Summer 2018 complimentary
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CONTENTS s2018
4
FEATURES 46 Cooking with fire by Cassie Pence
Feast in the Field serves up sensory delights far beyond the plate.
52 Plein-air pioneers of the Gunnison Valley by Janet Weil
These two painting couples drew artistic inspiration from the valley’s alpine beauty – a century apart. Page 58: Researching our artistic heritage.
62 Boots on the ground (carefully) by Cosmo Langsfeld
With hoes, gloves and conversation, the Crested Butte Conservation Corps aims to address backcountry issues and continue the valley’s legacy of stewardship.
68 A different spin by Beth Buehler
Though overshadowed by other sports in this mountain town, tennis still claims center court for its long-time fans.
84 Two ducks with one shot by Cara Guerrieri
SHORTIES 12
90 From small town to big screen by Kelli Hargrove Rohr
For-word thinking by Sandy Fails The Center’s new Literary Arts Department aims to draw together Crested Butte’s diverse writers and readers in their love of all things literary.
16 Jazzing up September by Sandy Fails With this inaugural jazz festival, Roger Kahn hopes to put Colorado and Crested Butte on the musical map.
24
Reds, whites and greens by Kathy Norgard Tassinong Farms Wine & Food: How to create a high-altitude container farm/community gathering space that also models sustainability.
26
A rough trail to Carbondale by Kelli Hargrove Rohr Local proponents are helping to forge a hiking/biking trail from Crested Butte to Carbondale, but the path is rockier on the Pitkin County side.
30
Apps for outside by Chris Garren Nature helps you escape your screens. But with these outdoor apps and gear finds, sometimes it’s better to bring a little technology with you.
The gift of caring, paid forward by Sandy Fails Nurtured by this community, particularly a former teacher and mentor, Charlie Stoneberg wants to carry that goodness into the world.
40 Power and playfulness The Crested Butte Music Festival offers its “musical response” to the times. Xavier Fané
These summer and fall gatherings cultivate connections to earth, art and activism.
104 The deportation of Sylvia Smith by Brian Levine
Art in their eighties by Cara Guerrieri Richard and Phyllis Guerrieri recount their childhoods and ranching years in two new books: his collection of stories and her album of paintings.
32 A rock and a hard place by Molly Murfee Durable surfaces: placing footprints and tire tracks where they belong.
Three young Crested Butte alumni have forged very different paths into the film industry.
96 Regenerations by Molly Murfee
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36
“Old coot” Tom Sneller and his hunting/trapping diary.
The turbulent tale of a fiery 1900s newspaperwoman in Crested Butte and Marble.
110 Choosing each other by Molly Murfee Times have changed, but the responsibilities and treasures of community have not.
MOUNTAIN LIVES 121 Winged hunting partners by Caroline Singleton
Following the ancient (and demanding) art of falconry, Katherine Browne hunts small game with her cohort, a red-tailed hawk.
124 Storms by Polly Oberosler
What a long-time wilderness ranger learned from her close encounters with mighty mountain weather.
129 Not your typical commute by Stephanie Maltarich
For this shuttle runner, jogging to Aspen is all in a day’s work.
WHAT’S LEFT 7 Editor’s note | 78 Photo gallery | 134 Calendar 138 Lodging guide | 140 Dining guide 144 Photo finish - Tribute to a friend 5
Vol. XXXX, 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 Beth Buehler Kathy Norgard Sandy Fails Polly Oberosler Chris Garren Cassie Pence Cara Guerrieri Kelli Hargrove Cosmo Langsfeld Rohr Brian Levine Caroline Singleton Stephanie Maltarich Janet Weil Molly Murfee
PHOTOGRAPHERS & ARTISTS Nathan Bilow Trent Bona Sandra Cortner Dusty Demerson Petar Dopchev
Xavier Fané John Holder J.C. Leacock Rebecca Ofstedahl Lydia Stern
Summer 2018 complimentary
COVER PHOTO John Holder ONLINE crestedbuttemagazine.com E-MAIL sandyfails56@gmail.com ADVERTISING mj@crestedbuttemagazine.com Copyright 2018, Crested Butte Publishing. No reproduction of contents without authorization by Crested Butte Publishing & Creative. 6
Editor’s note
Rest well. Wake fully. We all know how it feels to slog through the day after a sleepless night: groggy, cranky and disengaged. On those days, I just want to guzzle dark-roast coffee, down peanut M&Ms and bingewatch “Big Bang Theory.” Our conscious selves clock out when we snooze – but then the night shift clocks in. In our slumber, our brains organize themselves, and our bodies repair tissues, power up our immune systems and fine-tune the hormones involving growth, stress and our appetite for peanut M&Ms. No wonder I’m a gluttonous glob when I don’t get enough shut-eye. As we put together this issue, I happened onto research showing that we need more than nightly sleep – we also need REST. In the rhythms of our lives, we need time-outs from being cogs in the world’s machinery. We need spaces of silence, nature and play. Interestingly, the benefits of rest sound much like those of sleep. Silence prompts growth in the brain’s memory Trent Bona
7
Editor’s note center. Laughter triggers endorphins and antibodies. Playfulness activates the release of healthy serotonin. Immersion in nature impacts everything from brain waves to heart function. All of these lower stress hormones, the biggest boogeymen of our modern lives. When we “goof off,” as when we sleep,
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist." -Oscar Wilde critical work happens. Perhaps it’s not surprising that when we don’t get enough true rest, it feels like a slow-mo version of the sleepless-night scenario. Shackled to the grindstone, we tend to fall into mindlessness and seek artificial stimulation and distraction. No cookie is safe in my kitchen when I’ve been too long enslaved by yellow sticky notes. Of course our consumer society likes us that way: obedient, easily manipulated, zombie mega-consumers. But the greater world needs us fully awake, to bring our deepest gifts to bear. We are here not to consume, but to experience and contribute. Fully awake. We know how that feels, too, at least fleetingly: falling in love, traveling, returning from a meditation retreat. There’s energy there: curiosity, gratitude, attunement, caring. When we’re fully awake, we seek truer connections, higher reaches and deeper nourishment (even if there’s Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer). Perhaps we can live in that place for more of our lives if we make sure we get the rejuvenation we need. Luckily, that’s a Crested Butte specialty. The pages of this issue illustrate how Crested Butte entices us to refresh deeply. The wilderness gives us space, silence and beauty. The town invites us to laugh and play, be that with a paintbrush, paddleboard or tutu. We could be the Seratonin Capital of Colorado. This issue also showcases people who bring heart and energy to their lives: a falconer, wilderness ranger, fiery newspaperwoman from the 1900s, conservationists, musicians and entrepreneurs. May they inspire us to rest well and wake fully. And may we enjoy Crested Butte not as a commodity to be consumed, but as a wonder to be experienced. —Sandy Fails, editor 8
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For-word
By Sandy Fails
thinking
David Rothman leads a poetry workshop at the Old Rock Library.
The Center’s new Literary Arts Department aims to draw together Crested Butte’s diverse writers and readers in their love of all things literary. This valley holds an inordinate number of writers, readers and lovers of words. Starting this summer, the Center for the Arts’ new Literary Arts Department will seek to bring them together to learn, share and encourage each other. In its first year, the Literary Arts Department will collaborate with existing entities – Western State Colorado University (particularly Western’s creative writing masters program), the GunnisonCrested Butte libraries, Townie Books, Crested Butte Magazine, Writing the Rockies, Headwaters Poetry Festival, Wildflower Festival and others. Eventually the department will add classes, panels, large presentations and small craft talks, 12
Lydia Stern
Happy 40th, Crested Butte Magazine! Celebrating the birth of one literary entity and the birthday of another. The Center’s Literary Arts Department will partner with the Crested Butte Magazine on a 40th anniversary celebration August 9 at the Public House. Contributors to the magazine (writers, photographers, artists, advertisers, etc.) will gather to hear funny, poignant or prophetic readings from four decades’ worth of Crested Butte Magazine writings, watch a slide show, hear musical interludes from notable local songsters, and enjoy each other’s company. The Literary Arts Department will also collaborate on the following summer-fall events. • With the Wildflower Festival: a children’s celebration of nature, with an outdoor tea party and book reading; nature and urban journaling; and the “landscape of grief” healing journey with expressive writing. • Crested Butte Writers Network meet-ups and Literary Salon Series to bring together and support local wordsters. • A publishing panel with best-selling authors (in partnership with the Crested Butte library). • Words & Wine, with authors reading their food-centric prose accompanied by sips and nibbles (with the Wine & Food Fest). • Ladybug Girl Storytime accompanied by costumes, art stations and PAWS animal rescue information (with Townie Books). • Sunday Puzzle, a morning of coffee and word puzzles in the tradition of Weekend Edition’s Sunday Puzzle, at Rumors. • Scorn Not the Sonnet, a poetry workshop with David Rothman, director of Western’s creative writing graduate program.
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DAW N C OH E N represented by the Midnight Gallery 229 Elk Avenue
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a book festival, mini Chautauqua, retreats, a writers network and a writerin-residence program. The new Center building, to be completed in summer 2019, will provide designated space for gatherings and co-working. Brooke Harless MacMillan proposed the Literary Arts Department idea to the Center for the Arts board last fall. A former writer for the Crested Butte Magazine and Crested Butte News, Brooke married teacher Jason MacMillan and moved to Turkey, where she wrote for the Turkish Film Channel. The couple then moved to Scotland, where Brooke earned her master of fine arts in creative nonfiction at Goucher College. Along with completing her thesis manuscript, Before They Go; A Case for Valuing our Elders, she studied several of the most successful literary festivals in the UK, including the renowned Edinburgh Book Festival, along with writing programs and literary cities all over Europe. After the birth of their daughter, the MacMillans planned to move back to Crested Butte. In preparation for the move, Brooke talked to valley writers, business owners and other entities and proposed the literary arts department, with the idea of bringing to Crested Butte elements of the most successful and innovative programs. The Center for the Arts already has an Art Studio, Culinary Arts Department and now a film festival, along with collaborative programming in dance. The new Literary Arts Department will round out the creative offerings and seek to “inspire audiences, encourage writers and connect people through the power of stories,” Brooke wrote, becoming “a hub for innovative and entertaining literary happenings.” This summer will open with a soft kick-off; the new department will piggyback on existing events and entities. Additional programming will begin when the Center building is complete. Brooke said, “There are lots of different literary events and programs happening in the valley, but there hasn’t been an umbrella organization to pull them together and present them in more organized ways. That’s where we’ll start.”
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Jazzing up
By Sandy Fails
September
Jazz festival headliner Bob Montgomery.
