week, one of the composers being featured in a CBMF event was brought in, and he talked composition with my kids all day,” she said. “We were able to tie in what’s happening this summer with the curriculum I’m working on.”

Ryals continued, “In such a rural, isolated area, kids are not exposed to as much world-class music as students living in a city, where there are things happening all the time. More exposure opens up their knowledge base to hopefully inspire their own creativity as musicians and vocalists.”

Formal studies show a myriad of benefits to engaging children in music programs, including higher IQs and test scores. But most people don’t need statistics to prove what is already made obvious through smiles and toe-tapping, swaying bodies.

“In Crested Butte, children have so many activities to grow physically,” Scheirle said. “We want to offer a taste of the emotional experience of hearing and seeing an opera or chamber music live. Our vision is to inspire a greater appreciation of music, change lives and develop the performers of tomorrow.”

Information: crestedbuttemusicfestival.org or 970-349-0619.

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26

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27

How trails

By Erica Mueller

happen

Evolution Bike Park in Mt. Crested Butte.

Those great biking trails were brought to you by collaborations, elbow grease and the oldest mountain bike club in the world.

Mountain bikers who ride the 750 miles of singletrack in the Gunnison Valley may think those trails just happened naturally. But, as the saying goes about raising a child, it “takes a village” to create such an extensive trail system. Public land managers and private property owners, riders and volunteers have collaborated over the years, brought together by the all-volunteer Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (CBMBA), the oldest mountain bike club in the world.

The next collaborative project will link the towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte with a new singletrack trail by the end of the summer. This connector trail will begin in the Evolution Bike Park off the West Side trail and meet up with the Upper Loop. The new alignment will be about a mile in length, and with some open meadows, aspen forests, rocky sections and a few gullies, it will cater to capable cross-country riders.

“It will be a blue descent to town and a black ascent if you’re coming back up to the mountain,” said Christian Robertson, Evolution Bike Park manager.

THE VALLEY’S TRAIL SYSTEM With Crested Butte being one of the birthplaces of mountain biking, 28

Trent Bona

the sport is near and dear to many in the valley. We ride legendary trails – and we pedal our bikes to the store, to the post office and even to “walk” our dogs. We’ve grown a bike culture based on practicality, efficiency and enjoyment.

In our diverse network, we have trails that take us to the town of Aspen; trails in chest-deep wildflowers; trails that weave through trees, around undulating berms and over rocks that seem insurmountable. But we ride them. Or if you’re like me, at times you get off your two wheels, walk over the obstacle and take a minute to gaze at the surrounding beauty.

To complement the backcountry riding, we have Evolution Bike Park, a network of trails at the ski resort where beginners can learn, take lessons and test themselves in the skills zone areas. The chairlift does the uphill work, carrying people and their bikes to the top of the runs.

From the same lift, experts can get their gravity fixes at high speeds and over large jumps on the black-diamond and double-black trails. Those who love both uphill and downhill can pedal the crosscountry trails and connect to some of the classic off-resort rides like Snodgrass or head out Gothic Road to explore 401 or Deer Creek.

HOW IT HAPPENED The valley’s trails often cross a combination of private and public land, conservation lands and town property. Many groups come together to enhance our mountain biking access and mixed-use trails: Crested Butte Land Trust, local and non-resident property owners, the towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte, Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR), the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau

of Land Management.

The Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association was established in 1983, dedicated to building, maintaining and preserving access to mountain bike trails in the valley. In recent years, CBMBA has focused on developing near-town trails, while also working on some outlying projects. In the last five years, volunteers have built the Lupine, Meander and Budd trails and realigned the Upper Loop, creating great biking right out our back doors. The association hosts work days throughout the summer, and it’s the people in this valley with a passion for mountain biking who keep CBMBA thriving.

In addition to its strong relationship with the local Forest Service office, CBMBA has worked closely with CBMR to create and improve trails at the ski resort. In 2009, as downhill biking was growing in popularity, cycling visionaries Drew Cesati and Christian Robertson wanted to further develop the bike trails on the mountain. The Evolution Bike Park was born, and CBMBA helped get the momentum going.

Volunteers helped construct the wood features for the Woods trail, then built Prospector, West Side, Lower Meander and Up & Away. CBMBA also helped widen the Luge trail to make it hand cycle-friendly for Adaptive Sports Center riders. In return, the resort and Evolution Bike Park support CBMBA, and many resort employees are also CBMBA volunteers. Yes, it takes a village.

Being a person who loves teamwork, I find this fascinating. I love being in a town where the mayor brings a hacksaw on his springtime bike ride to help clear a downed tree on the Lower Loop. I love organizations that use their relationships to forge better visions. I love that culture of working together. And I love the fact that our community has such an unquenchable passion for mountain biking.

CBMBA has plans for future trails, extensions, maintenance and enhancing rider education and etiquette. Join these enthusiasts if you’re interested; otherwise, when you’re out there enjoying a ride, send CBMBA a little thanks.

Erica Mueller is the director of innovations and relations at Crested Butte Mountain Resort.

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Photos by Bob Brazell

CBMBA AND THE EVOLUTION BIKE PARK

29

If letters grew on trees

In Alphabet Menagerie, artist Lian Canty and local writers play with language and tree people.

Lian Canty is an artistic tree hugger. In the sensual trees of her artwork, the flowing bark and trunks bring to mind the muscles and curves of men and women.

“I started drawing tree people years ago,” said Lian. “In anatomy class in college, I related human muscles to the twisted roots and growth of trees. I’m more of a figure artist, so I always relate what I see to the expressive qualities of figures.”

Those tree figures became the central theme for her book, Alphabet Menagerie, released last February. With brush and ink, Lian painted the 26 letters of the alphabet formed by the trunks and branches of pine, bonsai, cottonwood, dogwood and apple tree people. As the title suggests, Lian added a colorful and uncommon menagerie of about a dozen plants and animals to each letter; for example, a python curls to complete the loop of the letter P. Then she asked 18 local writers to create a poem or story incorporating the alliterative objects.

It took 48-year-old Lian about three years to complete the artwork, then another year to add the words of the writers and get the book into print.

The writers embraced their assignments with differing 30

By Sandra Cortner

Trent Bona

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Lian Canty (second from right) and some of her writercollaborators celebrate the publication of Alphabet Menagerie.

approaches. J.C. Leacock, a photographer with a side talent for writing, admitted he procrastinated a bit. “But once I started, I went with the whimsical sense of humor inherent in the art.” His “Jax on the Jungle Floor” incorporated such objects as jalapeño, jasmine, jaguar, junco and jackrabbit.

Said editor and author Sandy Fails, “I’d prepared myself to wallow in uncertainty for days.” Her husband took one look at Lian’s drawing for O and said, “That reminds me of the poem where Orpheus makes all the trees dance.” Sandy’s “Ode to Orpheus” uses ostrich, owl, octopus, orchid, orb, ocelot and otter to imagine a blossoming love. “It all fell into place painlessly,” she said.

Marcie Telander came to her assignment with “an abiding love of letters of all kinds.

I chose the letter Q because I’ve always thought it was one of the more archaic letters (and least ‘English’ – it could be Arabic or Egyptian) in the English alphabet, and because it is the only one that has that little tail. Also, I have loved Lian’s drawings of tree people for many years. When I saw the image for Q, the mysterious cave that seduced one to go further and further, and the tree couple perfectly balanced and poised welcoming one to pass through the portal of their joined limbs -- I could not resist. I was finished in less than an hour.”

NOT ALL THE WRITING IS FICTION. Katherine Darrow, a trained naturalist known for her Wild about Wildflowers book, uses the letter K to impart fascinating facts 32

Lydia Stern

about Australian and New Zealand species.

Did you know the laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaguinea) is a carnivorous member of the kingfisher family, and only four kinds live in Australia?

Another contributor to Alphabet Menagerie is Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, a widely published poet and occasional guest speaker in Crested Butte. She wrote the introduction and illustrates A, F, I, U, V and Z. This line comes from her romantic poem for the letter I: “Some mornings I go traveling in the iris of your eyes — and always I arrive in one of my favorite places to be. It’s here, with you, wherever you are in this astonishing world of wings, horns, snow, bloom, reptiles, ibis, trees.”

Lian and Rosemerry are partnering on another, future version of the book, coupling the alphabet images with Rosemerry’s poems. “I’m designing a pop-up page for the Alphabet Forest Map,” said Lian. “Certain poems will be letters that will be unfolded by the reader.”

The current edition of the 74-page, hardbound Alphabet Menagerie, with its lime green cover, sells for $48 at Townie Books, Milky Way, Pfisters Handworks, Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum, the Gothic Store, and through Lian’s website, alphabetmenagerie.com.

In 1988, Lian, a 1987 graduate of the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, founded Rendezvous Gallery with her then husband, and she raised children Laurel and Guthrie in Crested Butte.

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Courtesy of the Guerrieri Family

Four generations of ranching (circa 1965). Aubrey Spann and his wife Ernestine Eastman Spann (back right) ranched in Gunnison and Crested Butte; their daughter Phyllis Spann Guerrieri and her husband Richard (back, fourth and fifth from right) established the Bar Slash Bar Ranch in Gunnison; Aubrey’s mother Olive Imobersteg Spann (back, third from right) ranched in Crested Butte and Jack’s Cabin; and Burt Guerrieri (front left) still runs a ranch in Gunnison. Author Cara Guerrieri stands in front (third from right).

36

By Cara Guerrieri

A local family’s ranch journals document seventy years of births, deaths and baling hay.

On June 18, 1944, Aubrey Spann wrote that his day went like this: “Irrigated at Slate River. Branded six calves. Separated bulls. Hauled off one dead calf.” Aubrey, my grandfather, was a third-generation local rancher who was born in 1905 in a sod-roof house at Jack’s Cabin, halfway between Almont and Crested Butte. He kept a daily record of ranch events, a practice my parents, Richard and Phyllis Guerrieri, adopted when they began ranching in 1951. I recently hauled all the surviving “daybooks,” from 1944 through 2014, out

of my folks’ basement and looked through them, wondering what this treasure trove would tell me about the history of my family, ranching and the valley.

It came as no surprise that ranching has changed in the seventy years these daybooks cover. In 1944 the family hayed and fed the cattle using teams of horses, sleds or wagons, and pitchforks. Nowadays, the tractors, with their air-conditioned cabs, mechanically produce bales weighing three quarters of a ton, and in winter unfurl the giant bales back onto the feed ground.

37

Aubrey Spann in 1944 with daughters Audrey, Phyllis and Gerrie Lou. Inset: A few of the family’s daily ranch journals, the earliest of which is Aubrey’s from 1944.

Cara Guerrieri

Courtesy of the Guerrieri Family

When it came time to sell his cattle in the early days, Aubrey shipped them over the Continental Divide by narrow-gauge train and then brought them to live auctions in Denver or sometimes even Chicago. In 2014 my mother made notes about the online sale of the family cattle. Instead of shipping the livestock, ranchers post videos of them.

As much as the ranching business has changed over the years, oh, how much has stayed the same. Every year calves are born; calves die; cows are doctored, vaccinated, moved, branded and sold. Fences are fixed, ditches cleaned, hay baled and machinery repaired. Through it all, the daybooks make clear that a rancher’s life still means hard physical work and dealing with cycles of birth, death, illness, bad weather and the 38

whims of the cattle market. Many of the daybook entries are, in fact, repetitious and somewhat monotonous.

Every once in a while, though, the writer noted something unusual, like a stampede in 1947, when Aubrey wrote that he “went to see Mr. Jezat and R. Divisak at Rio Grande about my claim for the train stampeding cattle last November 12th.” As a writer, I long for the rest of the story, but there are no details, for the purpose of the daybooks was not to describe sensational moments but rather to keep an agricultural record. The daybooks are not only short on details; they also lack reflection by the authors. The strongest sentiment expressed in all the decades of entries was written by my dad on Christmas Eve 1953, just two years after going into

ranching, when he described having a “hell of a good time” at a dance in Crested Butte.

I can’t help but wonder how the family dealt with times like haying season in 1954 when “everything broke,” or in the first week of April 1965 when six calves in a row were born dead, or in 1984 when the temperature never got above freezing for four months. Sometimes, such as in one dramatic week in April 1957, both the cattle and the family seemed to be falling apart.

“Lost milk cow calf. Brought two calves to basement to warm up. Didn’t work. Pulled two calves - one backward (breech), one from small heifer. Up until 3:00 a.m. Pulled calf from purebred cow - used tranquilizer. Starkebaum (vet) cleaned two heifers. Calf born dead. Lost heifer from lump jaw. Hauled manure. Pump belt slipping. Mike (son) has kidney infection, Richard gall bladder - bad.”

Often in the daybook entries, I sense an odd symmetry between the difficulties on the ranch and those in the family. On March 2, 1944, Aubrey noted that he “sewed up a cow, and brought Phyllis home from the hospital after appendix surgery.” Two years later, in March of 1946, he administered “10 tablets sulpha and potassium drugs to a lame cow,” and “Dr. Light came to see Audrey (his daughter), and prescribed sulpha drugs for pneumonia.” In April of 1968, my

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father wrote: “Phyllis went to doctor with chest infection. Pulled calf from heifer that has pneumonia - calf dead.”

Quite the opposite of the synchronicity between family and ranch life are the sometimes jarring entries in which the mundane and the monumental merge on the page. On the day of my sister’s birth in 1961, the daybook reads, “Phyllis has a baby girl, Ruth Marie, 10 lbs., 3 oz. Finished haying at the Lazy T Slash ranch.” When Aubrey’s brother was killed in 1956, Aubrey recorded one sentence noting Woodard’s passing but also wrote, “I dug on the spring at the Hummingbird Pasture.”

There is a quality of “keep going-ness,” if you will, in the daybooks, a determination to forge ahead with daily life, to persevere even during the most difficult times. It is this long record of family resilience that I’ve come to value just as much as I appreciate the daybooks as a historical record of ranching in the valley and a treasure trove of material for me as a writer. There, in black and white, is my family’s proof that in spite of long hours, hard physical work and an abundance of life challenges, if one keeps going, things will eventually sort themselves out.

Although it took a long time, such was the case after the shocking death of my grandparents’ eldest child, Gerrie Lou, at age 19. She died of infection after an appendectomy, shortly before penicillin, which might have saved her life, became widely used as a treatment. Aubrey, a careful record keeper, left entire months of entries blank after her death. The stark emptiness of the pages says more about his enormous grief than any words he might have written.

It was a good long time before he began again to record the number of cattle moved, meadows irrigated and hay baled. His backto-normal entries not only signaled his healing, but according to recent studies, may also have contributed to him recovering from her death.

A recent article in the New York Times reports that journal writing may be a path to emotional well-being after an upheaval, even if the author simply records, without emotion, what he or she did that day.

The article concludes that if there were a prescription for writing “it might read: Spend a little time with your diary — and then go for a walk.” I think if Aubrey were the prescribing physician, it would say, “No matter what else is happening in life, state the bare facts in your daybook. Then go feed the cows.”

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A Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory researcher uses tiny radios to spy on the nocturnal habits of male hummingbirds.

Words & images by David Inouye 42

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The tracking radio (.2 oz.) has a three-inch antenna.

Gossip around Crested Butte probably features ample speculation about where various males have spent the night, and why. That topic is also of interest up the East River valley in Gothic, home of the world-renowned Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), although the lab’s speculation centers not around young human males, but around males such as marmots, ground squirrels, bumble bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

Forty-five years ago a young scientist from the University of Arizona, Dr. Bill Calder, began studying the physiology of Broad-tailed Hummingbirds at RMBL. He used innovative techniques such as putting an electronic thermometer inside an artificial 44

egg, which he placed in an incubating female’s nest. A wire ran down the tree from the nest to a chart recorder on the ground, and he could tell by when the egg cooled or warmed up when the female was sitting on the nest, and what her temperature was. He and a student gathered the first evidence that a female incubating eggs could go torpid at night if she was stressed from not being able to feed much on a rainy day, letting her body temperature (and thus that of the eggs) drop at night. And the eggs still hatched despite the cooling treatment.

Bill was also interested in the energy budgets of male Broad-tails that bred in the Crested Butte area after migrating from overwintering in Mexico. He noticed that

they flew up in altitude after filling up at hummingbird feeders in the evening, and wondered why. Females didn’t do this because they were tied to their nests on aspen or conifer branches in the valley bottom, close to the flower-filled meadows where they foraged. For a few summers Bill tried to figure out where the males were going by hiking up a mountainside at dusk until he heard a male fly overhead, and then going a little higher the next night.

Despite all that hiking, he was never able to find a male at night, or determine at what altitude they were bedding down.

Perhaps one advantage of spending the night higher is the cold-air drainage that happens during the night; as chilly, heavier air sinks,

valley bottoms become cooler than hillsides.

Skiers or mountain bikers heading down a valley in the early evening have undoubtedly experienced these temperature gradients.

I collaborated on a few other studies of hummingbirds with Bill, including banding the hummingbirds in hopes that someone in Mexico might report one of them, so we’d know where they go for the winter.

We banded a few thousand birds over a few decades, but only had a few recaptures, I think all elsewhere in Colorado other than the many re-sightings we had in Gothic. Not many bird banders catch hummingbirds, because the “mist nets” they use to catch most birds are pretty easy for hummingbirds to avoid. In Gothic, banders have usually used screen cages with a trap door and a hummingbird feeder inside. Bill spent many hours peering out his lab window at the trap so he’d know when to drop the door. (Catching and banding birds requires permits from the federal government and state, and you have to have a permit to get the bands.)

Over the years since Bill Calder’s premature demise, the question of where males go for the night has remained unanswered, although that information could provide insight into how the males can save energy at night after expending a lot of calories pursuing possible mates and chasing other males away from their territories. But some new technology could help answer the question. Over the past decade the electronics used to make radio tags have been miniaturized, so it’s now possible to make one small enough to put on a hummingbird. I heard about a graduate student in Mississippi who has been using them to track migrating Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and decided I’d try them at RMBL. This required a few months of negotiating for permits from the federal bird-banding laboratory, the state Division of Parks and Wildlife and the RMBL Research Committee.

I located a manufacturer, who uses a tiny hearing-aid battery that is most of the weight of the radio, and arranged to buy four radios. The radios weigh about 0.2 grams, which is marginally light enough to put on a hummingbird that only weighs about three grams, or a little more than a penny (about 2.5 grams). Each radio is programmed to broadcast a signal every few seconds, and using a directional antenna, I found I could detect them from a mile or more away if there were no hills in the way. The battery 45

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lasts about three weeks, and then if I can retrieve the radio, the manufacturer can replace the battery for about half the cost of a new radio.

To attach the radios to the birds, I adopted a technique that had been used by the student working with Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. I used scissors to trim a tiny patch of feathers until I could see the skin on the bird’s back between its wings, put a drop of eyelash adhesive on the skin, applied a tiny square of chiffon fabric, and then used the same glue on the radio battery to attach it to the fabric. The proprietor of the fabric store in Boulder where I looked for chiffon scraps loves hummingbirds and was happy to donate a few pieces for the project.

If you’re in need of false eyelashes, which came with the glue, let me know, as neither the birds nor I use them. The premise of this technique is that if we can’t catch the birds to remove the radios when the batteries die, the radios will fall off as the feathers start to regrow, relieving the bird of its burden.

The technique sounds simple, but in practice took some learning. The first bird I tried flew off normally when I released it, and I was able to detect its radio signal a few hundred yards away for an hour or so. I found the bird in a willow shrub and photographed it as it flew around, but then it took off to parts unknown. So at least I knew that the bird could fly easily with the radio. I rode up and down the East River valley, around Mt. Crested Butte and up Washington Gulch but couldn’t hear the signal. My guess is that this hummingbird was just passing through, stopping at my feeder before continuing on his journey. So that $200 experiment was short-lived.

The second radio I used must not have been glued on well enough, and after an hour I could still hear it but it didn’t seem to move. Imagine the task of trying to find a hearing aid battery on the ground a quarter mile away. I could get within a few yards without too much trouble, but narrowing the search from that point took almost two hours of using the radio without an antenna, trying harmonics of the broadcasting frequency, and digging out the largest magnet I could find in my toolbox. But I finally found the radio.

The third attempt was more successful, as I saw the male back again at the feeder, as did my family while I was at a meeting in Germany for a week. The radios have a wire antenna that sticks out about three inches, so it’s not difficult to see even though the

feathers cover the battery. By the time I got back to try tracking the male at night, the battery had died, but I was able to recapture the bird and remove the radio.

A second component of this research project is to use the radios on females to find nests. Hummingbird nests are difficult to locate, and we want to monitor the timing of the nesting process so we can compare it to the seasonal progression of flowering that I’ve been monitoring at RMBL since 1973. We have evidence that the changing climate is altering the timing of flowering more quickly than the birds are changing the timing of their migration, which could cause problems for both the flowers and the hummingbirds if the trends continue. Given the success installing radios on males, I tried one on a female, but she must have been a transient bird; she only remained in the area a short while.

That left me with one radio left to deploy, and a representative of the Western Hummingbird Partnership, which provided some funding for the radios, was coming to visit. I caught a male while she was watching, put the radio on, and she released it. I heard the radio from somewhere in the willows in the valley bottom that day, and

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Using eyelash adhesive to attach a tiny radio to a hummingbird and then tracking its movements: easier said than done.

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then the next day it seemed to be somewhere up on the side of Gothic Mountain, and not moving. My search skills were put to the test again, and it took two trips up the mountainside before I found the radio on the ground, where it must have fallen off of the bird. So I now have one data point, which suggests to me that the male probably flew up about a thousand feet to spend the night in a short conifer tree, about a mile away from where I banded it. This summer I’ll try putting a temperature logger at that site to see how much warmer it is at night than the valley bottom.

This project has been an interesting learning experience, and I hope to try again this summer. If I’m lucky, I’ll catch resident birds rather than transients, and toward that end I banded about a hundred hummingbirds last summer so I can recognize them. Birds born in Gothic tend to return there, and the oldest known wild hummingbird is a female banded in Gothic that we re-caught almost every summer for 13 years. That’s probably twice the age of most females, which tend to live longer than males. Maybe my skills at gluing on radios will improve so I don’t have to search for them on the ground again.

I think Bill Calder would have been very interested that we can now use technology to try to answer the question he posed decades ago, about where the males go at night. My motivation for this work is partly curiosity about the natural history of a beautiful pollinator, partly exploration of what new technologies can teach us, and also interest in the physiological ecology of how the males manage their energy budgets and how nesting females will be affected by ongoing changes in their flower resources.

For the right price, I might lend a radio to someone in Crested Butte who wants help tracking a male of another species.

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High roller

From his wheelchair, Jake O’Connor builds hand cycles to get people back on the trail after lifealtering injuries.

Words by Luke Mehall Images by Braden Gunem

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Most fans know the Gunnison Valley has some of the best mountain biking in the world. But those people might not know that the world’s best hand cycles for mountain biking are made in Crested Butte as well.

Jake O’Connor, proprietor of Reactive Adaptations, is a reticent and driven visionary who credits the Crested Butte community for his success. His hand cycles, created in his shop in Crested Butte South, allow folks with disabilities to get back on the trails and back to an active lifestyle they cherished before becoming injured.

O’Connor suffered a spinal cord injury in 2001 while doing construction work in Fort Collins, Colorado. “I was lifting a large exterior framed wall in a house, and it crashed down on me,” he explained. “I broke most of my ribs and had a pretty complete T11-12 injury.”

Not one to dwell on his misfortune, he got out of the hospital in a month and a half, and less than a year later completed his degree in construction management. He worked in that field in Kansas for five years, putting in 60 hours a week, and grew tired of it. “I wanted to be a ski bum,” he said. (He skis on a mono ski, and recently built his own.)

He moved to Salt Lake City, where he skied, played and worked in a bike shop.

Whenever he had the opportunity to take a vacation, he ended up in Crested Butte, so he finally moved here.

It was circa 2009, and Crested Butte was experiencing the woes of the economic downturn. O’Connor sought out construction work, but it was scarce. “I had some time on my hands, so I decided to do something with it,” he said.

O’Connor had owned and enjoyed a couple of hand cycles from a company called One Off. But he wanted something

“gnarlier,” a mountain bike hand cycle better suited for the trails of Crested Butte.

He teamed up with Chad Belyea, of Crested Butte Ironworks, who helped him build the first prototypes.

“Chad donated a great amount of time,” O’Connor said. “It’s unreal how much he helped me.”

Things took off after they created the first bikes, and friends started asking O’Connor to build bikes for them. Reactive Adaptations was born. These days, with business booming, O’Connor has a lot on his plate. He runs the company primarily by himself, with one part-time employee, Dan Klim. He works with the Crested Butte Adaptive Sports Center and frequently travels the West, assisting with biking events and festivals geared toward bikers with disabilities.

The process of building these bicycles is involved and complex. “Every disability is 53

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different,” O’Connor said. “I build bikes that cater to various situations; a lot of them are for quadriplegics. There are special hand cranks, brakes and electric assists. Your typical mountain bike has about a dozen welds; one of my hand cycles can have around 140.”

Rosa Malloy-Post found O’Connor’s bikes after a climbing accident left her confined to a wheelchair. She rode a hand cycle from one of O’Connor’s competitors first, before discovering Reactive Adaptations bikes. “It was like going from a 1980s Stumpjumper to a $5,000 full-suspension mountain bike,” she said.

Malloy-Post noted that O’Connor’s innovations make his bikes stand out.

“Jake’s rigs really make a world of difference. Being able to use an electric assist lets me go faster and longer than the standard build. I have a lot of fun, and I love the ability to go out and be

with my dog in the outdoors.”

That is exactly what keeps O’Connor going: restoring freedom to people who have experienced life-altering injuries. “It’s a cool feeling when I go to events, like Utah’s Moab Mania, and I see people riding my bikes. Also, when people tell me that they did something in the outdoors that they weren’t able to do for five years, like going for a ride with their family members, I love that.”

Crested Butte has turned out to be the perfect place for Reactive Adaptations.

O’Connor is able to build most of the bikes in the Gunnison Valley, and he plans to keep it that way. “It’s so hard to quantify how much help and support I’ve gotten here,” he said. “So many people have donated their time and resources.”

He added, “My girlfriend Meredith is my biggest supporter. She’s put up with my busy schedule, sleepless nights and countless questions – and she’s even helped with

production when things got too crazy.”

The trails surrounding Crested Butte also keep him going. An avid rock climber before his accident, O’Connor favors rocky, nasty, straight-up terrain utilizing his bike’s low gearing. Some of his favorite local trails are Whetstone Vista, Strand Hill and the Upper and Lower Loop.

He enjoys fishing and also takes time occasionally to do a casual “booze cruise” down the Gunnison River with Meredith, just to “stop thinking about bikes for an afternoon.” In Kansas he did a lot of adaptive wakeboarding, but joked, “It’s not as much fun in the Blue Mesa when you’re freezing to death.”