With a festival dedicated to “real jazz,” Roger Kahn hopes to give Colorado’s world-class jazz musicians the recognition they deserve. Colorado draws kudos for many things, but its world-class jazz musicianship remains little known. Jazz aficionado Roger Kahn intends to change that, beginning with the inaugural Colorado Jazz Musicians Festival in Crested Butte this September 7-9. Kahn, a longtime DJ of the KBUT jazz show “Jazz on a Summer’s Eve,” has been “a jazz guy” since he was a teenager. Growing up in New York City, he listened outside the doors of jazz clubs when he was too young to get in. When he could get in, “I heard the best of the best: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck,” he said. In the 1970s Kahn lived in Crested Butte but did communityorganizing work in Denver. In the evenings there, he scouted the classic jazz clubs. “These guys are good,” he thought of the musicians, “even in comparison to what I’ve heard in New York City.” Kahn now lives mostly in Denver, with summers in Crested Butte. A few years ago, he took his teenage granddaughter to brunch at Denver’s Dazzle jazz club. At a nearby table, Kahn spoke to pianist/ vocalist Ellen Rucker, whom he’d seen perform many times. She then introduced him to other musicians and to jazz patron Frank Nichols. Nichols invited Kahn to the intimate Sunday jazz soirees at his home, where musicians gathered to perform, jam and ad lib for the audience of radio hosts, club owners and other jazz buffs. Observing “this wonderful musical interaction,” Kahn’s wife Diane suggested creating a similar opportunity in Crested Butte. 16
After years of community organizing and overseeing the Crested Butte Wild Mushroom Festival, Kahn said, “I swore I was never going to organize anything again. But I was so inspired by these musicians.” He began planning a jazz fest in the mountains. Sponsors (Crested Butte Mountain Resort, Eleven/Public House, radio stations KUVO and KBUT, the Center for the Arts and others) jumped on board, as did musicians. “I have more jazz musicians who want to perform than I have space for them. I’m already thinking about the next year,” Kahn said. In contrast to the huge jazz festivals in Telluride and Aspen, which have tended toward pop jazz to broaden their appeal, “this is real jazz,” Kahn said. “Our festival is by and for the musicians, not just for the audience. Which means the audience can only benefit.” The Colorado Jazz Musicians Festival (cojazzfest.org) will open with a large concert Friday evening, September 7, preceded by a cocktail party with the musicians. Saturday will bring workshops and master classes, afternoon performances, and an elegant plated dinner followed by the feature act. Crested Butte’s Jean Marc Ventimiglia, a former Berklee School of Music jazz musician and former chef at Soupcon, will compose the menu to pair with the music. Chef Tim Egelhoff will join Ventimiglia to prepare the feast. Sunday will start with a jazz brunch, then afternoon jazz in the park. The festival should bring a more mature, affluent visitor to Crested
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Butte, Kahn said. “This is a chance for people who love jazz to discover Crested Butte – and for people who love Crested Butte to discover jazz.” Kahn emphasized, “The pool of musical talent in Colorado is remarkable, and no one knows it. I hope this will be a forum for recognition – and a few years from now Colorado will be known along with New Orleans, Kansas City and New York City as a center for excellence in jazz.”
THE FESTIVAL WILL FEATURE THESE MUSICIANS, AMONG OTHERS. Ken Walker, a “first call” jazz bassist for the Rocky Mountain region, has played with a “who’s who” of jazz greats and on noteworthy recordings, including his own Terra Firma, which stayed on jazz charts for many weeks.
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Grammy-recognized vocalist Donna Elise Scott performs at Denver’s top jazz clubs and in big bands, Latin jazz combos, R&B revues and gospel shows throughout the U.S. and Africa. Her two CDs have gained critical acclaim. Imaginative pianist/keyboardist Adam Bodine leads the Adam Bodine Trio, with an impressive discography. He’s also a composer, arranger, producer, accompanist and charismatic performer, playing at top national jazz venues. Gypsy Jazz Social Club features western Colorado musicians inspired by acoustic string-band jazz known as “le jazz hot.” The music includes jazz and swing standards, Latin rhythms and original material, as well as gypsy tunes new and old. Colorado-based Bob Montgomery has played his trumpet with jazz greats all over the world, with several albums to his credit. A founding member/director of the Telluride Student Jazz All-Star program, he was named “jazz educator and performer of the year.”
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Pianist Annie Booth is “the future of modern jazz in Colorado,” Kahn said. An alumna of the Telluride All-Stars, “she’s been getting a lot of play and critical acclaim.” She’ll perform with the Annie Booth Trio.
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Art in their
By Cara Guerrieri
eighties
Richard and Phyllis Guerrieri recount their childhoods and ranching years in two new books: his collection of stories and her album of paintings. The day my dad, Richard Guerrieri, handed me several spiral notebooks filled with his clear, graceful handwriting and said, “See what you can do with this,” I embarked on the most unexpected writing adventure of my life. I don’t know what prompted him, a Crested Butte native and lifelong area rancher, to take up pen and paper at age 85 and write about his childhood. But I do know that in their eighties both of my parents have turned to the arts to record and take stock of their lives. My mom, Phyllis (Spann) Guerrieri, paints charming and often humorous watercolor scenes from life on the ranch, and Dad writes poetry and memoir. Although we didn’t start out with the idea of publishing books, as Dad and I spent the next several months editing his stories, I saw the value in my parents’ work not just as family heirlooms but also as important and appealing first-hand historical records. Both sides of our family arrived in Crested Butte in the 1800s. 20
Dad’s immigrant grandparents were coal miners in Crested Butte, and Mom is a fourth-generation Gunnison Valley rancher. The collection of her paintings of ranch life and local landscapes, Pure Joy, also holds anecdotes from her 85 years on the ranch. Dad’s book, The Spaghetti Gang, is his account of his boyhood in Crested Butte in the 1930s and ‘40s and his family’s transition from coal mining to cattle ranching. When Dad and I began editing The Spaghetti Gang, he would show up at my house unannounced with a copy of the manuscript in hand. “Let’s hit it,” he’d say, settling himself onto my couch and placing his spittoon cup nearby. I’d cancel whatever plans I had for the morning — when your source is 85 years old, you’d better take advantage of every moment. We spent countless hours adding details and researching historical accuracy. Invariably, I wanted more specifics than he was able or willing to provide. “Could you tell more about the look and feel of White Rock Avenue back when your dad and the men saddled up and rode to the mine each day?” I once asked. “Well, I say right here it’s a dirt street. What more do you need?” he said. “Actually, there’s a lot to describe — the color, smell, sound.” “Are you telling me readers are so dumb they can’t picture a dirt street with horses going down it?” His tone bristled with disdain. “Description would make the story richer.” “There ain’t nothing more to say about a dirt street.”
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He folded his arms, as if that was the last word, but with my cajoling and much humor, his descriptions throughout the book expanded. Reading his stories is like walking through a 1930s movie set: “Strap-on Skis,” “No Bathing Suits,” “A Horse Named SOB” and “The Dreaded Catechism.” His vignettes about ranching, coal mining, Catholicism, World War II, hunting and skiing are “wildly entertaining,” according to author and historian Dr. Duane Vandenbusche, who wrote the introduction to the book. Dad’s plainspoken style, 130 photographs and accurate maps (with a walking tour-type legend) bring Crested Butte’s history alive. During the many months he and I edited, Mom made more and more paintings, an avocation she began when she was 78, the same age, she likes to note, when Grandma Moses began to paint. “If Grandma Moses could make such beautiful pictures at her age, I thought I could at least try,” Mom said. Mom got her start by taking art classes at her church and at Western State Colorado University, where she became a student again 60 years after she started college there in 1950. After she’d complete a painting, she’d often ask me to write a sentence, a paragraph or a story to go along with the image. At a certain point, gathering the stories and art into a collection seemed the natural next step. With her poignant and comical ranch scenes, she illustrates a waning lifestyle in the Gunnison Valley: “Crested Butte Cattle Drive, 1943,” “Stacking Hay in the ‘50s” and “Feeding Hay with Horses.” Over their 66-year marriage, Mom and Dad raised five kids and ran the ranch business as a team, and now they’re publishing books together. They agreed to produce books only “if our books can be an inspiration to others,” Mom said. “Everyone has a valuable story to tell, and I want everyone to know that at any age you can pick up a pen or a paintbrush and express yourself creatively. Don’t be afraid, have a light heart, and especially don’t be too critical of yourself.” Staff writer Cara Guerrieri earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Western State Colorado University. The Spaghetti Gang and Pure Joy are available in softcover, hardbound and e-book through websites SpaghettiGang.com and PureJoyArt. com, on Amazon and at local bookstores. Reach Phyllis or Richard Guerrieri at SpaghettiGang@Guerrieri.net and PureJoy@Guerrieri.net.
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Reds, whites
By Kathy Norgard
and greens
Kate and Andrew Haverkampf in their new eatery.
Tassinong Farms Wine & Food: How to create a high-altitude container farm/community gathering space that also models sustainability. Growing greens year-round at 8,500 feet elevation is a creative challenge. Kate and Andrew Haverkampf successfully tackled that challenge at Tassinong Farms, their hydroponic farm-in-a-box in Crested Butte South. Now they’re getting creative again. Andrew recently designed and oversaw construction of a new building in the front yard of Tassinong Farms, where people can gather to enjoy wine, food and each other. The interior has dialedback architectural details and carefully chosen layers of wood and other materials, creating a warm and inviting atmosphere. Barnwood walls and natural light greet customers at Tassinong Farms Food & Wine. The back wall is lined with Italian self-serving wine machines. Individual spigots use food-grade argon/nitrogen gas to dispense wine. This innovative system protects wine from oxidation while ensuring taste, aroma, body and color. In the cozy front of the room, with great views of Round Mountain, four stuffed chairs encircle a coffee table. With four additional wooden tables and stools, the room comfortably seats about 24 people. This new creation is becoming a gathering place for people to meet new friends or for old friends to socialize in a quiet space. Occasionally Kate sponsors game nights, during which people can enjoy espresso, wine, craft beer from around the world or gourmet items from the kitchen. Some people bring their laptops and use 24
Lydia Stern
Tassinong’s Internet. Three evenings a week (check the website), Callie Koch, a newly imported chef from Ft. Collins, prepares scrumptious homemade small plates. She also makes homemade crackers, breads, charcuterie boards and other food. “I use organic, seasonal and local foods whenever possible. I’m very excited to be a part of this new project,” Callie noted. Four days a week, patrons can linger over breakfast or lunch, enjoying fresh baked goods, baguette sandwiches, soups, gourmet salads or espressos. You can come just to dine or to pick up greens. (Yes, Tassinong is still a farm, with old shipping containers recycled into multi-tiered hydroponic growing chambers, and you can still buy organic lettuces and other greens there.) Kate hopes to bring guest chefs once a month to this undercrowded space. Already people have started using it for meetings and receptions. “I want this place to become whatever locals want and need,” she said. The Haverkampfs have also applied their abundant creativity to making Tassinong more earth-friendly. “Our goal is sustainability,” Kate said. “My three girls and I buy yardage at second-hand stores to make napkins we use here. We really encourage people to bring their own containers when they pick up their farm goods.” She added, “And please bring your own to-go cups. We have glass cups and glasses for use inside, but no paper cups, which only contribute to the waste in the world.” Eventually, Kate plans to give discounts to customers who come to Tassinong Farms Food & Wine by bike, bus, foot or skis. “We want to do our part to preserve the planet and this wonderful place we live.”