O’Connor has no plans to slow down, and Reactive Adaptations is constantly refining and innovating its products and creating new ones. “It’s about quality and providing freedom and independence. We’re trying to put out the highest quality hand cycle out there right now.”

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June 25 - August 9, 2015

Box Office: 326 Elk Avenue, Crested Butte, Colorado • crestedbuttemusicfestival.org • 970.349.0619

By George Sibley

The Gunnison County Electric Association, provider of Crested Butte’s electricity, celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2013 with the publication of a history, “Lighting Our Community,” by Vicki L. Spencer. This is an expanded story of Crested Butte’s critical role in the association’s early history.

Photos: Early Rural Electric Association linemen.

Reprinted with permission. Copyright NRECA. 57

A gathering of GCEA’s first board of directors (left to right): Tim Morgan, George Spehar, Jr., Joe Pasic, Jr., Bill Whalen, Janet Allen, Hannah Shackleford and Harvey Lobdell.

In 1941, GCEA had its office in Crested Butte.

Seventy-five years ago, the mining town of Crested Butte did something “electrifying” for the Upper Gunnison River agricultural valleys: the Town Council signed on to a plan that enabled the extension of electricity to all of the ranchers, farmers and small resorts in those valleys.

Crested Butte, the first town in the county to get electricity, had enjoyed electrical power since 1889, provided by the private Crested Butte Light and Water Company. The City of Gunnison followed a few years later. But the rest of the valley – the ranchers and farmers that were the lifeblood of the “down valley” economy – remained dark; extending power to the thinly populated rural reaches was regarded as unaffordable.

That changed in the 1930s, after 58

the creation in 1935 of the federal Rural Electrification Administration (REA).

Most of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were not popular with conservative American farmers and ranchers. Their first New Deal experience had been the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, under which they had reluctantly taken government subsidies to reduce the productivity that had been killing them, pricewise, with surpluses. In ranching country this had been manifested in the slaughter and burning of many cattle and sheep – a strong and distasteful cure. But joining the “make work” programs, like the Works Progress Administration or the Civilian Conservation Corps, they regarded as a serious sign of personal failure – never mind that those labor forces were actually

building the roads and bridges, water and sewer systems, parks and outdoor recreation sites, and other infrastructure for the nation.

But even the most proudly independent farmers and ranchers could understand the REA. It was no giveaway program, no coddling of those who couldn’t make it. It was a straightforward business venture: the federal government would lend the farmers money at a favorable rate plus technical support to help them put together their own electric power cooperative. It was truly power to the people.

Upper Gunnison ranchers began to organize a rural electric cooperative in 1938, incorporating as the Gunnison County Electric Association (GCEA) that September.

Gunnison River resort owner W. Richard Walker was first president of the GCEA board, and board member and ranch wife Janet M. Allen took on secretarial duties – for the next 36 years. Allen and another woman on the original board, Hannah Shackleford, may have been the real “sparks” for the organization; Shackleford eventually became board president, at a time when most organizational boards had no women at all.

The board divvied up the agricultural valleys and began recruiting co-op members at $5 per meter – more serious money in the 1930s than now. They held the first annual meeting in January 1939 with 116 members, and by the end of 1939 had 500 members.

That was, however, still too few people when spread over the settled portions of the Upper Gunnison watersheds, well short of the REA recommended density of three paying members per square mile. GCEA’s only hope of meeting that density was for one or more of the population centers in the valley to participate in the co-op. The City of Gunnison – despite being the economic center for most of the ranching community – declined to participate, which left Crested Butte.

The Crested Butte Light and Water Company was operating with a combination of hydropower from Coal Creek and steam power from a coal-fired boiler, both in the Powerhouse building across Coal Creek from the Old Town Hall. That equipment was antiquated and aging, however, and both the Town and the Light and Water Company were open for discussion with the GCEA. Four GCEA board members had been added from Crested Butte: Tim Morgan, Joe Pasic Jr., George Spehar and County Commissioner Bill Whalen. In October of 1940, at a Town Council meeting with 200

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Initial groundwork and cable laying for the Crested Butte Ski Area in 1971.

Buttians present, the council voted to let the GCEA recruit members within the town, and granted rights of way for transmission lines in the streets and alleys. The agreement with the Town also required the power source for the GCEA cooperative to be located within a mile of Crested Butte, to minimize line losses since the Town would be the principal load on the system. At that time, the “electric grid” had not extended into the mountains; the co-op had to not only build a distribution network, but generate its own power as well.

Early in 1941, the GCEA offices were moved to Crested Butte, where they stayed until moving to the present location west of Gunnison in 1975. Membership grew rapidly, and the GCEA was promised – so it seemed — $150,000 in loan funds to construct the system. V.A. Morgan had been hired as general manager for the project; he began to order poles and wire and other equipment that winter so construction could begin when the snow was gone.

Then politics struck. In mid-April, the co-op’s retained attorney Robert G. Porter received a telegram from the Washington office saying that the GCEA loan had been approved. He began to notify the board members – then received a call the same day, telling him to ignore the telegram; the loan was not approved.

An emergency meeting of the board was called. According to Porter’s reminiscence, “It was a gloomy meeting…. I must confess I was ready to quit the fight. But I will never forget 60

the reaction of Mrs. Hannah Shackleford. She suddenly pounded on the table with her fist and with flashing eyes said, ‘We will not stand for it! We will fight it through!’”

Thus directed, Porter, manager V.A. Morgan, project engineer E.C. Porter and Commissioner Bill Whalen set off the next morning on an epic April drive to Washington, D.C. “We had not attempted any political involvements,” Porter said, “but this time we were desperate.” When they arrived in Washington, after days on roads we can’t really imagine today, they went straight to the office of Congressman Edward Taylor.

Taylor had been representing Colorado’s West Slope since 1908 and had ascended through seniority to the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee – controlling practically every budget in the federal government. After hearing their story, Taylor took the four desperadoes to the REA offices immediately, and, attorney Porter reported with classic understatement, “That very afternoon the allocation was reinstated.”

That unleashed a storm of activity in the Upper Gunnison. Instead of contracting for the construction of its system, the GCEA took the “self-help” option allowed for co-ops – which essentially meant the ranchers became linemen, trained on the job, working off their tie-in fees, and wiring their own homes with REA plans and $10 material loans from the cooperative. As soon as weather permitted, crews began planting poles and stringing line down the Slate and East River valleys and up

the Ohio, Tomichi and Quartz Creek valleys.

A member of a line crew made up of outof-work Crested Butte coalminers confessed, years later, that while they were brave enough to go underground to dig coal, they were apprehensive about using climbing spikes to go up the poles, and instead used a ladder. But those main lines still got done that summer and fall.

The power plant was another matter.

The original design called for three diesel generators to power the system, but that order was cancelled, probably due to “Lend Lease” obligations to the British in the worsening European war. Undeterred, manager Morgan and engineer Porter worked with the REA technical advisor on a plan for a “state of the art” hydropower plant to be built out toward Peanut Lake, combining flows piped from both Coal Creek and the Slate River to power three 335-horsepower turbines.

The REA loan was expanded, and turbines, pentstocks and other parts were ordered. A concrete foundation for the hydro plant was poured that fall. But delays in deliveries indicated that it could not be completed in time to power the system in 1941. So Morgan and the GCEA board approached the Crested Butte Council about using the old Crested Butte Light and Water coal-fired generator to power the system through its first winter. The council agreed.

Thus, on December 6, 1941, with much fanfare, ceremony, and the Crested Butte High School Band, GCEA board members threw the switch connecting the old generator to 112 miles of new line, and 80 rural customers down valley were electrified for the first time.

But that was December 6, and America woke up the next morning to Pearl Harbor.

The nation was quickly on full war footing, and the War Production Board gave REAs a low rating despite the importance of food production to the war effort. The turbines and pentstocks were cancelled, and the GCEA faced the reality of going through the war years with an antiquated coal-fired power plant with no backup. Breakdowns were frequent under the heavy load, sending everyone back to hurricane lamps and candles when the plant was down.

The members of the cooperative had asserted from the start that they were “unalterably opposed to purchasing wholesale current from the Town of Gunnison or any other source and [were] willing to pay, if necessary, a higher rate to own and operate their own generating plant.” This sent manager Morgan and engineer Porter to

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exploring options that even included a small hydroelectric plant at the Roosevelt Mine high in the Quartz Creek watershed.

Then in 1942 an appalled boiler inspector closed down the Crested Butte generating plant, with a warning (according to attorney Porter) that “the old plant was likely to blow up at any time, and when it did it would damage most of the town of Crested Butte.”

The GCEA board had no alternative but to go supplicant to the City of Gunnison, whose offer to supply power from its diesel system the co-op had turned down in 1941.

A connecting line was created between Gunnison and the Ohio Creek line, and the lights were back on in the valley. But the load put a major burden on the city diesels – and the city in turn put a major financial burden on the GCEA users. By the end of the war, much of the Gunnison city budget was being funded by GCEA members.

When the war ended, there was talk of finishing the hydropower plant above Crested Butte, but the Bureau of Reclamation had swung into power-marketing mode; its new Green River Dam and Powerplant had power that officials wanted to sell cheap so they could build more dams to meet the need. They offered to get the Upper Gunnison Basin declared a “power emergency,” so Congress would fund a line to bring power over Old Monarch Pass.

The catch was that the City of Gunnison would also have to participate in the “emergency,” and the Gunnison Council was not eager to lose the GCEA revenue. After considerable dickering, Gunnison agreed to accept the Bureau’s cheap hydropower so long as the City received revenue for maintaining its plant as a backup supply. The Bureau of Reclamation began its Monarch line in 1951 and was providing power for the Upper Gunnison soon after. At that point, like most REA co-ops, the GCEA became a “distribution co-op,” distributing power brought in from the growing national megapower grid but producing none locally.

One has to wonder what the electricpower situation in the valley would be today had World War II not intervened in those brave plans laid in 1941. The original “state of the art” hydropower plant would have been outgrown long ago – but one then has to wonder what people like V.A. Morgan, Ralph Porter, the indomitable duo of Janet Allen and Hannah Shackleford, and all those “self-help” ranchers and miners would have done with the new technology for homegrown electricity that is available today.

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Housing Market Continues Upward Trend Benson Sotheby’s International Realty’s Brokers Lead the Charge

by Cathy Benson - Broker/Owner

Single Family Homes were up 5% from the previous year.

Our 2014 market ended as strong as expected. We ended up 6.5% in the upper valley and up 7.2% in Gunnison County compared to 2013. The sectors of our market that were strong were homes, condos and townhomes in Crested Butte, condos in Mt. Crested Butte and land in the Rural Gunnison area.

What does this mean for 2015 and beyond? Well we have already seen over 23% growth for the first quarter of 2015 compared to the first quarter of 2014. We are expecting to see steady growth in our real estate market as we move forward as visitor numbers were considerably up in 2014 with no signs of slowing down for 2015 and the Crested Butte area is still an incredible value compared to other Colorado ski and resort towns.

Condos and Townhomes were up 13% from the previous year.

We had 4 of the top 5 agents in total sales volume.

30%

We had a 30% market share in the Crested Butte area.

$39.8

We sold over $39.8 million of our in house listings and over $94.6 million in total volume.

All data is from the calendar year of 2014 and is pulled from the Gunnison Country MLS

Talk to one of our knowledgable, service oriented, professional, talented, caring brokers to help find your perfect property. Also check out our new mobile friendly, easy to use website bensonsothebysrealty.com when you start exploring Crested Butte and Gunnison real estate or if you are looking for the latest real estate market data.

970.349.6653

401 Elk Avenue | Crested Butte

BensonSothebysRealty.com

R E M O D E L & H I S T O R I C R E N O VAT I O N S

Bob Brazell Photography

NEW CONSTRUCTION

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Chris Miller Perspectives

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Bob Brazell Photography

GENERAL CONTRACTORS

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By Steve Church

“I fish, therefore I lie.”

Some say it isn’t a fish at all....

Rod Cesario

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Experience, expertise, exceptional service.

Reggie Masters 970-349-5313 Office 970-596-3568 Cell 970-349-5145 home reggiemasters@bighornrealty.com New Location! 305 Sixth Street, at the 4-way stop Crested Butte 970-349-5313 bighornrealty.com

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Some say it’s a spirit, a phantom, an apparition brought on by too many Budweisers and not enough oxygen.

“More like an aquatic Chuck Norris,” fumed an irate fishing guide from Scenic River Tours. “That beast has collected more flies than the city dump. In fact, that’s why he’s so fat! He lives on fishing tackle! It ain’t natural!”

“I had him jerk a client right out of the boat the other day!” added Mark Schumacher of Three Rivers Resort and Outfitting. “Dragged him around like an innertube behind a speedboat! Haunting really.”

We’re talking about Earl, Big Earl... ‘cause he is slick… like Earl.

The biggest, meanest, slickest trout ever to haunt the Gunnison River. Every local fisherman has his own tale of Earl... some even based on truth.

“Me and my little girl Tallulah were fishing by the confluence back in July when I got a little rainbow trout on,” said local waterman Brandon Clifford. “Couldn’t have been more than about eight inches, so I passed the rod off to Tallulah so she could bring in her first fish. ‘Here you go, sweetheart... Hold on tight!’

“Suddenly that pole bent double and Tallulah launched into the air like a bottle rocket. Hold on tight she did – and went sailing horizontal for about 20 feet before hitting the water.”

Skipping across the water like a flat rock, Tallulah might have started to question her daddy’s advice. Still she clung to the rod.

Hell of a fight for an eight-inch trout, Brandon thought as he dove in after his precious disappearing daughter.

With Tallulah under one arm and the wildly jerking pole under the other, Brandon struggled back up the bank. For the next 20 minutes, he fought what had to be the most possessed eight-inch fish in the world.

Finally, arms burning, he dragged the beast close enough to get a look at it.

“It wasn’t a rainbow at all. It was Earl, all right... golden color, red eye, about the size of Russell Wilson’s thigh. And clenched in his mouth, like a good cigar, was my considerably traumatized little rainbow, who had just experienced probably the worst 30

minutes of its life.”

Big Earl held on until he neared the riverbank, Brandon said. “Then he gave me a wink, spit out that rainbow and was gone.

Just like that. I haven’t got Tallulah to go fishin’ with me since.”

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Stories abound of missing pets: “Me and Pixel my wiener dog were about ankle deep – I was showing her some periwinkles – and ‘Whoosh!’ A big splash and my precious Pixel was gone! Without the slightest peep!”

Doggone.

Other folks claim they’ve seen Big Earl snatch bald eagles right out of the sky. That’s why you see those eagles just sitting on those branches, starin’ at the water.... They’re nervous.

Earl has been sighted from Blue Mesa Reservoir to Oh Be Joyful Creek about 40 miles away. Unusual for trout, which are pretty territorial.

He has been blamed for everything from cattle mutilations to divorces.

“I can’t get my husband out of that river!” sounds the common female complaint. “He wants that damn fish more than he wants dinner!”

“That man can’t talk about anything but Woolly Buggers and Tied Down Humpys.”

“Why, in his sleep the other night, my husband called me his Damselfly Nymph, and he called our daughter his little GreenButted Inch-Worm! Can you imagine?”

“I tried phoning the doctor, but his nurse said he’s out fishing.”

Mothers of unruly children have taken to using Earl as a motivational threat: “Better eat your peas, or I’ll tell Earl!”

And wily children have used the legendary fish to their own advantage. “I can’t take a BATH! What if EARL’s in there?!?”

One thing’s for sure: whatever lucky angler finally lands Earl not only will win the pool down at the Timbers Bar – which is nearing the gross national debt of Greece – but will also have bragging rights enough to make his head explode.

So all you fanatic fly fishers, strap on your finest Spuddler Smelt, Muddler Minnow or Blue-nosed Stimulator, get yourself a small pile of Budweisers, and head down to the Gunnison. For the fisherman who snares the mythic Earl will get the greatest reward any rod-wielder could receive, the epitome of fishing glory, the Oscar of Angling; he will have a fly named after him.

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Broker, CNE, RSPS (970)209-4895 joyce@redladyrealty.com 70

You’re halfway to your vacation destination, or maybe just your day job, when you realize you left your cell phone charging at home.

You: • Panic! There’s no way you’ll survive the day, much less a week, without it.

• Chastise yourself, but figure you’ll borrow a friend’s if necessary.

• What cell phone? Never owned one.

In today’s world, few of us can answer “C.” But for Vinnie Rossignol, holding out means holding on to what really matters in life. You can’t reach Vinnie by e-mail, Facebook or cell phone. But if you ride the bus, write a letter or leave a message on his land line, he’ll be happy to share some of his secrets to living a full life, unplugged.

“When people ask me to share my e-mail address, and I let them know I don’t have one,” confides Vinnie, “the usual response is ‘Good for you!’ I tell most people, if they want to get a hold of me, catch me on the bus.”

As a year-round driver for the Mountain Express’ colorful buses, Vinnie has served as a local ambassador and purveyor of Grateful Dead tunes for more than thirty years. During summers, he worked as a botanist and rangeland survey technician with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for nearly two decades. Vinnie also developed a faithful following during his many years as a tour guide for the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival.

Long ago Vinnie made a conscious choice to forego what many consider modern

essentials: a television, personal computer or cell phone. “For me,” he says, “being unplugged is just one element of being more present and embracing simplicity.”

Make no mistake: our sage is not a neo-Luddite or technophobe. At the top of Vinnie’s bucket list is to witness the Formula Two Races at Brands Hatch in the UK, regarded by connoisseurs as the best roadracing circuit in the world. Ask him about the day, back in 1971, when he received the Race Car Drivers Club Worker’s Performance Award for his outstanding job as flagging chief at northern California’s premiere roadracing track. You’ll get some good stories.

Back in the day, Vinnie cruised the California coast in a Porsche convertible; today, his ride is a previously owned 1991 Chevy F10 pick-up with 267,000 miles, which is definitely not in racing condition.

Although he still loves road racing, as with electronic devices, he believes we enter the spiral downward into over-dependence on technology when we “turn our tools into toys.” His motto: “If it runs on fuel or a battery, it’s not a toy.” And when an alternate reality becomes more important than actual reality, he draws the same conclusion: less is more when it comes to plugging in. “Every day on the bus, I see adults, teens, locals and visitors glued to electronic devices, ignoring incredible scenery out the window.”

Despite the many advantages of digital technologies, Vinnie believes that staying unplugged is a key to his mental and physical health. This may be true for many of us. In fact, IUD is no longer just a birth control device, but also refers to a recognized psychiatric diagnosis: Internet Use Disorder,

also known as IAD, or Internet Addiction Disorder. “Going dark” is an emergent slang term for disconnecting from digital devices, whether going undercover as a secret agent, weaning yourself from an addiction, or just taking a break from cyberspace.

On the flip side, “going dark” is actually a way to “go light,” as advised by one of Rossignol’s contemporaries, California poet Gary Snyder. In “For the Children,” Snyder wrote: “Stay together, Learn the flowers, Go light.”

Rather than being a Lenten sacrifice or punishment, unplugging can bring people closer together, help us take more notice of what’s going on in the here and now, and recover a measure of personal freedom.

Whether you wish to take a sabbatical from your digital habits for an hour, a week, or what’s left of your lifetime, Vinnie offers this 12-step plan to wean yourself from Wi-Fi and cell service in Crested Butte.

START YOUR MORNING AT A LOCAL CAFÉ.

There are many, and they all offer free Wi-Fi. However, this is a great opportunity to resist the urge to log-on or text. I know, it’s like asking someone with a two-pack-a-day habit to quit smoking. Try it, though. Instead, strike up a conversation with other folks in line, or your barista. Or just listen.

SIT ON AN ELK AVENUE BENCH. Trademarks of Crested Butte’s main drag, Elk Avenue’s unique benches (try them all!) are great places to kick back and sip your beverage. Depending on the weather, you can choose the shady side or the sunny side of the street. Hold the urge to check your 71

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smart phone. Smile and wave to passersby.

Welcome others to share the bench. These spots offer premium people watching and sky watching.

guides. Have a question about a trail, a restaurant, the library? They’ll help. No tips necessary.

READ THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER.

Speaking of libraries, if you’re fighting the urge to look up something on Wikipedia, you’ll probably find what you’re looking for at the Old Rock Library. This is also where folks go for free Internet service, but don’t cave in now! There’s a dictionary on display and a full set of encyclopedias. You can sign up for a library card and check out books and magazines. Plus, it’s a cool historic building and a quiet place to escape in a rainstorm. The library also offers activities for all ages, an educational lecture series and a book club.

To find out what’s going on in town, check the local newspaper; new issues arrive around town every Thursday morning.

On the inside front page, catch up on international, national and state news. Don’t worry; it usually doesn’t change much in a week.

WRITE A POSTCARD AND MAIL IT AT THE POST OFFICE. A full-fledged letter can be intimidating to write, but everyone enjoys receiving a handwritten postcard. Explore this alternative to Facebook, e-mail or texting your friends and family. Mom will love it. If that doesn’t work for you, write a card to yourself. Next, walk or bike to the post office on Elk Avenue. In Crested Butte, this is almost always a social experience. Check the kiosk out front for local events or buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal if you’re aching for more news.

(Bonus tip: If you don’t want to be delayed by conversation or lines, visit in the early hours of morning.)

STEP OUTSIDE FOR THE WEATHER REPORT. We’re in the mountains, so regional weather reports are often sketchy. Skip the habit of logging onto your favorite weather channel and step outside. With your built-in weather sensors, you can decide what to wear for your hike or bike ride. Bring a rain jacket.

During the summer, we can pretty much count on the possibility of afternoon storms, even if it’s clear in the morning.

FIND YOUR WAY WITH A MAP. Trust me, you don’t need GPS or MapQuest around here. Crested Butte is small enough that you can walk pretty much everywhere.

In fact, a walk about town is a perfect way to spend the day. The Visitor Center offers free maps of both towns and trails in the area.

If you need more detail, retailers sell trail guides and topographic maps.

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RIDE THE BUS. Crested Butte’s free buses are works of art and easy ways to get between villages, including Gothic and the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab. Don’t forget to look out the window! Best of all, the drivers are seasoned

VISIT THE LIBRARY.

LEAVE YOUR CAMERA AT HOME. Although cameras are useful tools, the fact that most cell phones also serve as cameras and that cameras are almost all digital these days, leads to other temptations. Lighten your load and see how it feels to expand your perspective beyond the rectangular, if viewing the world through a lens is part of your digital habit.

INVEST IN A GOOD PENCIL AND SMALL NOTEBOOK. Sketch, write and keep notes. A classic yellow #2 lead pencil doesn’t need to be re-charged or plugged in. Plus, many studies have shown that writing by hand enhances learning and memory retention when compared with typing. You can always type your notes up later if you need to.

VISIT CRESTED BUTTE WHEN THERE IS NO FESTIVAL OR SPECIAL EVENT. There’s almost always something going on in town these days, and festivals of all stripes make Crested Butte a favorite destination and hometown for many. But if you really want to experience the baseline vibe of Crested Butte, be here during the off season.

You’ll learn what really makes this place special.

WATCH THE SKY. “I’ve always said that driving the bus is an outside job,” says Vinnie. “I’m moving around the valley with big windows in front of me and all around me during my shift at the wheel. The sky is an endless show, night or day. Sunrise, sunset, clouds, rainbows, moonrise, snow and rain and stars. Watch the sky and you’ll never get bored.”

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Photo: Trent Bona

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Mon. - Fri. 9 am - 5 pm, June 8 - August 28 Mountain Adventures operates under a special use permit in the Gunnison National Forest, and is an equal opportunity service provider.

To book Camp CB or Mountain Adventures: 970.349.2211 ridecb.com/kids Advance reservations are highly recommended. All activities are weather dependent and subject to availability.

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ALIVE

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What a perfect combination - Having one of the premier custom home builders in Gunnison County teaming up with Benson Sotheby’s International Realty!

Who better than a builder with 44 years of experience to be able to provide expert knowledge on: * Suitability of building sites on raw land * Knowledge of permitting processes * Understanding of structural integrity of homes for sale * Knowledge of the different locations of prime property

Jamie Watt - Associate Broker 970.209.2675 Also, as a member of the Mt. Crested Butte Planning Commission, Past President of the Gunnison County Contractors Association and a Board member of the Mt. Crested Butte Downtown Development Authority, I have a finger on the pulse of the future of Gunnison County.

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(Just a few of our happy clients)

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Silver Ridge

A Crested Butte mom shares her favorite happy-kid haunts off the beaten path.

by Erin English

Little August with his dad (above) and all tuckered out.

Friends shook their heads in amazement when I told them my three-year-old son August was receiving a drum set last Christmas. “Good luck,” they said, while probably thinking, “You’ll rue the day!” In the winter months, though, a reliable source of indoor entertainment was necessary. On days when the novelty of building snow forts had worn thin, August would happily pound away while I tidied the house — earplugs firmly in place.

Summer is a different story, with only a small fraction of our daylight hours spent within four walls. August and I head out on adventures shortly after breakfast, and we’re still swinging the tee-ball bat in the driveway until that last sliver of sun slips behind the mountains each evening. Every bluebird day here is magic, and uniquely so when experienced through the eyes of a toddler.

Some of our warm-weather outings take 81

us to popular destinations: the Farmers’ Market on Sunday, the pirate ship at Crested Butte Town Park (any day of the week), and Monday night’s free Alpenglow concerts at the Center for the Arts. Every major community event is marked on our calendar, including the Fourth of July Parade and Vinotok.

But three years into this parenting thing, I’ve made a point of seeking out new activities to keep the days fresh — scouring the Thursday newspaper cover to cover, keeping my ears open around town, and sometimes just driving the Subby down a new road to discover a terrific explosion of wildflowers.

The variety keeps me as engaged as my son. And, by the time we circle back to Town Park with pretend spyglass in hand, the pirate ship feels new all over again.

NEIGHBORHOOD POCKET PARKS You can’t skim down a triple twisty slide with your two best friends at Crested Butte’s pocket parks (head to Rainbow Park for one of those), but charm wins out over snazzy features at these grassy slices of kid-heaven located around town.

So small you could bicycle by them for years and hardly notice them, the town’s pocket parks include Henderson Park (Third and Whiterock), Totem Pole Park (Third and Maroon), and Entrance Park (the junction of Sixth and Seventh streets at Red Lady Avenue). Where pavement meets dirt at First and Butte is my favorite of all the pocket parks, Three Ladies Park. August loves romping on the simple play structure and tumbling on the soft square of grass out front. The large shelter sometimes hosts our late-afternoon snack or picnics with pintsized friends.

For a treat you’ll both enjoy, visit Three Ladies at sunset. While pushing your delighted kiddo on the swings, you can enjoy unobstructed views of Paradise Divide as day merges into night.