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A rough trail
By Kelly Hargrove Rohr
to Carbondale
Xavier Fané
Local proponents are helping to forge a hiking/biking trail from Crested Butte to Carbondale, but the path is rockier on the Pitkin County side. What for many years was considered a far-fetched notion – a trail connecting Crested Butte to Carbondale – is officially in the works. The Town of Crested Butte, Gunnison County, Pitkin County Open Space and Trails (PCOS&T) and the U.S. Forest Service have taken strides toward adding yet another gem to Crested Butte’s collection of beautiful trails. The effort began in 2015, when Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper unveiled his “Colorado the Beautiful” initiative, with the goal that within a generation, everyone in Colorado would live within 10 minutes of a trail, park or green space. A major piece of Hickenlooper’s initiative was called “Colorado’s 16” (initially called “16 for 2016”), which identified 16 priority trails, trail segments and trail gaps throughout the state, one of which was a trail connecting Crested Butte to Carbondale. The proposed Crested Butte-Carbondale (CB-C) Trail would 26
follow 83 miles of stunning Rocky Mountain terrain, winding from Carbondale through the Crystal River Valley, up over McClure Pass and on to Crested Butte. According to PCOS&T, the lead agency for the Carbondale side of the project, the trail has been envisioned as a multi-use trail from Carbondale to Redstone, morphing into a singletrack trail to the Gunnison County line and into Crested Butte. The trail would connect to other trails in the area, a boon to those anxious to avoid the roar of cars on Kebler Pass Road. On the Crested Butte side, the project has progressed smoothly. The idea here began percolating in the 2000s, and the Gunnison Trails Commission has worked to make the trail a reality. The majority of Gunnison County’s side of the trail falls within the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forest (GMUG). As Hilary Henry, Crested Butte’s open space/creative district coordinator, explained, the Carbondale trail was included in the general outline for the GMUG 2010 Travel Management Plan, which “streamlined the process” significantly. Another factor working in Gunnison County’s favor is a large swath of existing trail. From just past the Kebler winter parking lot to Anthracite Creek, the Carbondale connector would follow the current Wagon Trail. And from Erickson Springs to the top of McClure Pass, it would follow the current Raggeds Trail.
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Construction on additional sections of trail should continue piece by piece as each portion receives NEPA approval and volunteer or financial resources become available. As Gunnison County moves forward on the CB-C Trail, efforts by Pitkin County officials have proven far more complicated. PCOS&T has faced extensive pushback and challenges. Budgets and routes are still up in the air, as Pitkin County negotiates which trail alignment best suits both the public and local wildlife. As of now, the plan calls for the first part of the trail to follow the Crystal River up toward McClure Pass, but the route is still up for debate as planners weigh the pros and cons of various alignments. PCOS&T utilized $300,000 -- put up by The Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund and Pitkin Board of County Commissioners – to hire two consultants to look into engineering issues and environmental impacts of the trail. That identified two viable routes: one following closely alongside Highway 133, the other roaming farther afield. Backlash has flared up regarding both routes. Some argue that the highway route would be exorbitantly expensive (the cost, estimated at $110 million, would account for half of the PCOS&T budget for the next 20 years). Others contend that the route veering away from the highway would pose a threat to local wildlife. To add to the wealth of questions faced by PCOS&T, County Commissioner Steve Child has proposed several options for the trail, including bypassing McClure Pass in favor of Schofield Pass – which could be more direct and take advantage of existing trails – and creating a stem off of the main trail to Marble in order to benefit the local tourist industry. Child has even suggested building two trails, one for serious riders and one for those more inclined to amble and enjoy the views. On the Crested Butte side, proponents hope to see volunteer construction on portions of the trail as early as this summer, though no specific timeline has been set, and the project is expected to take several years. In Pitkin County, PCOS&T still has many steps to take before a plan is finalized. Though the two counties are coordinating, their timelines will likely play out very differently. As of now, a Crested ButteCarbondale trail appears to be a ways off, but it should be a worthy stretch of beauty for hikers and bikers once it’s completed.
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Apps for
By Chris Garren
outside
Photos by Petar Dopchev
Nature helps you escape your screens. But with these outdoor apps and gear finds, sometimes it’s better to bring a little technology with you. One of the best parts of being outside in the mountains is the opportunity to unplug, slow down and connect with nature. However, there are times when you can leverage technology to help enjoy your time outdoors. Here are a few helpful suggestions for hikers, bikers, hunters and anyone who enjoys being outside.
GAIA GPS Gaia GPS packs the functionality of a $600 GPS unit into a reasonably priced phone app. It’s become an indispensable tool for many outdoors folks, from guides to hikers and hunters. You can track your routes. Gaia GPS let you create tracks and waypoints in real-time or ahead of time via the Gaia website. This lets you plan your trip, anticipate safe travel routes, and locate key landmarks or intersections. You can overlay layers onto the basemap to show everything from private property to slope angles for backcountry skiing. You can also share files with your friends to give them beta 30
on skin tracks, approach routes, etc. $29.99/ year for regular membership and $59.99/year for premium membership.
PEAKFINDER AR PeakFinder AR is an impressive app for identifying the peaks around you. It uses your GPS coordinates to create a labeled representation of the surrounding peaks exactly as they look from your location. The app can also overlay the peak labels onto the image from your phone’s camera. You can “fly” to nearby peaks to see the view from there, and you can fly up to see what peaks are hidden just out of your view. Cost: $4.99.
CBGTRAILS This app has the official map of trails in the Crested Butte area. The map is great for hiking, biking and other uses. It has trailhead directions, trail details and elevation profiles. You can record your tracks and mountain bikers can also join TrailQuest, a competition to see how many unique trail miles you can ride.
SUPERBURST CAMERA AND SNAPSTILL Superburst allows you to photograph multiple frames per second, so you can capture the perfect action shot. You can select the best photo, or these “bursts” can also be saved as videos. With SnapStill, you can create and save individual photos from the videos you’ve taken.
BLIZZARD SURVIVAL BAG This survival bag packs to the size of an old videocassette, but it folds out into a fully baffled and waterproof sleeping bag. It can then be resealed using a vacuum cleaner at home. These bags are inexpensive, fairly lightweight and much more effective than space blankets. Blizzard Bags are good to keep in your car for emergencies or keep in your pack when you need extra security.
MSR REACTOR STOVE The MSR Reactor is the gold standard for all backpacking stoves. It’s windproof, extremely fuel efficient and eerily fast. These even blow Jetboils out of the water. These are the most commonly trusted stoves for highaltitude mountaineers, but they are equally at home on backpacking and camping trips of any kind. Crested Butte native Chris Garren spends much of his free time exploring the outdoors, sometimes with a little help from his technology.
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31
A rock and
By Molly Murfee
a hard place
Petar Dopchev
32
Durable surfaces: placing footprints and tire tracks where they belong.
Unfortunately I’ve had this heart-breaking experience repeated endlessly with every sort of user: mountain bikers, jeepers, ATVers. So it’s time to talk about “durable surfaces.”
On that glorious day, the sky couldn’t get any bluer, the sunflowers any more yellow. Broadtail hummingbirds flitted through the larkspur and Indian paintbrush. Other hikers approached me on the trail. They smiled joyously and in one huge stride stepped off the path and directly into the wildflowers, crushing the plants in their wake. The proverbial record came to a screeching halt. The hummingbirds fainted to the ground, tiny feet kicking in their utter dismay. The hiking pair, proud to be giving me a wide berth, carried on – oblivious.
WHAT’S A “DURABLE SURFACE” AND WHY SHOULD I CARE? Millions of people visit Gunnison National Forest every year. Our footprints and tire tracks damage the fragile plant life that lives in this high mountain heaven, and those plants have a tough time growing back. We also compact the soil, making it impossible for new plants to grow. Without plants to stabilize the soil, erosion occurs. People get off the trail or road for many reasons – to get out of someone’s way, eat a snack, use the bathroom or find a parking place at the trailhead. We maneuver around muddy spots, water and
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rocks so as not to get our feet wet or our vehicle stuck. We’ve all seen what happens then – the single-track trail that becomes a “braided” double or even triple track, the section of path that looks like a snake who swallowed a chicken, a path or road that keeps getting wider…and wider…until it loses its wilderness feel. A one-time visitor might think this normal. But those of us who make this place our home sadly experience the damage over the years – the parking lot that creeps out into the wildflower meadow, the ghostly parallel trail that appears next to the muddy one, the secretive winding path that now feels like a superhighway, the single tent campsite that has spread to accommodate a family reunion. Focusing on durable surfaces (those areas less susceptible to impact) minimizes these blows to the landscape. The trail or road itself is a durable surface, as are rock, sand, gravel and established campsites. These are places with little or no vegetation. They’re easy to find, virtually everywhere once you become aware of them.
FIRST, GET PREPARED
If you bike or hike, get some good shoes sporting a waterproof lining like GoreTex. You can also purchase shoe covers or gaiters to protect your feet from water and mud. If motorized use is your thang, know the limits of both your vehicle and your abilities. Many of our trailheads and dirt roads require four-wheel drive. There are rocks and stream crossings to navigate. Sometimes large snowdrifts block a vehicular path. Inquire at local outdoor shops or the Chamber of Commerce about conditions, especially in early season before mid-July or late season beginning in September. Some thoroughfares may not be open due to excessive snow or water runoff. If conditions don’t permit you to go where you’d planned, the area offers plenty of other spectacular places you can access without causing damage.
FOLLOW THE BEATEN PATH The predominant rule: stay on the trail. If you encounter a muddy or snowy spot, get in touch with your inner child and use those great new waterproof boots and gaiters to tromp right through it rather 34
than making a separate path to go around. Walk in a single file on the trail so as not to widen it. When encountering other people, “pull off” only on durable surfaces, and completely stop to let the others pass. Do not trample the plants just to get out of someone’s way. Use this pause in the action to take a deep breath, relax, look around and enjoy where you are. Choose a rock or bare ground off the trail for snack breaks and lunch. Don’t cut switchbacks or strike out on your own. Where you tread, others will follow.
TENT WHERE IT’S MEANT Good campsites are found, not made. Use only established campsites. Don’t start branching out into untrammeled ground. Keep your campsite tight, making sure you conduct all your activities of washing dishes, sleeping, hanging out, etc., off of vegetation. Mind your margins; if you start spreading out, the campsite will enlarge further with future visitors. There’s no need for trenching, branch cutting or nailing things into trees to “improve” the site; let the ground, rocks and trees remain in their natural state.
MIND YOUR VEHICLES Motorized vehicles cause the most significant damage when improperly used. Above all else, stay on the road. You’re not allowed to “off road” anywhere here. Do not drive out into our open meadows, no matter how easy or fun it looks. If you encounter a snow patch, water run-off, mud or stream, don’t drive around it. If you can’t go through it, you shouldn’t be there. When parking at trailheads, don’t drive onto the grass, flowers and meadows to create a space. Find a pre-established parking spot. Don’t pull forward or to the side so far that your tires contact vegetation. Squeeze in if necessary; being in tight, slightly inconvenient parking is better than destroying wilderness. Congratulations on finding your way to a truly special place. Remember why you came here, and take good care to protect the very thing you came to enjoy. For more information on visiting our wild lands without harming them, see mountainmanners.gcb.org. For more in-depth information on Leave No Trace ethics, see lnt.org or (for motorized recreationists) treadlightly.org.
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211 Elk Avenue, Crested Butte 35
The gift of caring,
By Sandy Fails
paid forward
Tom Stillo
Nurtured by this community, particularly a former teacher and mentor, Charlie Stoneberg wants to carry that goodness into the world. When Nancy Vogel chose to join Gunnison Valley Mentors on behalf of her former student Charlene “Charlie” Stoneberg, she saw the potential in the angry, unhappy ten-year-old. On a spring day eight years later, having grown into friends more than mentor/ mentee, the two chatted happily while addressing Charlie’s 2018 high school graduation announcements. Now a sparkly, clear-eyed young woman, Charlie summed up the intervening years: “I was mean, close minded, uptight and angry. Then I went on a journey of self-growth. Now I’m really living life!” Charlie’s transformation tale stars “a lot of strong women,” she said, including her mentors, counselors and teachers. “The whole community raised me.” Normally a new volunteer approaches Gunnison Valley Mentors (GVM), then he or she is matched with a young person who could use some extra time with an adult. “It’s more like enrichment – like someone doing an activity once a week with a kid whose parents are 36
working really hard,” Nancy said. With Charlie, the situation was different; after being Charlie’s fourth grade teacher at the Crested Butte Community School, Nancy approached GVM specifically to ask about being the girl’s mentor. “I saw a girl who needed some support,” Nancy recalled. Charlie’s mom, dealing with personal struggles, had left Crested Butte for a couple of years. Her father labored long hours to provide for his three children. So Nancy began spending time with Charlie, doing yoga, hiking or just hanging out. With a catch in her voice, Charlie said, “Nancy has been everything to me. She would drop everything to make sure I was okay.” In their talks, Nancy reminded Charlie that she could choose to give less energy to things that made her resentful or unhappy. “She taught me to take the good out of the bad… I can’t always change my circumstances, but I can see what good I can find in them,” Charlie said. She also credits counselor Kathy Napoli with helping her “take off the foggy goggles” to see the world more clearly. “She changed my life, too,” Charlie said. That clarity has let Charlie understand that “everyone has their problems, their story.” At the same time, she has learned how to remove herself from destructive situations. Instead of quickly
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blaming other people, she first steps back to examine her own role in her relationships. Above all, Charlie has realized her own strength. “I’m really strong – strong enough to cope,” she said. Once she got her feet under her, Charlie wasted no time passing on the gift of caring. Even before entering high school, she asked Johnna Bernholtz of Gunnison Valley Mentors about joining the high school mentoring program. Throughout high school Charlie mentored younger students, and the Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte Rotary Club chose her for its 2017 “Service Above Self” award. Beyond the many Rotary scholarships noting academic, athletic and extracurricular accomplishments, this award “recognizes students who have done great things for the community,” said Charlie Tomlinson, head of the scholarship committee. “We think the world of Charlie Stoneberg.” The Rotary Club awarded $500 to Charlie and donated another $500 to the nonprofit of her choice – not surprisingly, Gunnison Valley Mentors. Johnna praised both Charlie’s dedication to mentoring and her skill at it: “Charlene is kind, silly and focused with her students. She’s able to confidently guide them in not just the homework, but by being a positive role model showing respect for others and modeling manners as well.” Charlie described her first mentee as a fourth grader named Jenny “who was like a little me.” She also mentored a middle school girl going through a tough family situation and helped an energetic boy figure out that the sooner he finished his homework, the sooner he could play. “I’m proud to be part of Mentors… and I’m so proud of Charlie,” Nancy said. “She works hard, and she’s found this maturity and self-confidence. I really respect her.” In this town with so little diversity, Charlie has found herself motivated by high school studies of racial inequality and injustice. “That hurts my heart,” she said, and it might influence her career decisions. Heading to Fort Lewis College in Durango in the fall, she’s leaving those choices wide open for now. Teacher, lawyer, counselor? “It’s fun and overwhelming to have so many options.” One thing she knows, however: “I want to change somebody’s life the way people have changed mine.”
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Power and
By Sandy Fails
playfulness
The Crested Butte Music Festival offers its “musical response” to the times. Though it brings in world-class musicians, classical music and opera, the Crested Butte Music Festival (CBMF) is hardly a prim and stuffy affair. Consider these four things you could learn at this summer’s eclectic, fun-spirited festival, July 5-August 11. How to pair beer with orchestral music. At the BEERoque event, Tivoli Brewery beer masters will offer a three-ounce pour to each listener to accompany each Baroque (think: ornate and emotive classical music) piece performed by the festival’s chamber orchestra. For example, a light and effervescent composition might be paired with a kolsch brew, while a heavy piece might call for a boch or porter. The pairing explanations will enlighten concertgoers about both beermaking and Baroque-style music. “BEERoque exemplifies the direction we’re taking our programming by adding out-of-the-box elements,” said Erik Peterson, CBMF co-artistic director. “We’ll have this gorgeous, affecting, moving Baroque music, then we’ll add these fun, sensory elements. We crafted the evening to entertain an audience that might not know that much about classical music.” What Leonard Bernstein would say about these times. The 2018 CBMF has adopted the theme “To Make Music More,” a phrase taken from a Leonard Bernstein speech shortly after the 1962 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Bernstein spoke of creating a powerful musical response to violence in the world. This year would be the 100th birthday of Bernstein, an American composer, conductor, author, pianist and advocate of social justice. To honor his birthday, 40
CBMF will perform several of his works. Also in keeping with Bernstein’s legacy of supporting music for all, this year’s festival reflects a huge diversity of musicians and musical approaches. For example, Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), an African-American composer who plays electric violin, will perform poignant Redemption Songs and Sonatas, which he recently played on the steps of the nation’s capitol. DBR, an Emmy-nominated artist and composer, has collaborated with Lady Gaga and other far-ranging performers; for his CBMF concert in celebration of freedom, he’ll play with pianist Yaldoi Ikawa. What the heck is a Fluxus? On Fluxus Night, the audience will come together to perform experimental “events,” following the Fluxus Handbook (a radical movement of artists, composers and designers from the 1960-70s). As part of the experiment, attendees might contribute to the “community performance art” by eating an apple onstage or taking a saw to a violin. No experience is necessary, but bring an open mind and sense of fun. How to find your way to a wild concert site. Attendees will hike or bike to two outdoor CBMF concerts – with the exact meadow location revealed to ticket holders. Route options (of different difficulty levels) will be available earlier and will highlight the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association’s stewardship and development of the valley’s trail system. One event will be a Zen concert with ancient Japanese instruments, the other a chamber music performance in a setting resembling a garden in Spain.
OTHER UNCONVENTIONAL EVENTS THIS YEAR: • a showing of the environmental documentary “The Colorado” (about the Colorado River) with a beautiful soundtrack by young composers;
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• a “blow-out” celebration with celebrity DJ Johnny Dynell, who DJ’s parties for Elton John and the New York City club scene; and • a legendary mariachi band parade down Elk Avenue, with three margarita-sampling stops at local establishments along the way. The Crested Butte Opera Studio, founded in 2009 and one of six CBMF education programs, will present Giuseppe Verdi’s comic opera “Falstaff.” Brian Garman, the festival’s opera music director, described it as “genuinely funny and completely entertaining.” He noted, “Verdi broke a lot of the old compositional ‘rules’ in this opera and ended up creating something new and vibrant and youthful… all at the age of 79. This was his last opera, and he was determined to write what he wanted, in the way he wanted.” Rule breaking, fun and vibrant? In those ways “Falstaff” befits the spirit of the 2018 Crested Butte Music Festival. “We’ve made a conscious effort to be a great partner in the community,” Peterson said, citing the festival’s approachable programming, reasonable ticket prices, many free events, and a public arts piano installation with the Crested Butte Creative District. For the full schedule of this summer’s events, see crestedbuttemusicfestival.org.
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The Center’s finish-line push
Kids’ Adventure Clothing and Gear 326 ELK AVENUE 42
349-2884
That impressive structure taking shape in the middle of town does NOT mean the Center for the Arts has finished its fund-raising. In fact, this is a critical time for donating to the Center’s campaign, said Executive Director Jenny Birnie. As of this spring, $12 million had been raised of the $15.5 million needed to complete the new facility and remodel the existing space (which was converted from a county maintenance garage in the mid 1980s and is now bursting at the seams). The new, energy-efficient Center will have a larger, multi-purpose auditorium, classrooms, studios, rehearsal spaces, galleries and state-of-the-art technology. For details and donation information, see crestedbuttearts.org/building-in-the-heARTs or contact jenny@crestedbuttearts.org.
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Kalon Wall, master of open-fire cooking, prepares for the feast.
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FEAST IN THE FIELD SERVES UP SENSORY DELIGHTS FAR BEYOND THE PLATE. Words by Cassie Pence Photos by Nathan Bilow
Huge carcasses, skewered on iron crosses, hang from lodgepole pines above open flame. Fat drips slowly down the flesh, sizzling as it hits the pit. Ash and sparks swirl through the air. Cinders crackle and pop. Although whiskey calls, guests at Feast in the Field, a farm-to-table experience set on a ranch in Crested Butte, can’t take their eyes off the team of chefs shrouded in sweet wood smoke. A second fire pit is hugged by a crescent of whole rabbits skewered on bamboo sticks stuck into the ground to catch the heat of hot coals. Under those coals and ash hide a medley of vegetables wrapped in linen, buried to cook slowly and concentrate flavors. To the side, a cast iron griddle rests low, directly over the flame to char local tomatoes, fresh, plump and juicy. Kalon Wall, executive chef of Revelden (formerly Sunflower), and his team use this ancient art of open-flame cooking to create a multi-course feast entirely with fire — over flame, under it and in it. Chef Wall is drawn to cooking over fire because of its raw simplicity. All he needs to impart incredible flavor is found in the field: stones, wood and happy livestock. “This is the way I like to cook. It’s as simple as you can get. It’s using the field to cook. It’s all here. You’re not bringing anything in, and it connects people to land,” says Wall, whose restaurant Revelden strives to be as local and sustainable as
possible year-round, despite the challenge at this altitude. “There’s the creative aspect of cooking with anything at any time, but there’s more authenticity in the food when it’s based on what’s available around you.” Wall’s inspiration for a fire dinner stems from his travels to Argentina, where he trained at Francis Mallmann’s resort Siete Fuegos to learn this rustic, gaucho-style fire cooking. Celebrity chef Mallmann is the modern-day expert of open-flame cooking. He wrote the book Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way and was featured on the Netflix series Chef’s Table. It was the men who tended cattle on the South American plains in the 18th and 19th centuries – gauchos – who cooked this way in the fields. Mallmann resurrected the idea, and Wall brought it to the fields of the Gunnison Valley. “Open-fire cooking is a really enjoyable culinary experience,” says Chris Sullivan, owner of Mountain Oven and Wall’s sous chef for the evening. “There’s a lot of time involved, from starting very early in the morning and lighting the fires to manning extreme high heats and coaxing the fire into a form we can use to cook the meats properly. But there are huge benefits both in practicing working with the flame and the final product. The carbonization of food extracts a huge amount of flavor.” August starts the peak of harvest in the high country, and for this meal Wall uses 47
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only vegetables and meat carefully produced on farms and ranches in Gunnison and on the Western Slope. Feast in the Field is a celebration of local food, paying homage to the people who grow it and the land that sustains it. Farmers and ranchers break away from busy harvests to attend, and the event raises money for Mountain Roots, a nonprofit that makes the valley’s foodshed more sustainable and abundant through education, outreach, production and the creation of new markets for area farmers. “Restaurants mention the farms they get produce from and have them up on a board or publicize them in some way, but having the folks who produce the food attend the event is unique and gratifying. I have a lot of pride when the food tastes good, and it’s nice for me to feel appreciated,” says farmer Mark Waltermire, owner of Thistle Whistle Farm in Hotchkiss. “And I really appreciate what Kalon does. He’s the best chef I’ve worked with in terms of respecting what I do and taking advantage of the things I do well.” Sounds of revelry from the open kitchen tent pull the crowd from the cookery pits. Inside, more cooks chop herbs and garlic and slice peaches and plums. They’re excited and anxious to feed 100 or so guests from this tiny pop-up kitchen, but the mood is more like a party. These chefs and cooks are donating some or all of their time in honor of local food, and the buzz is contagious. They pause from knife work to clink glasses of rosé or swig whiskey, and that’s when ticketholders remember — oh yeah, time for a drink. In the field, wine, whiskey and hard cider await — as does more fire, this time housed in huge iron cauldrons welded by local artist Joe Bob Merritt. All the libation makers are there: the distiller from Distillery 291 Whiskey in Colorado Springs; the brew master from Big B’s in Paonia; and the wine ambassadors from Catena, a winery in Argentina. They pour more and more samples and talk about their liquid obsessions. “Whiskey fits well with any event, but it really goes well with fire and dusk after a long day and getting ready to eat meat out in a field,” says Michael Myers, owner and distiller of 291 Whiskey. Myers’ small-batch distillery was shortlisted for Icons of Whisky with Whisky Magazine. “This is an amazing event. It feels like you’re in Argentina. Everybody’s dressed so beautifully. I’ve been to a lot of these roasts, and this is one of my top three.”