FISH FEEDING For this mommy-toddler twosome, summer means regular trips to the Roaring Judy Fish Hatchery. Roughly 15 miles down Highway 135 from town, the excursion requires a car ride, but it’s free and well worth the effort.

A good hour of entertainment includes tossing fistfuls of food to hungry fish (get your coffee can full of pellets from the main office), followed by a pretty walk down a cottonwood-lined path to the stocked 82

Erin English and son August in the family mega-tent (above) and playing at the I Bar Ranch.

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fishing ponds. At a picnic table near the water’s edge, we eat lunch and watch kokanee salmon launch into the air.

While you’re there, don’t be afraid to chat up the employees, as we often do.

On one visit, August and I stumbled upon a crew manually extracting (squeezing) eggs out of hundreds of salmon. He watched entranced, as did I, as gelatinous bubbles spewed out of fishes’ bellies into collection trays.

CAMPING At first, the giant Coleman Montana eightperson tent my fiancé and I purchased shortly after August was born seemed silly, especially when compared to the compact backpacking set-ups we’d used before.

Now I have nothing but love for our family-sized nylon shelter. Camping is our son’s favorite summertime activity, and it’s so easy to do around Crested Butte.

Whenever possible, we set up camp near a gurgling stream (such as just off Cement Creek Road) to soothe us to sleep and help ensure a good night’s rest for all. We pack plenty of milk, meals and snacks, along with obscene amounts of kid clothes. Dirt spreads — fast.

We’ve found some fantastic drive-up camping sites out Slate River Road, up Washington Gulch and at Spring Creek Reservoir. For first-timers, consider reserving a spot in advance at Lost Lake Campground off of Kebler Pass Road.

With fire pits and vault toilets, this scenic spot boasts a high convenience factor.

A pail and shovel for digging in the dirt and fixings for s’mores equal toddler bliss.

GETTING ACTIVE Pulling August around Crested Butte South in a Chariot attached to a townie bike is a superb workout for me and a fun way for him to take in the surroundings.

And running alongside my little guy while he cruises on his Strider — the unofficial toddler bike of Crested Butte — induces breathlessness and laughter for both of us.

Hiking, which is free and plentiful around the Butte, adds variety to our week. For a lovely half-day adventure, park a floppy hat atop your child’s noggin and head to the Lower Loop, Snodgrass Mountain, Caves Trail or Judd Falls. I bring a kid-carrier for that moment when August loses his enthusiasm for hiking.

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I enjoy the grand beauty while we amble along, and when it’s snack time, we get down on hands and knees to follow a caterpillar’s journey across rocks, leaves and grass.

While hiking late in the summer on Mt. Crested Butte (and in other spots around the valley), keep your eyes peeled for patches of wild raspberries; they’re delicious when plucked fresh off the bush.

Some day I hope to do some mushroom hunting with my son, with caution and a fungi identification guidebook firmly in hand; the wrong ones can be quite poisonous.

LIVE MUSIC FOR KIDS, BY KIDS Few things are cuter than a little one wiggling his or her body to some tunes.

So any chance I get, I take my musicloving guy to see a live performance. The adorable factor jumps up a notch when the musicians are also kids.

The Opera Children’s Chorus rendition of “Oklahoma!” was a summer highlight for us last year. August sat in rapt attention during the entire musical, commenting on costumes, lighting and the talented young singers. Check the Crested Butte Music Festival’s webpage, crestedbuttemusicfestival.com, for this summer’s Opera Children’s Chorus performances.

At the Farmers’ Market, don’t be surprised to see a cute kid in a raccoon hat playing a violin. Local musician Cash Lamar has often entertained my child as we’ve strolled Elk Avenue in search of fresh produce.

Farther afield in Gunnison, a trip to the I Bar Ranch is a special treat, complete with hayrides, a crackling bonfire and burgers made with meat from a local rancher. At the I Bar’s Kids of the Gunnison Valley concert last summer, more than a dozen youngsters from Crested Butte and Gunnison fiddled, sang and tapped out songs on keyboards to the delight of my little man.

Maybe some day August and his drum set will take center stage at such a concert.

That would certainly be a proud-mommy moment, worth his practicing and my earplug wearing. But until the weather turns cold again, those drums will sit mostly neglected; we’ll be outside soaking up fun and Vitamin D. For summer in Crested Butte is a lot like toddlerhood: fleeting and sweet.

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ACTIVITIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE •

Trailhead Children’s Museum art/ science camps or explore on your own

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Old Rock Library story times, family films, reading programs, etc.

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Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory kids’ nature camps

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Camp CB: Adventure Camp and Mini Camp at the ski resort

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Crested Butte Town Rec: Kids Live! performance camp, tennis, baseball, soccer, etc.

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Mountain Adventures: rafting, hiking, biking, fishing, etc.

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Gravity Groms action-sports day camp, biking to rocket launching

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Roots & Shoots environmental field studies/garden camp

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Art Studio of the Center for the Arts classes and pottery painting

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Paradise Place Preschool day care and adventure program (grades K-3)

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Stepping Stones Children’s Center day care (infant-age 5) and day camp (5-7)

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Jan Runge

By Polly Oberosler One afternoon several years ago, I was waiting, as western courtesy requires, on a herd of cattle that the cowboys and dogs were working up to and through a narrow gate. It was a herd of maybe two hundred head, and had I driven to the gate, it would have disrupted a half day’s worth of work on the part of the cowboys. From my high vantage point, I watched the stock dogs work the cattle – music in motion, as if swept by a maestro’s baton. I could hardly see the dogs for all the dust and the distance that separated us, but I could see their handiwork; the cattle moved as if they were part of some symphonic animation. I could envision the conductor’s long graceful strokes while the herd ebbed and flowed as the dogs positioned them to go through the gate. Our own border collie at the time was a champion herd dog, and watching the dogs move the cattle with body language and eye contact brought a smile to my face.

“Stock dog” is a term thrown like a lasso around all dogs used for herding livestock, and they embody the natural instincts of 88

Nathan Bilow

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Jan Runge

each breed injected with just the right smatterings from other breeds to cultivate what stock growers need in herding. The oldest, and the one in its purest form, is the border collie; these dogs are gatherers and masters at “steering” the herd. The border collie came from the British Isles and was named for hailing from the southern border of Scotland. The word “colley” meant good or useful and was occasionally attached to a particularly good wife or husband. Used originally for gathering sheep and moving them to new pasture in the Scottish hill country, the more insistent border collies often doubled as cattle dogs.

Other stock dogs that evolved over time were the heelers, which came from a mix of breeds that were fine-tuned to create a dog more forceful than the border collie, to push cattle more easily. The breed developed in Australia and the U.S. from Australian sheep dogs, border collies, wild dingo dogs and dalmatians, with smatterings of other breeds.

Heelers are more aggressive overall, but breeders got the bite out of most of them by tempering the dingo with quieter breeds.

Some ranchers of the Gunnison Valley 90

have come to use dogs only recently, while others have used them for years. One good stock dog can do the work of three people on horses and make easier work of an arduous day. The dogs can work their way through the willows in the creek bottoms where wise old cows go to escape detection and a horse can’t penetrate. Being incredible athletes, the dogs can drop off steep edges after cattle where horses would lose their footing, and they’re a huge asset in the bogs that could tear up a horse’s legs were the cowboy to go after an old bull there.

Stock dogs are invaluable once you have a bond with them. They work in harmony with their handlers, watching, listening and always anticipating. For border collies, one physical attribute (other than their incredible intellect) has remained through the generations – the white tip on their tails that allows handlers to see them even in tall grass.

I grew up with border collies and have had many of them. They are wicked smart and honest, and they possess unmatched loyalty and incredible savvy. Most of them will choose working over food any time, and they constantly watch their masters for

Writer Polly Oberosler with buddies Alice and Edgar (also shown among the flowers).

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direction. A friend of mine told me once that having a border collie was a unique experience because every morning when he woke up, the dog was staring at him. Border collies are famous for their stare, and I can attest there is power in those eyes.

Some years back my husband and I went to pick up a female pup we’d requested out of a ranch litter. She was the only female out of eight puppies, and as the rancher described her, “very busy.” So busy, in fact, that she had just fallen in a ditch dug to repair their broken sewer line, so the rancher was cleaning her up in the sink on the back porch when we arrived. As we talked my husband picked up the runt, and the more he held that little guy, the more it became evident that we were going to have to take him home as well. They became Edgar and Alice, two names pulled out of thin air on our way home.

In my lifetime, I’ve had a few horses and two or three dogs that were all heart, and Edgar is one of them. As a puppy, he began to limp without complaint on a rear leg, and further investigation led the veterinarian to conclude that Edgar had no track for his kneecap on that leg, so it slid in and out of place depending on his movements. The vet tried to repair it, but being a five-monthold puppy with a playful sister, Edgar tore it up to the point that we had to have the leg amputated. Just days after his surgery, we saw the pain vanish from his face, and he began to move around even better than before. In a few weeks he was traveling at a dead run with zero indication that he was missing a hind leg. He had no idea he was handicapped, and unless they looked closely, other people were unaware he was three-legged. His motion was so incredibly fluid that other animals never gave him a glance as he blasted by them. Edgar would have been a champion herding dog, but his handicap impeded our imagination, not his.

Edgar is uncanny smart, always seeming to know just what I need in any given situation. Like all border collies, Edgar watches every move we make and begs to assist us no matter what we’re doing. Helping us with the horses has cost him a tooth or two and a dent in his brow, but until he got older, he could snap back from their striking hooves like Mohammad Ali. Border collies are born to work, and depending on their personality, they can become neurotic messes without a job.

Any job will do, from watching the house

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Jan Runge

Dave and Polly Oberosler with Edgar.

and truck to keeping the cats off the counter, but they are most happy herding cattle or sheep – in which situation you have to make them rest or they will kill themselves doing the job. When moving cattle the dogs are nearly tireless, stopping only to drink quickly at stream crossings before they’re up and running again. They constantly look at their human companions for direction as they move back and forth behind the herd.

Even at 13 years, Edgar will react with authority if we look like we need a hand with a horse, steer or pig. He has hopped thousands of miles behind the horses and mules I used as a ranger in the West Elk Wilderness, and he’s still a loyal companion in spite of his one hind leg slowly breaking down.

We don’t take him much any more, though he has taken to lying between the truck and trailer to make sure he doesn’t get left. My husband brings him to feed the horses every morning, and from a sunny spot at the barn, he spends the rest of his day watching the world go by through wise old eyes, still ever vigilant. Sometimes I take him for a drive around the neighborhood just so he can hang his head over the side of the truck and let his ears fly in the wind. He is a steady friend.

Note from the author: Edgar passed away just before press time. I chose to leave this article as it was, because I was writing about his life, not his death. He hopped a million miles. Now he can fly. RIP, Eddie boy.

– Polly Oberosler

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John Holder

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By Molly Murfee The irony of running a program that preserves open space from indoors behind a glaring computer is not lost on me. Eerie electronic vibrations emanate from the screen, probably disrupting my own force field. The crazy machine whirs at me, as if trying to take flight or project its self-importance. My ass pools like lead in the seat of my chair.

Through the skylight above my desk, I see leaves twisting in the light breeze. A robin teases me from the aspen branch, cocking its head back and forth in search of worms below, then flaunts its freedom by zipping off into the blueness of a summer’s sky that is leaking onto my computer keys.

I can’t take it.

My back hurts. My neck hurts. My heart hurts.

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I whip my control back from the pulsing contraption in front of me and press the “off” button with a “take that” cackle and cuss words that would embarrass my mother.

My backpack stays well supplied for just such occasions. I add a couple of energy bars and a peanut butter sandwich, top off my water, leave a note for my honeybun and screech off in my truck as fast as 15 m.p.h. will allow.

“What have we done?” I mutter, rolling down my windows so the wind may have its way with me. I breathe down into my toes, blowing out all the crap of modern life, its materialistic obsessions and unreasonably fast pace. Of the more more more and bigger bigger bigger. Of the buildings with their isolating walls and stuffy air polluted with

coughs and farts and yesterday’s anxieties about tax returns and health insurance. Of the refrigerator’s hum and the garbage truck’s beeping. Of cars and pavement and the ridiculousness of street sweepers in a place this close to the dust of the wild. Of hammers and backhoes and the infernal racket that signals “progress.” Excel spreadsheets, endless emails, community-bludgeoning Facebook posts, soul-sucking meetings, short-sighted politics and bureaucratic paperwork trail behind me in a turbulent wake. So much toxic flotsam and jetsam, expelled like sewage from a cruise ship too long at sea.

On the dirt road to my salvation, much of the swill is jarred out of me by cavernous potholes. At the trailhead, I swing on my backpack and slam the truck door behind

me, marching away from the last chunk of modern industrialization I’m going to see for a while.

At first I practically run, just to make sure nothing and no one has followed me.

But after a couple of turns up the trail, with a glance over my shoulder, I finally slow down.

Stop.

I inhale a breath that now goes beyond my toes, sending tendrils into the cool earth, exhale a softer air that laces out from my lips like a plea. I breathe in the sunshine, chin tilted to the sky, pulling those golden rays into my lungs. I breathe in silence. Stillness.

Solitude. I breathe in the wing beats of bees as they busy from sunflower to sunflower.

I touch the fringy stamens, dusting my fingertips with pollen, rolling it between

pointer and thumb until the topography of my own prints is full of it, touch it to my tongue to taste what the bees taste. The crystalline creek to my right burbles as the water spills over boulders and spirals in eddies. A white-crowned sparrow flits through the high alpine meadow, its whistling song winding through the pristine air like a silver ribbon. I smell the green musky pungency of the willow shading the creek, the fullness radiating from the Engelmann spruce bark, its scent released by the caress of warmth. I evaporate into the essence of cleanness. Of greenness. Of openness. Of a “less” that is pregnant with connection, realness and right importance.