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Hors d’oeuvres funnel out of the kitchen tent on big trays: small bites, like heirloom Three Root Grex beets on rye toasts smeared with ricotta and topped with olive golden raisin relish. Smiling, young Mountain Roots’ staff people pass them around, chatting about what they do for the nonprofit — growing the school gardens, harvesting vegetables from backyard gardens to donate to the food pantry, or running the organization’s multi-farm communitysupported agricultural (CSA) program. These young people are donating their time, too. The love for local food is that strong. “Hanging around the fire pits is a really nice part of the feast. It’s a visceral experience. The fire is organic and beautiful, you smell the meat roasting, and there’s a real camaraderie at the event,” says Monica Ariowitsch, Skyland resident who has attended Feast in the Field the past two years. Though she knows some of her fellow feasters, she says, “One of the reasons I go is to connect with new people, people who have common interests, people who support local food and Mountain Roots.” Guests linger near the fire, but the sun 50
is dipping behind Whetstone and it’s time to eat. Inside the tent, tiny candles and bistro lights create a soft glow. Hand-sewn, mismatched, cloth napkins made from vintage cotton American tablecloths (from the 1950s and ’60s) add color and coziness to tables draped in white linen. Flowers grown by Rain Crow Farm in Paonia are artfully arranged in rustic Ball jars by Sarah Schmitz of From the Ground Up, a Crested Butte flower shop. While the now-hungry guests wait for the first course, they flip through the books resting on their plates: Notes from the Field, made by artist Steph White. A hand-carved woodblock print of a purple beet graces the cover, and the inside reveals stories of all the makers it took to create this one-of-a-kind dinner. Each guest receives a pencil to make notes in the back of the book. “The idea is that when you’re out in a field, enjoying a dinner with the farmers and ranchers and the chefs that made the dinner, under the starlight and surrounded by friends and fire, feelings and tastes are stronger, more memorable. You’re more present. We want you to write those
sensations down so you remember how magical local food is and why it should be supported,” says Sarah Stoll, Mountain Roots board member and co-organizer of the event. Courses begin to roll out, and the roar of enjoyment grows louder and louder. The green tomato gazpacho with charred melon, goat ricotta, strawberries and papalo greens, a heat-loving cilantro, is a showstopper. Ambassadors from Catena pour wine and explain why their wine, though from Argentina, fits this local feast. Like the farmers on the Western Slope, the Catena family knows the challenges of growing at higher altitude. Their vineyard is at almost 5,000 feet, and the Catena team for years has studied the high-altitude soils of cool-climate wines. Oohs and ahs rise as people comment on the individual ingredients of each crafted dish — the Riscaldo corn with the We Gotta’ Farm rabbit, for example, and the burnt tomato with fire-roast Parker Pastures beef. It’s as if the diners have never tasted these foods before. Maybe they haven’t, not like this. “I’ve grown the same varieties of vegetables in many places, and the stresses
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Defining
Mountain
Style
Photo : Jeremy Armstrong
that the plants have to go through in this particular place – lack of humidity, intense sunshine, cold nights, hot days – contribute to better flavors in food than any other place I’ve grown,” says Waltermire, whose corn has become legendary. Commotion in the “kitchen” alerts guests that it’s time for the grand finale, and everyone hustles to get a front row seat to the carving of the asado Parker Pastures lamb and the unveiling of the curanto — that medley of potatoes, zucchini, patty pan squash and onion – that’s been wrapped in linen and cooking in the earth for hours. Chef Wall carves and hands out chunks of succulent meat. In this primal style of hospitality, no one complains as they eat with their hands. Alas, the diners eventually retreat to the tent to sit civilized and finish the course. But soon the fire, the starlight and the whiskey call them again to the larger canopy of the evening sky. Freelance writer Cassie Pence serves on the Mountain Roots board and co-organizes Feast in the Field, which will return this summer on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018.
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Henry Richter painting, courtesy of the Savage Library, Western State Colorado University.
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On their honeymoon, Catherine and Henry Richter painted near Rustlers Gulch, observed by their friends, the Westbrook family.
Photo courtesy of Gail Jacobs
By Janet Weil
Editor’s note: Research on the history of art in Crested Butte (see side box) has uncovered some fascinating ties between artists past and present. A fun example: Catherine and Henry Richter, who launched their romance and honed their plein air painting among the valley’s scenic mountains in the 1910s. They are noteworthy for their accomplishments – and also for certain similarities to present-day husband-wife painters Shaun Horne and Dawn Cohen, who reinvigorated the plein air movement in Crested Butte. Here are their stories. “I just stood there and watched that man paint. It was like magic,” said Catherine Moore, referring to Henry Leopold Richter while on a painting excursion in the mountains surrounding Crested Butte. Thus began a 45-year love affair and artistic partnership until Henry Richter’s death at 90. In Catherine’s account of how she met Henry in 1913, she wrote, “Henry made a side trip to Salida, Colorado, to visit his
friend, Richard Ernesti. It so happened the Ernestis were friends of mine also. He had been my teacher for two years in Greeley... I was familiar with a beautiful oil painting of a sunset over a desert, which hung above their mantel; and they had told me about their friend. So here he came, Henry Richter, with his violin and a brief case of music, a case of painting materials and his suitcase… We four went sketching, but I not to paint. I had little experience and preferred to watch this fine artist paint… We had four wonderful days.” Henry’s formal art training began in 1900 when he enrolled in the Chicago Art Institute while studying privately under the renowned painter E. A. Burbank. In 1904, Henry opened his own studio and began exhibiting his artwork. He achieved success with his exhibitions and received glowing reviews for a one-man show at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1911, due to all the favorable press, Henry was offered a position as the first art professor at the Normal 53
Henry and Catherine on their wedding day, 1915.
School of Colorado in Gunnison (now Western State Colorado University). Henry painted several large murals for his classroom, which are displayed in Western’s library along with many of his paintings. Catherine Moore attended the Chicago Art Institute for three years, studying drawing, design and interior decoration, and also received her teaching degree in art and painting from Colorado State Teacher’s College in Greeley. She claimed teaching and secretarial work were the only job opportunities available to women. Henry and Catherine married in 1915 in Grand Junction. Catherine turned Henry down at first, telling him, “I think I am making a mistake if I marry you, because I have no training to be a professor’s wife. I have to learn to be very dignified.” At the urging of Henry’s friends, she reconsidered. “I decided I could learn to be a professor’s wife…and I was a good one,” she said later. Recalling their honeymoon, Catherine wrote, “Henry and I were married July 25, 1915 – and left on the 8:30 a.m. Narrow Gauge for an interesting honeymoon. First to Telluride (which we did not find interesting), then over to Ouray and its neighboring points of interest, then to Gunnison, to our home in the La Veta Hotel, and then immediately off with Dr. George Sullivan, Ruth, and several of her relatives for a trip through Crested Butte, past the old shack on Crystal Creek (Henry 54
Courtesy of the History of Art in Crested Butte project.
Courtesy of the Savage Library, Western State Colorado University.
Dawn Cohen and Shaun Horne in their elements.
Lydia Stern
made a good water color, I a quick sketch) and over the mountains on a wild mountain road to Marble and Redstone – one time a coke oven village of 50 tiny houses – then home. Worn out!!!” From 1911 to 1919, Henry and Catherine went on many sketching and painting trips through the Elk Mountains, capturing the incredible beauty of the area in watercolor and oils. A year after they wed, Catherine offered to take over the responsibilities of Henry’s classes so he could devote all his time to painting. Henry captured the majestic Maroon Bells, the meandering Gunnison River and Nordic skiers trekking through a snowy mountainside. He made several views of Lake Irwin with the surrounding peaks resting in the distance. Catherine painted a watercolor of the town of Crested Butte in 1917 with its small cluster of houses on a hill and Paradise Divide beckoning in the background. She painted the dramatic rock formations of The Castles and a view of storefronts in Crested Butte.
During these years Henry developed his plein air style of painting. Plein air painting is done outside. These works are taken directly from nature, instilled with a feeling of the open air. Henry and Catherine were sketching and painting the magnificent landscapes surrounding them while saturating their senses with the beating heart of the natural world. The effect of the changing light on color played an important role in their paintings. Plein air painting is often associated with the Impressionist artists of the late 1800s, during a time when artists began coming out of their studios to create their works, painting real people doing everyday things. The popularity of plein air painting was aided by the development of easily portable equipment, including paints sold in tubes. The Richters left the Gunnison Valley in 1919 and settled in California. Henry further developed his plein air painting into the California style of representational art, documenting scenes of everyday life on the Pacific coast.
Nathan Bilow
A CENTURY LATER: SAME MOUNTAINS, PAINTED BY A DIFFERENT DUO Fast-forward one hundred years to Crested Butte’s thriving plein air movement and the present-day couple who helped fuel it: Shaun Horne and Dawn Cohen. Shaun received a degree in biology with an art studio minor. While he was enrolled in a landscape-painting class, his professor encouraged him to go outdoors, observe how the landscape actually looked, then paint. Shaun soon discovered the challenges and rewards of painting en plein air. He went to Colorado State University (CSU) in Ft. Collins to earn another bachelor’s degree, this time in painting. Since 2001, Shaun has been working full time as a landscape painter using a large-scale plein air method. He returns to the same site, under similar light conditions, day after day until the painting is complete. Although Shaun is influenced by the early Impressionists, he paints with an American hard edge, akin to Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper or Georgia O’Keefe. 55
“Adele Barn” by Dawn Cohen
After Dawn received her bachelors in art education in 1994, she was accepted to CSU’s graduate art program to earn her Masters of Fine Art. One fateful night, she went to an art student’s house, where Shaun was also living. “I sat across the table from Shaun, but he never looked at me,” Dawn said. Before the night ended, they finally interacted, and Shaun gave her a painting of his. Dawn took it home and hung it on the wall across from her bed. “I looked at it every night and tried to see it through his eyes,” she said. She fell in love with the painting and with the painter. Shaun invited Dawn to Utah on a plein air painting excursion. As they painted there, she began seeing the world differently, engaging on a more sensory level, observing nature soulfully. “When painting outside, I’m receiving information from all the senses, not just the eyes,” Dawn said. “It allows me to feel and experience the landscape and to perceive the heaviness or lightness of the atmosphere. The beauty of nature is an inexhaustible subject matter.” She was hooked. After they got married, Shaun claimed he knew the most beautiful ski town in the country where they could live, she could ski 56
an amazing mountain and paint exquisite scenes right from Elk Avenue. “It’s a super cool, funky, authentic ski town, and you’re going to love it,” he assured her. In 2002, Shaun and Dawn moved to Crested Butte. It took Dawn three years before she ventured out into the chilling cold of the Rocky Mountain winters to paint. She learned to dress in multiple layers. “I march out to a snowfield carrying all my painting materials and stomp around with my big heavy boots. You have to be strong to paint en plein air in the middle of the winter. It takes commitment and discipline to brave the elements. But, once I’m there painting, I forget myself looking at something so beautiful,” she said. Dawn’s paintings Town Garden, Winter Reservations and Adele Barn represent “how charming Crested Butte can be in different seasons,” the artist said. “I like to paint the buildings in nature because it describes how humans and landscape interact… how the people here value and enjoy the visual uniqueness of where they choose to live. I want others to see how incredible a place can be when it’s adored and taken care of.”
Shaun said about his painting Shady Side, “Crested Butte is the only Colorado ski area town that has coal mining (which is to say wood) architecture. Telluride and others mined silver and gold, made more money than coal miners… and built brick buildings. In the 1970s young import skiers started painting Crested Butte’s wood structures with bright colors, in a way I haven’t seen happen to brick buildings. The result is the wild and beautiful color sequences in this view. For my money this is one of the best sequences of facades anywhere.” In 2011 and 2014, Shaun funded the very successful Plein Air Invitational, attracting a hundred plein air painters, including the best in the country. The massive ten-day event featured a tented gallery set up in town. This summer Dawn expects to teach plein air workshops sponsored by the Center for the Arts. A century after the Richters set up their canvases here to paint the awe-inspiring landscapes around them, Shaun and Dawn have advanced the plein air painting movement and fostered Crested Butte as a worthy, growing art destination.
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Follow CBMF online:
Enjoy these unique events & much more. July 5-August 11, 2018.
Date
Time
Event
Venue
Price
7/5
10:00 PM
Shake Your Butte with DJ Johnny Dynell
PH
$25
7/6
6:00 PM
Crested Butte Opera Studio Cabaret
CFTA
$40
7/7
8:00 PM
Bluegrass: Bonnie & the Clydes
CFTA
$25
7/8
7:30 PM
BEERoque Chamber Orchestra
CFTA
$50
7/10
2:00 PM
Japanese Garden: Outdoor Concert
TBA
$40
7/11
7:30 PM
Crested Butte Opera Studio w/ Orchestra
CFTA
$50
7/12
7:30 PM
Fluxus Night: Community Performance Art
CFTA
FREE
7/13
7:30 PM
Film: The Colorado
CFTA
$5
7/14
7:30 PM
Symphony with Charles Yang, violin
CFTA
$50
7/15
5:30 PM
Celebration Gala
LMS
$200
7/17
11:00 AM
Opera: Falstaff Dress Rehearsal
CFTA
$10
7/18
11:00 AM
Hike-to Outdoor Concert w/ Alex Komodore
TBA
$40
7/19
7:30 PM
Opera: Verdi’s Falstaff
CFTA
$50
7/20
7:30 PM
Opera: Verdi’s Falstaff
CFTA
$50
7/20
10:00 PM
After Dark w/ Ron Earl
CFTA
$5
7/21
7:30 PM
Opera: Verdi’s Falstaff
CFTA
$50
7/22
7:30 PM
The Wild Chamber Music Party
CFTA
$40
7/24
6:00 PM
Sound Hearth Home Soirée: CBOS
TBA
$160
7/25
8:00 PM
Gypsy Jazz Goes South
CFTA
$35
7/26
8:00 PM
Gypsy Jazz: John Jorgenson Quartet
CFTA
$35
7/27
7:30 PM
Altius String Quartet
UCC
$40
7/29
8:00 PM
Tribute to Grappelli and Les Paul
CFTA
$35
7/31
9:00 PM
Redemption Songs and Sonatas
CFTA
$25
8/2
8:00 PM
Steve Poltz, Singer-Songwriter
CFTA
$25
8/3
8:00 PM
Spinphony: Female Classical Rock Quartet
CFTA
$25
8/4
8:00 PM
Don Byron and Aruán Ortiz, Jazz Superstars
CFTA
$40
8/5
7:30 PM
Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time
CFTA
FREE
8/6
6:00 PM
Sound Hearth Home Soirée: Mozart’s Vienna
TBA
$110
8/7
9:00 PM
Aaron Diehl, solo jazz piano
CFTA
$40
8/8
8:00 PM
The Good, the Bad, the Devine
CFTA
$40
8/9
8:00 PM
Natalia Zukerman
CFTA
$40
8/10
7:30 PM
In the Family: Eugenia and Arianna Zukerman
CFTA
$40
8/11
4:00 PM
Mariachi on the Rocks – a Margarita March
Parade
$20
VENUE KEY: PH = Public House | CFTA = Center for the Arts | LMS = Lodge at Mountaineer Square UCC = Union Congregational Church | TBA = To be announced to ticket-holders
FILM: The Colorado Friday, July 13, 2018 7:30 PM At the Crested Butte Center for the Arts Tickets $5.00
CBMF Symphony Orchestra w/ Charles Yang Saturday, July 14, 2018 7:30 PM At the Crested Butte Center for the Arts Tickets $50.00
The Wild Chamber Music Party Sunday, July 22, 2018 7:30 PM At the Crested Butte Center for the Arts Tickets $40.00
PLEASE NOTE: All info is subject to change. Please see crestedbuttemusicfestival.org for the most up-to-date info.
The lives and paintings of Catherine and Henry Richter came to light through an expansive research project “to uncover, discover and archive the history of art in Crested Butte.” The collected information, stories and artwork will be curated into a museum-quality exhibition next summer in the new Center for the Arts building. Nicholas Reti, painter and owner of Oh Be Joyful Gallery, is collaborating with artists Ivy Walker and Peggy Morgan Stenmark, plus volunteers, art lovers and other community members. A Creative District grant is helping fund the project. Reti hopes to draw more people – to help with research; to share relevant art, photographs or stories; or to contribute their talents to the exhibition. Since last autumn, volunteers have combed through local archives (particularly at Western State Colorado University’s Savage Library), with surprising results. Many people assume the mining life was too rough and poor to accommodate the arts, Reti said. But the area’s old boomtowns were actually fairly cosmopolitan, luring people from afar with visions of buried riches. Later the coal mines drew southern European immigrants who brought vestiges of their distant cultures. Area newspapers from more than a century ago show ads for galleries and live theater. The mining town of Irwin boasted a theater so lively that the floor gave way under the weight of its audience. Beyond “high art,” suitable for framing, people found time to write poetry, compose music, dance, draw, paint and create
with fabric. Even earlier, art served practical purposes, as reconnaissance and survey expeditions brought photographers, cartographers and artists to create images of the newly “civilized” land. (The native population, with their own art forms, might have disagreed with that terminology.) The history project includes cataloging artists, artwork the project has acquired, and images of the artists’ work found in collections throughout the country. Reti said, “We want to inspire more articles, research and interest into our community’s creative history.” Reti conceived the “art-cheology” idea after seeing a historic lithograph of the 1884 Jokerville Mine disaster. Preliminary research excited him even more, revealing several dozen visiting or resident artists whose work shaped the development of art in the valley – and far beyond. Reti said, “I’d like to raise awareness of what our community has been to the Western art scene,” which would make Crested Butte even more relevant and attractive as a destination for artists and art fans. Ultimately, Reti dreams of establishing an art museum in Crested Butte. In addition to illuminating the valley’s rich artistic heritage, next summer’s exhibit will showcase the possibilities of the Center’s new professional-caliber gallery space, Reti said. Have information, photographs or artwork to share? Want to help? Learn more at ohbejoyfulgallery.com/history-of-art or email history@ohbejoyfulgallery.com.
Fine Art • Custom Framing • Photography • Pottery • Posters
Celebrating 25 Years
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With hoes, gloves and conversation, the Crested Butte Conservation Corps aims to address backcountry issues and continue the valley’s legacy of stewardship. By Cosmo Langsfeld
Courtesy of CBMBA
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It’s going to be a good day. In the pleasant air, a few lazy clouds hint at afternoon rain, typical for July. A huge snow plug below Emerald Lake lingers from the winter’s massive snowfall. A hiker gives us a funny look as we glissade down the edge of the quasi-glacier in our matching beige shirts and orange helmets. Maybe it’s the hoes and Pulaski tools strapped to our packs. A rake or two. A five-gallon bucket. The sheathed bar of a chainsaw rising from behind my head. On our way up here, we’d stopped at the Judd Falls trailhead to pick up trash: a few energy bar wrappers and some toilet paper. A pittance compared to the La-ZBoy recliner and portable toilet the other crew had hauled out of the woods the week before (not to mention the contents of the pit beneath the toilet). From the snow plug it’s an easy stroll
to Schofield Pass and the first climb up Trail 401. Here we start our day of trail work: the smell of two-stroke exhaust and spruce chips; tools swinging in the dirt; conversations with anyone who happens by; the hike back on a clean, well-maintained trail. It’s an average day for the Crested Butte Conservation Corps. A good day. The Crested Butte Conservation Corps (CBCC), under the umbrella of the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association (CBMBA), was created as “a fulltime, six-day-a-week, on-the-ground trail crew aiming to minimize impacts, protect our valuable resources and steward them for the best experiences possible.” In its first season last year, the two three-person crews completed trail maintenance, user impact mitigation and cleanup projects throughout the Gunnison Valley. For me, it was a fantastic job. The idea for a paid trail maintenance
crew, said Matt Whiting, board president of CBMBA, had been kicking around board meetings for years, and conservation and public land use were always at the forefront of those conversations. “We saw a lot of issues with backcountry management and stewardship, and we said, ‘This has got to be something bigger than just fixing mountain bike trails.’” The organization wanted to create a work crew that would address a wide array of concerns across the entire community, including trail work in wilderness, picking up trash, helping ranchers and assisting in the management of dispersed camping. Because the Conservation Corps has no legal authority to enforce rules, the crews focus on education and cleanup. According to Dave Ochs, executive director of CBMBA, “Our goal is to kill them with kindness. I 63
Conservation challenges, Exhibit A: long-term damage from one driver (soon followed by others) veering off-road onto fragile alpine tundra. If the road is buried by snow, please turn back! Below: Dave Ochs, Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association executive director, and Crested Butte Devo mountain bikers presenting the fruits of their conservation fundraising efforts.