For the first time in days, my eyes gaze beyond a space two feet in front of me.

They linger over the folds and creases in the hillsides, take in the moving variance that is life unencumbered by man-made contraptions, soak in the multitudinous color palette. Effervescent emerald. Drenched fuschia. Ethereal periwinkle. Luxuriant purple. All set against an implausible blue.

This sensory explosion and heartplumping response is part of human’s evolutionary history, for 99% of our existence we lived as hunter-gatherers. As we look out onto the verdant hills, alive with bees and flowering and pollination, as we drink in an environment that is diverse, healthy, ripe with food and water and shelter potential, our modern interpretation of this as an “aesthetic” experience is actually our genetic history telling us – yes. This is a place where 99

life thrives. Each sight, sound, taste, feel and smell is a clue that leads us to both medicine and meal.

Harvard entomologist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward O. Wilson purports that this genetic-cultural encoding from our hunter-gatherer history remains in our genes, despite generations of city habitation. It creates what he calls “biophilia,” or the innate affiliation human beings have to other living organisms and processes – in other words, to nature in all of its glorious diversity.

Stephen Kellert, professor at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, dissects our biophilia response even more. He has found that this sense of awe and fascination, with 100

the resulting tension release, relaxation and peace of mind, is derived from an intimate experience of nature’s diversity and complexity arising from eons of natural selection.

As hunter-gatherers our observational skills were paramount to survival. Even today if we spend the time noticing species interconnectedness, we discover kinships and affiliations and find our place as a part of the whole. Knowing of life’s complexities fosters reverence and loyalty. Our loyalty to maintain that which sustains us leads to cooperation and altruism. A sense of spiritual significance awakes. With all our human needs met – from physical to social to spiritual – we gain psychological well-being, identity and confidence produced by the conviction of an

ultimate order and meaning in life.

And that’s when we begin to care. The importance of conservation arises when we realize not only the physical, but also the emotional, cognitive and spiritual needs nature fulfills within us.

If we are to save anything – a species, ecosystem, chunk of land, the planet or even ourselves – we must first love that thing.

Create a heartstring to it. Only then will we fight for it. I don’t know how to realize this relationship, and its importance, except through actual physical connection.

The numbers make it difficult, however.

We have already exceeded the ability of our planet to provide with more than seven billion humans living on its surface. Colorado’s population alone will increase up to five

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million in the next three decades. The United States is seeing more than 1.6 billion visits to the outdoors per year. The National Forest that surrounds us here in Gunnison County experiences 3.4 million visitors annually.

We are crawling over each other to get a piece of the outdoors. And we’re having an impact.

Outdoor adventure has become fashionable, with magazines, blogs, websites and social media proclaiming the “Top 10 Secret Hot Spots,” the carrying capacity of those hot spots be damned. Gear brands tout the latest and greatest products that will protect us from getting lost, or getting bunions, or getting hypothermia in a hailstorm.

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bigger, better and latest and “does this backpack make my ass look fat?” and “is this color in style?” We head into the woods, reading our GPS manual along the way, checklist of hot spots in hand, searching for that wilderness experience with a million of our closest friends.

And hurry. We’ve only got two days.

Our clamoring has us hiking and biking on each other’s heel and pedal, panting down each other’s necks on the trail. Our backcountry is becoming littered with toilet paper and goo wrappers. Tire tracks mar the delicate high-alpine tundra, fire rings scar our mountain meadows, campsite areas are as populated as subdivided neighborhoods.

Soon there will be little untrammeled land to enjoy. Through its commodification, it will be burned, occupied and eradicated.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten the point. We’ve lost the ability to sense or be aware of that innate attraction to nature that probably pushed us to read the blog about hot spots in the first place. Biophilia.

What we really need, more than bragging rights or looking cool or being in the hippest new place, is to Just. Stop. Moving. Be silent. Be still. Be alone. Be vulnerable. And then just listen. Watch. There is so much to hear without the noise of a civilization on hyperdrive grinding in our eardrums. So much to see when our noses aren’t pasted into our hand-held devices.

Extraordinary beauty slams us into the present moment. It empties our minds until our only focal point is that one thing.

We’re immersed in the blue iridescence of a full-moon bath, the blush of the sun on a vermilion peak. Our eyes are wide open to our surroundings, that which gives us food, air, spirit. We become in that instant a part of our world because we are so fully engaged in a deep gaze with it.

We need wilderness for more than “just” the preservation of species, ecosystems, wildlife corridors, recreational opportunities or medicinal possibilities. We need it for more than “just” the preservation of clean air, water and soil. Our societal ills of excess are not only causing the destruction of our land and pollution of our air and water, they are also making us depressed, sad, anxious and stressed as we struggle to keep up. And so, we also need wilderness for what author Wallace Stegner describes as a spiritual resource, for the “incomparable sanity it can bring… into our insane lives.”

We need to be in wilderness for that primal reconnection – the biophilia that still glimmers in the genetic memory of our cells.

We need to feel the real rhythm of a place – of sun and moon, blooming and dying – instead of a day choked with the demands of iPhone dayplanners. We need to learn that we don’t need so many gadgets, and that screens don’t really connect us.

But too often we slam through the wilderness like a carnival ride, then toss aside what it has to teach us like a halfeaten cone of cotton candy. We bring our inconsiderate tendencies with us, and destroy the very thing that supports our truest and deepest needs.

To develop a wildland ethic, we acknowledge the gifts nature gives us – from physical sustenance to spiritual reconnection – to help us curb our hedonism and exercise restraint. We consider the health of the ecosystems we’re traveling through and living on, we note our impacts, and we’re respectful – focused on sustainability rather than selfish exploitation.

We kindle our sense of awe to give us the perseverance and passion to preserve wild places. We carry in our packs only what we need, and that simplicity can inform our material decisions back in civilization.

We tread lightly in the backcountry, which prepares us for exerting a smaller footprint in the front country. We remember the mountain stream that teased us with its laughter and are prudent in our use of its resources. The mutual relationship of the ant and the aspen sunflower reminds us of our interconnectedness with all things, and to maintain right relations with all.

In the introduction of The Biophilia Hypothesis, Kellert writes, “The modern onslaught upon the natural world is driven in part by a degree of alienation from nature.” The biophilia revolution promises we humans may yet rediscover our love of the natural world and renew our relationship with it. From solitude and silence, from activating our senses in the natural world, we can find answers. Clarity and right values will arise. We can recover reverence, cooperation and a sense of spiritual significance. We can recognize the natural world’s role in our very happiness and move toward its preservation. In the process, we just might regain our own sense of sanity.

Freelance writer Molly Murfee is also the executive director of 1% for Open Space, a local non-profit that collects voluntary donations from customers of 100-plus participating businesses. These funds are used to permanently protect open space lands in Gunnison County.

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While this might be just a short visit for you, someone else will take your place when you leave. The cumulative impact of millions of visitors on our wildlands can seriously damage the soil, plants, water and wildlife.

LOVE THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE

LOVE THE PLANTS

Get some waterproof hiking boots or trail shoes so you can march through any condition the trail presents and still keep your feet dry.

Invest in some gaiters to go over the top of your boots so water can’t leak in.

Bring a good camera and/or binoculars, so you can photograph or view wildlife and wildflowers without scaring the animals or trampling the plants.

Learn more about this incredible land with wildflower, plant and tracking guides.

Stay on the trail. If you encounter muddy or snowy spots, use those great boots and tromp right through. Walking around soggy spots enlarges the trails, creates multiple trails, causes both erosion and compaction, and kills the beautiful plants you came to see.

Walk in single file on the trail so as not to widen it.

When encountering other people on the trail, “pull off” only on durable surfaces 105

such as dirt, gravel or rocks, and stop to let others pass. Don’t trample plants to get out of someone’s way.

Stay on the road. Don’t drive into the gorgeous meadows, no matter how easy or fun it looks. This destroys plants, compacts the soil, creates erosion and makes an often irrevocable mess of things.

At trailheads, don’t drive onto grass, flowers or meadows to create parking space. Squeeze into established parking spots.

Use only established campsites.

Keep your campsite tight, staying off of vegetation when you wash dishes, sleep, hang out, etc.

Take breaks on durable surfaces. Choose a rock or bare ground for snack breaks and lunch.

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Urinate at least 200 feet from lakes and streams. Try to find unvegetated areas.

Animals are attracted to the salts in our urine and may defoliate plants to get the salts.

Deposit human waste in catholes, dug six to eight inches deep, at least 200 feet from water, camps and trails. Cover and disguise the cathole when finished.

Pack out toilet paper and hygiene products. A great technique: Put your trash products in a used coffee sack, roll the whole bundle in a plastic bag, and carry it out in your pack to toss when you reach civilization.

Camp and wash (dishes and yourself) at least 200 feet from lakes and streams. Carry water to your washing spot, use small amounts of biodegradable soap, and scatter strained dishwater over unvegetated areas so as not to attract animals who might eat the plants.

LOVE THE EARTH Pack it in, pack it out. Inspect your campsite or picnic area for food scraps or litter to pack out; take care to get small items like twist ties, candy wrappers or cigarette butts.

Modern human food isn’t a natural occurrence in the backcountry. Leaving it behind can attract animals, which in turn become accustomed to humans. Animals accustomed to people, especially bears, are often killed to avoid animal-human interactions. Pack out all leftover food, cooking grease and materials used to cook food, such as aluminum foil. Even orange

peels, apple cores and pistachio shells appear as food to animals.

Stuff extra plastic bags in your pack or vehicle to carry out trash.

If you see someone else’s trash, pick it up, too.

Especially pack out your toilet paper. Do NOT bury toilet paper or leave it on the ground. Animals will find and strew it about, and it won’t disintegrate quickly in our cold environment. It’s unsightly and unhygienic.

Plan and pack your meals and snacks so as to avoid litter. Leave excess packaging at home. Avoid small items like twist ties that can easily fall out of your pocket.

LOVE THE WILDNESS Leave the wildflowers. Flowers are the way plants reproduce. If you pick the blooms, you threaten the plants’ survival.

Wildflowers won’t last in a vase in your house anyway; they wilt quickly after being picked. As the Wildflower Capital of Colorado, Crested Butte depends on these flowers for tourism and therefore our income.

Respect the wildlife. Don’t feed or approach wildlife, including chipmunks or birds that seem interested and appear to have

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been fed before. Feeding wildlife alters their behavior; they may even lose their ability to find food on their own, which might cost them their lives when humans aren’t around. When camping, store food so animals can’t get into it. Hang your food sack in a nearby tree.

Honor the rocks and trees. Carving into the bark of trees opens them to disease and alters the wilderness experience. Carving into rocks is just plain obnoxious.

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBORS

CHRIS JOBSON

Owner & Contractor

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Don’t travel in large groups. If you have many people, break into smaller pods and hike different trails or a good distance apart. Most folks visit our backcountry to find solitude and quiet, away from noisy crowds.

Give folks some space. Whether hiking, camping or lunching, keep your distance from other recreationists so they may enjoy the silence and solitude of the wilderness.

Listen to nature. We all understand the primal urge to howl at the moon or hear your echo bounce through the valley. But keep your human noises down so others can savor the subtle sounds of nature. Turn off or silence your cell phones and gadgets; many seek the wilderness to escape from technology.

LOVE MAKING A PROPER FIRE Know if any fire restrictions are in place.

We live in an arid land; building a fire in dangerous conditions can threaten our homes, forests and livelihoods.

Use only existing fire rings. The intense heat of a campfire sterilizes the ground beneath it, so plants may not re-grow there for many years.

Keep fires small. Use only dead and downed wood. Don’t cut branches from trees or bushes, dead or alive. A good size for firewood is about the size of your wrist, or something that can be broken easily with your bare hands.

Put out your fire completely.

Use a lightweight stove for backcountry cooking and enjoy a candle lantern for light.

For more extensive information on low-impact travel: Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, www.lnt.org (click on “Learn” and scroll to “Seven Principles”). If you use motors to experience our wildlands, check out www.treadlightly.org (click on “Education,” then “Learn” and then “Recreation Tips”).

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Dusty Demerson

Remembering why we’re here: caring connections, wild beauty, active minds and bodies.

Lydia Stern

What color are your eyes?

By Kathy Norgard

Nathan Bilow

Beth Carter

Dusty Demerson

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Beth Carter

Lydia Stern

112

Crested Butte is a small town where people stop and take the time to look you in your eyes if you meet at the post office or somewhere else in the community.

As in big cities, people here are busy.

But our pace is slower.

Most people here have computers, iPhones and other modern gadgets. We’re connected to the larger world. More importantly, we’re connected to each other.

We like to interact face to face rather than relying too heavily on electronic communication.

As I interviewed people for this story, the consensus was that Crested Butte is a place where you can be yourself. We do our best not to discriminate. Divergent lifestyles are accepted and celebrated.

Sure, we have our idiosyncrasies, but it’s important to accept one another.

We get to know each other here in this small community. We care about each other’s safety.

It’s difficult to impossible to be anonymous in Crested Butte. People know your business, in the good sense of that phrase. It’s part of keeping one another safe.

A local shared: “It’s not inappropriate for a single woman to go into a bar alone to listen to music or have a glass of wine.

Chances are, the woman knows the bartender and he knows her. He’ll look out for her.”

Another long-time resident said she was walking down Elk Avenue one afternoon, and after she passed two local teenage boys on the sidewalk, one made a disrespectful remark. The woman stopped, faced the boy and told him, “I know your parents. I don’t think they would like to hear how you are behaving and what you just said.” The boy blushed and apologized.

A high school student remarked, “People watch out for one another here.

When I visit a big city, it’s kind of weird. I have to be careful not to be out after dark.

I have to pay attention to where I am and what I’m doing all the time. It’s safe to ride my bike or walk anywhere in Crested Butte. There’s very little crime here. I feel like someone is always watching out for me.”

Locks are under-utilized in Crested Butte. Only rarely does an unlocked bicycle disappear from the front of the library or at a local coffee shop. Folks sometimes leave keys in the ignition while

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they run into a local shop. Many Buttians have forgotten where their house keys are – except when the bears are out. (Some smart bears have learned how to open front doors of houses.)

Speaking of animals, dogs live here, too, and they seem to love it as much as their humans. The population seems to be about one dog per person. We live with and share our town with a variety of animal species. On any given day, you might see a fox, bear, coyote, rabbit or deer near town.

Sometimes we unwillingly share the harvest of our gardens with these critters.

Local Barb Hammond tends a vegetable garden to support her family’s healthy lifestyle. She was employed as a nurse at the hospital, raising two young children with her husband, Tony Veit, when she received a serious cancer diagnosis. Her Crested Butte friends and neighbors sprang into action. Barb’s support came not only from local faith communities but also from the larger community.

“People I knew and some I’d never met brought meals for our family during the entire next year when I was going through treatment. Every time I had to go to Denver for chemo, I came back to a clean house, and sometimes I didn’t even know who had cleaned. Others babysat my six- and eleven-year-old kids and shuttled them to their activities, accompanied me to my appointments, plowed our snowy driveway, and dropped by to hang out with me,” Hammond recalled. “I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.

I’d seen glimpses of the bright spots of our community before, but personally experiencing it was amazing.”

Last July, Hammond and her family completed the Summit Hike to the top of Crested Butte Mountain (12,192 feet), a fundraiser for Living Journeys, a local nonprofit that provides support groups and other aid to individuals and families coping with cancer. Besides receiving good medical care, Hammond attributes her current good health to the support of a loving community. She now wants to “pay it forward” by giving to others.

Another long-time resident describes Crested Butte as an active village. People are active physically while enjoying and respecting the surrounding nature. Some amazing athletes live and work here, and most everyone is outside part of each day enjoying nature by walking, hiking,

running, skiing, biking or dancing.

Yes, dancing. You might even see someone dancing down Elk Avenue (and not only during the Heritage Museum’s Black and White Ball). It might be a student taking classes at the Crested Butte School of Dance, where you can learn hiphop, tap, ballet or other forms of dance.

Some locals celebrate each day by dancing.

Crested Butte encourages all kinds of artistic and intellectual self-expression.

This place hosts annual wildflower, film and music festivals and the Public Policy Forum. With a short summer drive or bus ride to the old Gothic town site, visitors can learn about the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, a world-famous research center. On Monday nights during the summer, rain or shine, colorful chairs and blankets cover Town Park as people gather and listen to music at the free Alpenglow concerts. Locals and tourists mix, greeting old friends and making new ones.

“Living our modern lives has made us less involved in the daily lives of our extended families. Community becomes even more important. Crested Butte is where I feel at home. I love to chat with people I pass on the street or have people drop by my place. We rely on one another.

I have no desire to live anywhere else in the world,” recounted a relatively new resident who relocated here from the Virgin Islands after living in many other beautiful places around the world.

We can hike or Nordic ski to a pristine lake or into the mountains or just stand outside in our backyards to experience the natural beauty of where we live.

A fourth-generation Crested Buttian noted, “This is as good as any place I’ve been to in the whole world. I stay here because I have Coal Creek in my veins.”

Driving down Elk Avenue in summer or winter, it’s clear that tourists love visiting our paradise, too. Many of us consider tourists to be our guests. We include them. We talk to them. Tourists are part of the tapestry of our community.

When we answer their questions about where to eat or get the best ice cream cone, we take the time. We notice the color of their eyes.

These are the reasons I live here.

Psychologist and psychodramatist Kathy Norgard came to Crested Butte in 1996 as a part-time summer resident and moved here full time in 2011. Her eyes are hazel.

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Travels with Hal Hal and Mariah were our friends for a decade in Crested Butte. They’re gone now, but I remember our times with them fondly, including certain trips with Hal that usually went well — or at least ended well.

Hal came from a German-American family in Chicago. As a boy he’d taught himself to ski, and to jump, thirty yards or more, at Riis Park. We met when he was nearing seventy, no longer a jumper but still a good downhill skier, fearless and far better than I was. He also had two snowmobiles.

He always wanted me to try one, but in my view one should go into winter woods quietly, on skis or snowshoes. (Deer and elk, I think, would agree, although they might add a provision about not carrying arms.)

One winter, when Mary Jane and I were out of town, two of our younger cousins, Sally and Tom, spent a few days in our Crested Butte house. Hal and Mariah were very kind to them. The kindness included Hal taking them snowmobiling. One afternoon they helped him load Hal’s snowmobiles on his trailer, and they drove up Kebler Pass road to the trailhead. Soon they were cruising, through deep powder, the slopes of Scarp Ridge, Hal driving one machine and Tom the other. When they returned to Hal’s truck, Hal asked Sally if she’d like to try driving a snowmobile. She would. Tom had had enough and said he’d stay with the truck.

Off went Hal and Sally, roaring uphill. Evening arrived. Hal stopped to show Sally how to turn on her headlight. It was time to go home, so they started off again, now in the dark, down the road from the Irwin Lodge to Lake Irwin. Hal led, with Sally following his lights at some distance. She failed to see a curve in the road, went straight on following his lights, and hit an aspen. She broke both wrists. Being young, she healed soon. But that was enough snowmobiling — enough for our family, not for Hal. Hal always had more engine power at his disposal than I did, including an airplane. He Nathan Bilow

Good friends don’t always make good alpine travel companions.

by Peter Bridges

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admitted to two crashes, which he insisted, I think rightly, were not his fault. One crash, years before we met, came when he flew himself on business up to Saskatoon. It was dark and he was coming in for a landing when all the lights went out in the city, at the airport terminal and along the runway. He lacked fuel to fly elsewhere, and so came down where he thought the runway must be. His guess was good but not perfect.

A wing hit a warehouse and then he stopped, uninjured. Next week he was back in the air, in another plane.

One pleasant summer morning in Crested Butte, Hal suggested we fly to Aspen for lunch.

That appealed to me. I’d never been there and was somewhat curious about the place, but I figured a couple of hours in the haunt of billionaires should suffice.

Hal kept his plane at the Gunnison airport, down the road from Crested Butte and 150 miles from Aspen by car but only 40 miles by air. We took off in late morning in his aging Stinson.

I’d meant to ask him just when Stinson stopped making planes – decades earlier, I learned later.

No matter; in a few minutes we were flying over the Elk Mountains in a cloudless sky. “Oh,” said Hal, “I should tell you that I only have one

Soon there was no trail. I was thirsty, hungry and hot, but had no food or water or even a hat. Or a map. Or a compass.

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oxygen tube. Don’t you think the pilot should have that?” By all means.

As we neared the high mountains, I could identify West Maroon Pass below us. What fun!

We climbed to 16,000 feet, since in front of us were the Maroon Bells and Castle Peak, each over 14,000. The air got thin, and I got woozy and failed to appreciate the full beauty of the scene, but just ten minutes later we landed in Aspen and soon were having sandwiches and beer at the old Aspen Wienerstube. On the way home we flew low, along the spectacular chasm of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Since then, my wife and I have gone to Aspen several times on foot, slogging over West Maroon Pass, with the Bells and Castle Peak above and not below us, and at 12,500 feet feeling only a modest lack of oxygen.

Hal’s machines included an old Jeep. One July morning, a year after our flight to Aspen, I was sitting idly on our front porch, looking in turn at Mt. Crested Butte and at a hummingbird poking happily into our columbines. I was wearing hiking clothes, but I was thinking I might take a day off from rambling in the mountains when I saw Hal walking up Sopris Avenue.

He had something to tell me. He’d been studying the topographic map and had figured out a way to drive between the mountains — Whetstone and Axtell — that separate our valley from that of Ohio Creek. He and Jeep were ready to go; would I like to come? Sure, though I doubted we would find a drivable way. If we did, it would be a rough trip, but I need not wonder about the Jeep’s mechanical condition.

Or should I? Recently Hal had volunteered to fix our ailing washing machine. I’m not a good repairman, so I agreed. With a little help from me, he disassembled and, he thought, fixed it, and then reassembled it. It failed to start. “Hal,” I said, “what’s that little spring doing on the floor?” We looked at each other and laughed, and I called our regular repairman.

In any case, the Jeep was certainly good for this short trip, rough or not. I yelled to my wife that I’d be back in a couple of hours, and off we went. We drove up Kebler Pass road and then the gravel road that crosses Ohio Pass at 10,000 feet above sea level. A mile beyond the pass, Hal turned left onto a dirt track, the once-planned right of way of the Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad that had never made it all the way to Ohio Pass, let alone the Pacific Ocean. The track was narrower than it is now.

I got out to investigate and met two mountain bikers. “Where are you coming from?” “Crested Butte.” “Can our Jeep get through?” “No, man, John Holder

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it’s singletrack.”

I went back and told Hal this was as far as Jeep could go, adding, “I’ll walk home. There must a decent trail, if bikers do it.” Jeep and Hal turned around, and I started walking.

For an hour I was happy, even singing to myself as the trail wound uphill through big conifers. Now the trail became fainter. Soon there was no trail, and no bikers to consult.

I was thirsty, hungry and hot, but had no food or water or even a hat. Or a map. Or a compass.

For hours I made my way through nests of downed trees whose branches tore my bare legs and across steep scree below some summit I could not identify. I was totally lost, but I must have been on the back side of Mt. Axtell. Finally I came down to Kebler road and saw Mt. Crested Butte rising above our town. It was a good two or three miles farther away than it should have been. A merciful driver picked me up, and soon I was drinking a beer at Hal and Mariah’s house. “Hal,” I said, “we’re comrades, but we don’t have to be fellow travelers.”

Peter Bridges is a former ambassador turned Crested Butte homeowner, hiker, biographer and poet. He diplomatically changed a few names in this account.

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Dusty Demerson

Crested Butte proves that with shopping, dining and fun, sometimes smaller is better

by Sandy Fails Admittedly, I’ve lost my skills at shopping-mall consumerism. After driving through city traffic and prowling for a parking space, I’m already flustered when I enter the walled-in world of canned music, milling people and dozens of stores vying for my commerce. I tend to wander wide eyed and overwhelmed for half an hour before drifting into the food court to chow on menu items I’ll soon regret.

Meanwhile my husband, a more urbanadjusted soul, strides through the mall like a man born to consume. By the time he joins me on my third piece of flaccid pizza in the food court, he can confidently report on the latest communication technologies and how fashion is trending toward saturated hues and a more relaxed silhouette.

The truth is, I’d generally rather shop locally. We don’t have infinite choices of clothing, accessories, décor, art, gear and gifts, but we have good ones.

As a challenged clothing shopper, mostly I venture forth to find outfits for special occasions, which means the stakes are higher. So I consult Nan, Joyce, Missy or whoever’s working at the local clothing stores. It’s like having a girlfriend on call to help pick out a scarf or suggest a different color camisole. Not once have I suspected that a Crested Butte retailer talked me into buying some pants only to smirk to herself after I left, “Man, those really make her butt look big.”

I buy shoes here because the folks at the store know what I’m talking about. I need

to work all day in these shoes, ride a bike downtown for lunch, and walk home after hours in an unexpected snowstorm. And I’m looking for something cute. No problem, the clerks say: comfort, style, traction and snowproofing. Isn’t that what everybody wants?

We don’t have a massive whole-foods grocery chain here, but we have a small, health-conscious market where sincere people give me the beta on thickening my coconut pudding with arrowroot. And we have a farmers market where the sellers might have picked those beets the day before you bought them.

When my husband and I travel, we ferret out good restaurants. But seldom are we wildly impressed; we’re too spoiled by the diversity and quality of our home eateries.

Our valley doesn’t have hundreds of urban options, ranging from excellent to really bad. Instead we have three-dozen options, ranging from excellent to pretty darn good.

Since most of our restaurants and shops are locally owned, chances are high that the owner of the place I’m patronizing is in the kitchen or behind the cash register or otherwise contributing to my enjoyment.

And the money I dish out for that enjoyment goes in large part to pay employees and support my friends and neighbors.

My husband and I will still hit the city shopping malls occasionally, so Michael can maintain his consumer acumen. And I can get food-court indigestion and appreciate living in a small town with surprisingly diverse ways to shop and dine.