Courtesy of CBMBA
think we can have a better reach because we can come up to people as a normal person off the street and help them to practice proper etiquette.” This goes beyond simply following rules. It’s about cultivating a positive impact on our environment and our community. Behavior is contagious. When one impatient individual drives around a snow plug in Paradise Basin in June, within half a day a new road mars what used to be pristine, high alpine tundra still saturated with winter’s runoff. That happened last summer, and when coworker Nick Catmur and I went up to shovel what was left of the snow (enough to sink a lifted jeep to the running boards), our behavior was also contagious; over the afternoon, four random people, both locals and visitors, began helping us with the work. As Ochs said, “It’s about maintaining a presence.” That presence helps send the message that this is what we want for our community. Almost everyone who lives in the valley depends on the land in one way or another. Whether it’s ranchers who truly live off the land, service industry workers dependent on tourism, or those of us who just need a daily dose of mountains to stay happy and healthy, our land is our life. On top of addressing various management issues, both CBCC crews spent 64
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Lydia Stern
significant time “fixing” single track around the valley. This work includes everything from installing drainages to help trails shed water, to clearing downed trees, more than 600 of which were cut out by the crews last summer. While the organization seeks to balance the conservation and trail work elements of the CBCC, according to Ochs, those practices are two sides of the same coin. “It’s all about leaving experiences better for the people who follow you.” Picking up toilet paper at the 403 trailhead and fixing the massive trenches that had worn in that trail both make for a better backcountry experience. Prior to the Conservation Corps, trail work by the Mountain Bike Association was purely a volunteer effort. Many locals turn out annually for workdays such as National Trails Day and the CBMBA overnight, which last summer was held on the new Baxter Gulch trail just south of town. Though efforts began in the 1990s to procure land for that trailhead and easements for passage through private property, CBMBA has only been involved in the Baxter Gulch project since 2011, contributing to the work done by the Town of Crested Butte, the Crested Butte Land Trust, 1% for Open Space, and Gunnison County. Since then, CBMBA has played a heavy role in setting the alignment and constructing the trail – as well as assisting the Western Colorado Conservation Corps (WCCC), a youth crew based out of Mesa County. This summer the WCCC crew will continue its campaign on the sections of trail that are not on federal lands (i.e. National Forest). Once the WCCC reached the National Forest boundary last summer, said Ochs, “We went full ground assault on it,” extending the trail nearly to the saddle between Whetstone and Axtel mountains. The trail, a top priority for CBMBA, should be completed by the end of this summer. CBMBA’s work on Baxter Gulch has been primarily volunteer labor, aside from the hours put in by the Conservation Corps last summer hauling tools in and out for volunteer workdays, clearing trees from the trail corridor and building new sections of trail. This tradition of trail building and community service, as well as the CBCC’s name itself, draws on historical aspects of the Gunnison Valley. In the mid-1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC),
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Crested Butte Conservation Corps and volunteers take a break from trail work.
a government program under President Roosevelt’s New Deal, established three camps in areas east and northeast of Gunnison. These men worked on road and trail construction, hay production, flood control, wildfire fighting and other projects under the supervision of the U.S. Forest Service. In 1940, a fourth camp was occupied two miles east of Gunnison off Highway 50. In February of 1941, men from this camp set up a side camp at Cement Creek. According to records, the crews at Cement Creek spent a significant amount of time working on the Pioneer Ski Area, where they cleared ski runs and constructed a “16-stall heated toilet” as well as a “log shelter house.” Other CCC projects in the area included clearing a six-mile segment of “truck trail” up Cement Creek, rebuilding portions of the road from Almont to the Taylor dam, and constructing a phone line from Almont 1½ miles up the Taylor River. Though it’s known that the Civilian Conservation Corps built several trails in the valley, the only CCC trail named in local Forest Service documents is the “Quartz to Taylor Stock Drive.” In its inaugural season, the Crested Butte Conservation Corps was funded through major donations from the towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte as well as 1% for Open Space. The Gunnison/ Crested Butte Tourism Association made a significant donation, along with contributions from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Crested Butte Land
Trust, Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce, Gunnison Valley Off-Highway-Vehicle Alliance of Trailriders (GOATS), High Country Conservation Advocates (HCCA), the Crested Butte (Devo) Development Team, Big Mountain Enduro and Smith Optics. Also, 38 “founders,” including individuals, families and businesses, donated $1,000 each to get the CBCC off the ground. This broad support makes the Conservation Corps a true community effort, and as Matt Whiting put it, “If we can get both HCCA and the GOATS supporting the same thing, then we’re probably on the right path.” As to the CBCC’s future, Ochs said CBMBA wants to incorporate a youth element and add opportunities for community involvement. Funding is an ongoing process, and while Ochs hopes that the towns, 1% for Open Space and the community will continue to support the Conservation Corps, the organization is also pursuing grants through the National Forest Foundation. More than anything, the organization would like to see the CBCC grow sustainably to address the issues presented in backcountry management, while also cultivating a sense of stewardship in the community. “Partially my hope,” said Whiting, “is that people will have that sense of ownership of their public lands and will pass that on to the next generation that will view management of public lands as a responsibility.”
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A different spin THOUGH OVERSHADOWED BY OTHER SPORTS IN THIS MOUNTAIN TOWN, TENNIS STILL CLAIMS CENTER COURT FOR ITS LONG-TIME FANS. By Beth Buehler
Jackie Bingham-Levine and her budding tennis aces. 68
Nathan Bilow
Mountain biker/tennis buff Don Cook has collected more than 200 wood rackets.
Dusty Demerson
IN A TOWN REVERED FOR ITS SKIING AND MOUNTAIN BIKING,
a town possessed by summer softball mania, tennis might be considered a “fringe” sport. As with golf or curling, you might not hear much about the latest local matches. But the beehive of activity on the town’s recently refurbished tennis courts hints at a richer story.
DON COOK: COLLECTOR OF HISTORY, RACKETS AND TENNIS GAMES Most people know Don Cook for his role in Crested Butte’s significant mountain bike history; in fact, he was featured in a January 2018 mountain biking television segment that was part of History Colorado and Rocky Mountain PBS’s “Colorado Experience” series. However, he also has been a friendly and familiar face on local tennis courts since the 1980s.
Cook was working for a local concrete company when the Town of Crested Butte built its first tennis courts in 1979. He assisted with the concrete forms and the surface work for the three courts. “It was the start for tennis for me because I was so excited about the courts. I wanted to get involved then but got involved in this little thing called klunkering [the start of mountain biking] that distracted me until 1988,” he explained. When the Crested Butte tennis courts were built, the only other courts in the area were in Gunnison, Cook recalled. Then Bill Lacy Sr. built courts in his Meridian Lake development, and by 1988 Mt. Crested Butte had added two courts. Along the way, courts were constructed at The Club at Crested Butte, Glacier Lily Estates, Outrun and Plaza condominiums, Crested Butte South, Larkspur and Buckhorn (though some no longer exist). One thing they all have in common: incredible views. The town courts immediately became very popular, Cook said, and Crested Butte
State Bank put up a $10,000 purse for what was known as the “State Tournament,” attracting players from around Colorado for a decade. The talented tennis pros hired by the Crested Butte Parks and Recreation Department and The Club at Crested Butte also played key roles in developing the local tennis community. In the mid 1980s, 23-year-old Australian Colin Hill served as the town’s summer tennis pro when on break from attending Oklahoma City University (OCU), where he competed on the school’s tennis team. Colin Robertson, owner of a Mt. Crested Butte condominium and a winner of the Crested Butte State Bank Tournament, coached the OCU team. Former Parks and Rec Director Jerry Deverell also remembers a woman in her seventies who served as tennis pro for a few years. “You could not get a ball by her; she was amazing!” Early on, a pool of excellent local men’s players “competed ferociously against each other, whether there was a tournament or 69
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Jackie and students on the town courts.
not,” Cook recalled, citing names like Fred Holbrook, Pat Corcoran, Bruce “The Face” Newman, Louie Patestos and George Gers. Newman and Gers were willing to play with an upstart like Cook, who was working to improve his game and later won five town tournaments in a row. Today, Cook’s regulars are Steve Williams, Brad Yamamoto and Randy Swift. In the mid 1990s, the focus shifted from singles to doubles when Rick Divine, tennis fan and owner of The Club at Crested Butte, installed a removable enclosure over the courts there. The bubble went up each winter for a decade or so, until the enclosed courts became too difficult and expensive to heat. Cook and Clay Berger started a wood racket doubles league that played at the bubble for several years, despite the fact that tennis racket technology had moved on. Cook’s first tennis racket was a $25 wood Maxply Dunlop racket purchased at his neighborhood sporting goods store in Littleton, Colorado; it was stolen out of his car soon after he arrived in Crested Butte at age 19. That didn’t deter him from collecting more than 200 wood rackets representing a 70
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broad range of eras and brands, with most purchased through eBay from 2000 to 2004. Not content to let the collection gather dust, Cook has tried out 95 percent of the rackets, still using several to play wood racket singles and doubles.
JACKIE BINGHAM-LEVINE: MASTER INSTRUCTOR OF TENNIS AND SKIING Getting involved in the local tennis scene almost always means crossing paths with
Jackie Bingham-Levine, Crested Butte’s tennis teaching professional for the past decade. Few people can expertly teach two sports, but Bingham-Levine is the exception, working as a full-time ski instructor for Crested Butte Mountain Resort when the snowflakes fly. Her friendly Scottish brogue, words of encouragement and seasoned teaching abilities have impacted hundreds of tennis players and skiers of all ages. After being
educated in sport and movement studies in Edinburgh, Scotland, teaching for 23 years in the Scottish school system and coaching ski racing on weekends, she relocated to Crested Butte in 2000 after marrying Brian Levine. In Crested Butte, Bingham-Levine called John Fielding, who would soon start as The Club at Crested Butte’s tennis pro (he now teaches at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs). He hired her immediately, and she also noticed an ad in Colorado Tennis seeking U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) school tennis clinicians. After training and certification, she traveled Colorado’s Western Slope showing school physical education teachers how to offer tennis instruction indoors. Bingham-Levine also has achieved certifications through the U.S. Professional Tennis Registry and U.S. Professional Tennis Association and as a British Lawn Tennis development coach. After a few years, Bingham-Levine was approached by the Town of Crested Butte to provide tennis programming at the town courts in addition to The Club. Her job included planning a large July 4th tournament that used many of the courts at this end of the valley. As Deverell recalled, “It was a scheduling nightmare with all the different levels, singles, doubles and mixed doubles!” As locals got busy serving growing Independence Days crowds, the tournament faded away. However, attendance at Crested Butte’s tennis clinics for adults and youth has increased by at least 30-40 percent under Bingham-Levine’s leadership, according to Recreation Supervisor Joey Carpenter. She also was part of a community-based group called 40-Love that spearheaded an initiative to replace the three town courts. The result was more than $285,000 raised through grants from Great Outdoors Colorado and USTA Colorado, funds and in-kind services from the Town of Crested Butte, and fundraising and hands-on assistance from locals. The new courts were unveiled in 2015, the same year Colorado USTA presented Bingham-Levine with the Clyde Rogers Award in recognition of outstanding contributions to the recreational tennis player. She quickly acknowledges the important role Dave Johnston has played as one of her long-term instructors, along with Steve Williams, Fred Kuval and Brad Yamamo, who also assist with clinics. Participation in tennis programs is evenly split between locals and part-time residents, with several visitors showing
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The Club at Crested Butte: a court with a view, and long-time players Carolyn Spahn, Lis Collins, Perdie Linehan, MJ Farnan and Dawn Smith.
Nathan Bilow
up after seeing clinics underway and information posted at the courts. “We have teachers, builders, lawyers and a whole range of backgrounds playing,” Bingham-Levine said. “The USTA has said this is one of the best tennis programs in small mountain towns. I describe Crested Butte as a town with skiers who play tennis.”