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Summer events

JUNE

2015

7, 14, 21, 28

Crested Butte Farmers Market, west end of Elk Avenue

11-13

Mountain Theatre’s ten-minute plays, Mallardi Cabaret

13

Chairlifts open for bikers and hikers, CB Mountain Resort

17

Ride the Rockies events in town

18

Wild Canaries, CB Film Series at the Center for the Arts

22-July 2

Summer Theatre Workshop for Youth, Mountain Theatre

25-28

Crested Butte Bike Week

25

Bicycle Tour of Colorado events in town

25-Aug. 9

Crested Butte Music Festival (CBMF)

25-28

Time Spans, contemporary music mini-festival (CBMF)

27

Splatter Dash Run starts in Totem Pole Park

27-28

Bridges of the Butte 24-hour townie tour

29

Alpenglow concert, Center for the Arts outdoor stage

JULY

Lydia Stern

Katie Onheiber

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1

Public Policy Forum speaker

1

Live! from Mt. Crested Butte: free concert, Red Lady Stage

2

Black & White Ball, CB Mountain Heritage Museum

3

Pat Green performs at the Center for the Arts

3

Writer Luke Mehall (American Climber) speaks at Townie Books

3-4

Crested Butte Music Festival’s One World

4

July 4th parade, street games, pancake breakfast, fireworks

4-12

Cattlemen’s Days in Gunnison

5, 12, 19, 26

Farmers Market on Elk Avenue

6, 13, 20, 27

Alpenglow free concerts, Center’s outdoor stage

8

Opera on Tap at Kochevar’s

8

Public Policy Forum: Trevor Potter

8

Live! from Mt. Crested Butte: free concert, Red Lady Stage

11

Divine Family Young People’s Concert (CBMF)

12

“From Russia with Love” (CBMF)

13-19

Crested Butte Wildflower Festival

15

Opera Children’s Chorus (CBMF)

15

Public Policy Forum: Dick Allen, The Supreme Court

15

Live! from Mt. Crested Butte: free concert, Red Lady Stage

16

Crested Butte Monthly Film Series

17

KBUT’s Friday Night Fry, Crank’s Plaza

17-18

Epic Rocky Mountain Relay, Cañon City to Crested Butte

18

Grin & Bear It Green Lake trail run

18

Crested Butte Music Fest’s Celebration Gala

22

Live! from Mt. Crested Butte: free concert, Red Lady Stage

22

Public Policy Forum: William Lanouette

22-25, 28

Crested Butte Mountain Theatre: “Little Shop of Horrors”

22, 23, 25, 26

Music Festival opera: “Don Pasquale”

23-26

Crested Butte Wine & Food Festival, Center for the Arts

24-26

Ripple Women’s Art Retreat, Center’s Art Studio

25

Living Journeys Summit Hike/Mountain Half-Marathon

29

Live! from Mt. Crested Butte: free concert, Red Lady Stage

29

Public Policy Forum: Mark Udall, Senate Intelligence Committee

31-Aug. 2

Crested Butte Arts Festival

31-Aug. 2

Enduro World Series Mountain Bike Race

Kevin Krill

Lydia Stern

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Summer events 2015

AUGUST

Dusty Demerson

1-2

“Little Shop of Horrors” continues

1-2

Arts Festival continues

1-2

Enduro World Series continues

2-3

Crested Butte Open Golf Tournament & Gala

2, 9, 16, 23, 30

Crested Butte Farmers Market on Elk Avenue

5

Live! from Mt. Crested Butte: free concert, Red Lady Stage

5

Public Policy Forum: Mark McKinnon, America’s Democracy

3, 10, 17

Alpenglow free concerts, Center’s outdoor stage

3-7

Geek Week at Rocky Mountain Biological Lab

6

Museum Speaker Series

6-9

Frank Vignola’s Gypsy Jazz Guitar Camp

6-9

Gypsy Jazz in Paradise (CBMF)

7

Dustbowl Revival at the Center for the Arts

12

Public Policy Forum: Joel Gallant

12

Live! from Mt. Crested Butte: free concert, Red Lady Stage

14

Historic Pub Crawl hosted by the museum

19

Public Policy Forum: Steven Grace

19

Live! from Mt. Crested Butte: free concert, Red Lady Stage

20

Crested Butte Monthly Film Series

20

Museum Speaker Series

24

Dawn to Dusk Golf Challenge for the Center for the Arts

31

Chefs on the Edge, Center for the Arts

John Holder

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John Holder

SEPTEMBER 3

Museum Speaker Series

4-5

KBUT Kampout at the I Bar Ranch

5-6

Grand Traverse Mountain Run & Bike

6

Dave Wiens West Elk Bicycle Classic

6, 13, 20, 27

Crested Butte Farmers Market

12-13

Pearl Pass Bike Tour to Aspen

12

Mt. Crested Butte Chili and Beer Festival

13-19

Vinotok Fall Harvest Festival

15

Community Iron Pour, Center’s Art Studio

17

Crested Butte Monthly Film Series

17

Museum Speaker Series

24-27

Crested Butte Film Festival

26

Camp 4 Coffee Cart to Cart run

26

Museum Day: free admission to the museum

30

Illuminations slideshow at the museum Xavier Fané

ONGOING: Classes and shows at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts, Tour de Forks culinary events, art shows at the Piper Gallery; Tuesday Talks (adults) and Kids Nature Camp at Rocky Mountain Biological Lab; Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte rec programs; Trailhead Children’s Museum day camps and classes; Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum events; and Crested Butte Music Festival events. Also see gunnisoncrestedbutte.com/events.

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The warmth of a family inn...

...the value and convenience of a hotel Complimentary WiFi and continental breakfast Hot tub • Designated pet-friendly rooms • Non-smoking

(888)349-6184 • www.oldtowninn.net A TripAdvisor GreenPartner and 2013 Certificate of Excellence winner 130

DINING 9380 • (970) 251-3000

Elevation Hotel, Mt. Crested Butte Spirits and food with altitude. 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 afternoon drink and sunset viewing.

Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner

Lydia Stern

BACCHANALE • 349-5257

BRICK OVEN • 349-5044

The Bacchanale is a modest Italian restaurant from the team that launched django’s. Our fresh and light menu will re-introduce you to simple flavors, colorful salads, artisan flatbreads and handmade specialties. Dinner nightly from 5-10pm. Reservations accepted and can be made online.

Pizza-by-the-slice, deep dish, thin crust & specialty.

Fresh subs, appetizers, burgers, largest salad bar in town. 30 beers on tap, high end tequila, spirits and wine. Open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. FREE DELIVERY. BrickOvenCB.com

Treasury Building, Ski Area Base

Lunch / Dinner

Lunch / Dinner

Lunch / Dinner

209 Elk Avenue, Downtown - Bacchanale.net

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DJANGO’S • 349-7574

Courtyard of Mountaineer Square, Mt. Crested Butte

Dinner

BUTTE 66 ROADHOUSE BAR & GRILL 349-2998

223 Elk Avenue, Downtown

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Experience American cuisine at it finest with our classic roadhouse menu, burger and shakes. Enjoy the casual fun atmoshere complemented by daily drink specials, live music and a large outdoor deck with unbeatable views.

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DONITA’S CANTINA • 349-6674

THE ELDO • 349-6125

Mexican. Down-to-earth eatery specializing in good food, ample portions and fun service. Fabulous fajitas, enchanting enchiladas, bueno burritos. Local favorite for over 30 years!

Crested Butte’s only brewery and music venue.

Happy hour from 3-7pm. Check our website for current entertainment schedule eldobrewpub.com.

Awesome burgers. Check out our sunny deck for shady people.

Dinner

Lunch / Dinner

4th & Elk, Downtown

Enjoy award-winning cuisine in a relaxed modern setting. Our small plates have captured national attention and combine Spanish and southern European flavors with the freshest seasonal ingredients. Dinner served daily 5-10 p.m. Reservations recommended.

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215 Elk Avenue, Downtown

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ELK AVENUE PRIME • 349-1221

KOCHEVARS SALOON • 349-7117

LAST STEEP • 349-7007

Downtown Crested Butte on Elk Ave. Serving U.S.D.A Prime Steaks, fresh seafood, wild game and more. Come watch the game on the biggest HD screen in Crested Butte. 16 draft beers and the largest wine selection in the valley.

The oldest bar and gaming hall in Crested Butte. We have great wings, killer daily specials, a wide beer selection and the most authentic ambiance in the Valley. Ten TVs guarantee you will never miss a game.

Darts, pool and arcade.

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.

Lunch / Dinner

Lunch / Dinner / Late Night

Lunch / Dinner

226 Elk Avenue, Downtown

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127 Elk Avenue, Downtown

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208 Elk Avenue, Downtown

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LIL’S • 349-5457

MCGILL’S • 349-5240

MIKEY’S PIZZA • 349-1110

Serving the best sushi in town as well as meat, seafood, and options for the kids. We take pride in serving our guests the highest quality of fish which is why we get it delivered 6 days a week! We offer a nightly happy hour at the bar from 5:30 to 6:30. Open 7 nights a week at 5:30. Reservations are recommended but not necessary.

Old-Fashioned soda fountain. Malts, shakes, sundaes, banana splits, libations, home-cooked breakfasts and lunches prepared to order. Historic locale, casual atmosphere.

At Mikey’s we use fresh ingredients and consistent service to please every customer and every order.

But we have more than just the best pizza in town, we serve breakfast burritos, coffee, subs, burgers, calzones, pizza rolls, desserts. Pick up and delivery.

Lunch / Dinner

Breakfast / Lunch

Lunch / Dinner

228 Elk Avenue, Downtown

321 Elk Avenue, Downtown

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611 3rd St., Downtown - Across from Ice Rink

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SOUPCON • 349-5448

WOODEN NICKEL • 349-6350

WOODSTONE GRILLE • 349-8030

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.

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.

The WoodStone Grille offers a generous breakfast buffet to charge you up for the day’s adventures.

Come back to rest by the fire while sipping your favorite drink, and stay for a pub-style dinner suited for the whole family. Serving breakfast and dinner daily.

Dinner

Breakfast / Dinner

Off Elk Avenue on Second, Downtown

Dinner

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222 Elk Avenue, Downtown

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The Grand Lodge, Mt. Crested Butte

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Killing ‘em Softly Two Seatings Nightly. Reservations Required.

970.349.5448

SoupconBistro.net

Lydia Stern

970.349.5448 CB, CO 81224

SUBS, APPETIZERS BIG JUICY BURGERS HUGE SALAD BAR STUMPTOWN COFFEE TEQUILA, SPIRITS, WINE + HDTVs LUNCH + DINNER EVERY DAY OPEN FROM 10 A.M. ‘TIL 10 P.M. DAILY

Cr ested B ut t e 's only b re w e ry a n d m u si c ven u e! enj oy o ur se cond story de ck f ille d wi t h lots o f s u n sh i n e!

F r e e W IF I • Ha p py hou r da ily 3 :0 0 - 7:0 0 pm lunc h s p e c ia ls W e d n e s day - S u n day 11:30 am - 3:0 0 pm

215 Elk Ave une Cre ste d B utt e, C o 81224 e ldob re w pu b .com 970 - 349 -6 125 132

D I N E - I N • TA K E - O U T DOWNTOWN CRESTED BUTTE

970-349-5044

Prime Dry Aged Steaks, Fresh Seafood, large groups welcome, weddings.

226 El k Ave n u e , C re s te d B u tte

970 . 349 . 1221

ma ke reser vations online

e l k ave p r i m e .c o m

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Hand-crafted smokehouse specialties, hearty salads, roadhouse-style burgers. Delectable milkshakes, for adults, and for the whole family.

Serving daily from 11 a.m.

970.349.2999

SLOPESIDE, TREASURY CENTER - MT. CRESTED BUTTE

We use the freshest ingredients in our creations, all homemade with lots of love. Although our pizza made us famous, we have so much more to show you why

CB’S ONE AND ONLY SUSHI BAR Dinner Nightly 5:30 Happy Hour at the Bar and Sushi Bar 5:30 - 6:30 Patio Happy Hour 4:30 - 5:30 (starting June 27 until End of August) 321 Elk Avenue | 970.349.5457 | l i l s s u s h i b a r a n d g r i l l . c o m

Trent Bona Photography

Mikey’s is real good food.

GUNNISON 303 E. Tomichi Ave 970.641.1110 CRESTED BUTTE 611 3rd Street 970.349.1110

AMERICAN STYLE BISTRO CUISINE WITH SPECIALTY MARTINIS AND COCKTAILS Open Monday thru Saturday 5:30 Happy Hour Daily 5:30 - 6:30 Late Night Happy Hour Thursday thru Saturday 10:00 - Midnight 122 W. Tomichi Ave | Gunnison | 970-641-4394 | B L A C K S T O C K B I S T R O . C O M 134

FULL MENU online at

MIKEYSPIZZA.NET

Come enjoy our alpine menu and new look. Featuring custom stone oven pizza, pasta and signature grill items.

Play some billiards on our open table.

NEW! Cocktail service to

Elk Avenue w 127 w 970.349.7117 Late Night Food until 1:30 am every night

the swimming pool and hot tub!

Open daily, serving breakfast, après and dinner.

970.349.8030

GRAND LODGE CRESTED BUTTE, MT. CRESTED BUTTE 135

PHOTO FINISH

Raynor Czerwinski

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L E T U S S H OW YO U T H E

B R AV E N E W WO R L D O F L E G A L M A R I J UA N A

C O LO R A D O ’ S F I N E S T R E C R E AT I O N A L C A N N A B I S S TO R E Outstanding selection of high quality marijuana, edibles, concentrates and topicals.

Locally owned, grown and operated.

C R E ST E D B U T T E

WINNER!

2 0 1 4 B L A Z E R ’ S BA L L

Top 3 Flowers, 2nd Place Concentrates, People’s Choice

WINNER!

2 0 1 4 B E S T B U DT E N D E R

Crested Butte News Best of the Butte

42 3 B E L L E V I E W AV E N U E , C R E S T E D B U T T E 9 70 . 3 49. 6 6 4 0 | S O M A C O LO R A D O . C O M OPEN DAILY Must be 21 + with valid ID to enjoy our services