FINDING YOUR TENNIS PEEPS Doubles groups have formed on their own and regularly play around town. A senior men’s group gathers on Mondays, and a longtime group of Crested Butte South moms squeeze in Thursday matches while raising kids. Lis Collins started playing locally around 1993 and quickly met people through a women’s tennis ladder who then became lifelong friends. She was an active member of the 40-Love committee and has played weekly doubles matches for years 72
with MJ Farnan, Dawn Smith, Carolyn Spahn and Perdie Linehan, friendships that have spilled into other sports such as skiing. Collins and her husband, Johnny, have four kids who range from middle school to college; the youngsters have learned the sport from their parents and instruction through the Town of Crested Butte and The Club at Crested Butte. “Socially, when you go out in the world, it’s a good thing to pick up a racket and hold your own,” Collins said. For adults, clinics are “a great way to meet second homeowners and broaden who you can play with,” she added. “Most people here are transplants and bring their tennis background with them.” MJ Farnan has been playing in Crested Butte since 1980 but didn’t participate much her first year due to joining a co-ed softball team, a more serious commitment than expected. “I remember sitting on the bench during a game and looking at the tennis courts thinking, ‘Forget this, I’m going back to tennis!’” She also remembers Ann and Ed Vitt being huge early proponents of tennis, selling tennis clothes and balls in their store, Butte & Co. For part-timers James and Margaret Wright, tennis offers a great way to get back into the local scene upon returning each
summer from Longview, Texas. Margaret started visiting at age 15 during winter and developed a love for summer when her parents purchased a house in Crested Butte South 20 years ago. The Wrights enjoyed tennis as youngsters but opted for soccer in high school, college and beyond, eventually moving into coaching and teaching careers. “Each time we went to Crested Butte in the summer, we’d spend the majority of the time playing soccer in the adult league and on the playground outside our house,” Margaret said. “However in 2012, I was in a major car wreck that broke my collarbone and led to many surgeries. The summer after those surgeries, I decided the best way to rehab my collarbone was to go back to tennis. I reached out to Dave and Jackie and was immediately welcomed into the tennis community.” Each tennis clinic increased her range of shoulder motion and her range of tennis friends. Her husband at first resisted joining her on the court, she said. “Then one day he met Jackie from Scotland (my husband’s British), and she convinced him to try it. Through the clinics, mixers and cardio classes, we met some wonderful fun-loving friends that we can reconnect with every summer.”
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Game on in Crested Butte CLINICS, LESSONS AND PROGRAMS (ALL AGES) •
For Town of Crested Butte clinics or private lessons, see crestedbutterec.com.
•
For adult and youth summer programs at The Club at Crested Butte, see theclubatcrestedbutte.com.
OTHER OPPORTUNITIES TO PLAY •
Friday night tennis: Throughout the summer, anyone is welcome to show up at the town courts for mixed doubles 5-7 p.m. on Fridays. Organized by Bingham-Levine and volunteers, partners are assigned and mixed up throughout the night. The cost is $5 per week or $25 per season. Generally, the level is intermediate and advanced.
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Tournaments: Bingham-Levine plans to organize summer mixer tournaments on one weekend morning per month for people interested in playing mixed doubles.
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Singles: Watch for postings at the town courts or in local media for men’s and women’s singles tennis ladders or round robins.
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Two ducks with one shot “Old coot” Tom Sneller and his hunting/trapping diary. By Cara Guerrieri To us, he was our reclusive old uncle, but to the hippie town of Crested Butte in the 1960s and ‘70s, Tommy Sneller was a beloved and colorful local character. He’d hang out and tell stories down at his childhood friend Tony Mihelich’s Conoco station. He’d work odd jobs around town, jobs through which all the locals got to know him — at the town dump, at the ski area, on the highway crew and at the skate rink. Generous with the meat from the wild game he shot, he endeared himself as an oldtimer in their midst. Born in 1914 at 117 White Rock Avenue, Uncle Tom (actually my great uncle) was the sixth child of Croatian parents George and Frances Sneller. He lived his whole life in the same house and was one of the few who stayed in Crested Butte after the mines shut down in 1952. In that year he began keeping a diary, which we found in his house in 1983 after he died. He wrote almost daily entries beginning in October 1952, as the town began its swift decline, through the end of 1954, with a smattering of notes until 1956. From his opening entry on October 18, 1952 (“Killed my buck, first shot”), to the final entry on June 25, 1956 (“Killed a bear above Long Lake”), he recorded his love of hunting, prospecting and trapping, passions that took him all over the hills and valleys around Crested Butte. The places he went in just those two
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years reads like an outdoor adventurer’s dream list: Brush Creek, Washington Gulch, Gothic, Redwell Basin, Mt. Axtell, Irwin, Kebler Pass, Treasury Mountain, Red Mountain, Mt. Whetstone, Marcellina Mountain, Lottis Creek, Poverty Gulch, Farris Creek, Keystone, Smith Hill, Strand Hill, Silver Basin, Rustler Gulch, Cement Creek and Wolverine Basin. He fished in the streams, rivers, creeks and high mountain lakes: Emerald, Spencer, Pillar, Peanut and Blue. He prospected throughout Gunnison County from Taylor River and Spring Creek to Lost Canyon, Lake City, Pitkin, Saguache and the Cochetopa Valley. Proud of his hunting prowess, which was legendary in the family, Tom bragged about it in his notes. On October 18, 1952, he wrote, “Went up Brush Creek…saw six, got five. Not bad. Eh.” A week later he noted, “Chas and I went up Brush Creek to set traps. Saw three deer, got them with four shots, not bad. Bragging again.” Another time, on May 30, 1954, he seemed to have accomplished the impossible: “Didn’t do a dam [sic] thing but go fishing and killed two ducks with one shot with the 220 swift [rifle].” Tom spent so much time outdoors that in the winter of 1935 he went snow-blind. Since he’d already lost his sight in one eye in a hunting accident as a child, the family prayed for his recovery. His sister Mary implored Saint Lucia, patron saint of the blind, to restore Tommy’s sight. Pregnant at the time, Mary promised that if Saint Lucia helped, she would name her child
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after the saint. Tom’s sight returned, and one of Mary’s twin girls was named Lucille. In his younger years, Tom was an unsettling member of the family. Too many times he’d come staggering down White Rock Avenue barely able to stand after drinking at the bars. Someone from the family would walk him up the street and see him safely into his own house. But on June 21, 1947, he gave up drinking for good and began his transformation from drunkard to beloved town character. What prompted his sobriety is unknown, though on June 12, 1947, the Elk Mountain Pilot reported that his father George, also an alcoholic, “fell at his home early Friday morning and broke a rib.” The family gathered around, coming from as far away as California, believing the 82-year-old was on his deathbed (he would live another five years). Whether his father’s troubled days as an alcoholic triggered Tom’s sobriety or not, that month was a turning point in his life, an important anniversary he noted in his diary in 1954: “seven years since I quit drinking.” One thing he never gave up, however, was his stubborn streak. He was a bachelor, a miser, a curmudgeon, and quite untidy, the last of which bothered his sisters Mary and Kathryn to no end. In the early ‘60s the two of them picked a day when they were sure Tommy would be away from home, drove from Gunnison to Crested Butte, and started mucking out his house. Their calculations about his whereabouts proved incorrect, and when Tom got back from visiting Young Tom with sisters Kathryn and Mary, who later tried to clean his house… once.
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his buddies at the Conoco station, he gave his sisters holy hell, telling them to get out and never try to clean his house again. After that, Uncle Tom put up a “No trespassing” sign on his front door, not to keep criminals away but to deter his clean-happy sisters. Those same sisters always wished their brother had chosen a more conventional career, but he was determined to make his living trapping marten, mink, coyote and muskrat and selling pelts to Sears, Roebuck and Company for the little bit of money he needed. The pay was meager. “Rotten prices for furs,” he wrote on Dec 26, 1952. Two years later, after months of trapping and sending furs, he wrote: “Got check for furs for $470. Got $4.00 [each] for mink and $370 for nine weasels.” He found the amounts inadequate. “So I sent check back.” The life of a trapper had to be discouraging during those ghost town years in Crested Butte, and even Tom contemplated leaving. On the day after Christmas 1952, he wrote that he was “going to Nevada in the morning.” Later, his entries included “wrote to see about going to Greenland” and “sent application for foreign work,” but none of those ideas materialized. Instead, he stayed, one of only about 300 residents left of the prosperous town of his youth. In its place were empty storefronts, an abandoned railroad and houses worth almost nothing. Fitting the unconventional guy he was,
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the year the coal mine closed, Tom (who never worked in the mine) started prospecting for coal. With various buddies he dug and hunted and dug and fished and dug. In 1954, after “28 days of prospecting with Renny [Stadjuhar},” they had “worked several holes,” and each day Tom recorded the number of feet they excavated. They never found any coal, and finally, on February 20, Tom wrote, “Renny quit me at 103 ft.” Later that year a friend of his started working a mining claim Uncle Tom owned. On August 24, 1954, Tom wrote, “Went up to the mine. [He] is sinking a shaft. Going to see
lawyer and arrest him.” While the outcome of the dispute is unclear, on August 30, Tom “went up Poverty Gulch, found a good mine but I think I am thru [sic] mining. Went up and got my stuff from our mine.” Less than a week later, on September 4, he “staked two claims” and by the end of that month his notes indicate that he’d staked at least 27 more. His mining days were not over. Over the years he never stopped believing he’d find treasure hidden in the mountains around Crested Butte, and his prospector’s “rock-pick” hammer was never far away. As he advanced in years, he didn’t go as far afield Tom Sneller in the 1977 Levi’s ad that earned him a lifetime supply of free overalls.
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and spent more time in town, hanging out at the Conoco wearing his fisherman’s hat and jean bib overalls. (He had a lifetime supply of free overalls as pay for posing in a 1977 advertisement shot in Crested Butte for the Levi Strauss company.) Newcomers who adored the curious old-timer invented tales about his past. Even today, if you mention Tommy’s name to some who knew him, they’ll lean in and say, “Not many people know this about Tommy but…” and then proceed to tell you that he had no relatives other than a long-ago fiancé who died in a tragic car accident. The truth is, there was no fiancé and no tragic accident, and of course Tom did have family nearby. The tales, however, made Tom especially appealing, along with a life that echoed the dreams of many an American boy — out West, hunting and trapping, mostly living off the land, and not beholden to any boss. Those years after he found acceptance and companionship in the revitalized town of Crested Butte may have been some of the most contented of Tom’s life. Once, when he was in the Gunnison hospital, the family visited and tried to make conversation. He refused to talk about the old days of his youth, which were tough times, but he was perfectly happy to converse about his current life in Crested Butte, his fishing or hunting exploits, the guns he owned and the promising claims he’d staked. Tom Sneller died a few years after that hospital stay, and in the end, I believe he discovered the gem he’d dreamed of for so long. The treasure he found didn’t come from a vein in the rocks or a nugget in his pan; it was right there in the town Crested Butte became, with its alternative-style culture and people who celebrated an unorthodox old coot like him.
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Pearce Roemer on the set of X-Men: Apocalypse.
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These three young Crested Butte alumni have forged very different paths into the film industry. By Kelli Hargrove Rohr
Courtesy of Pearce Roemer
Much of Crested Butte’s beauty comes from its size. Outsiders might equate “small” with “limited,” but that word isn’t in the Crested Butte vocabulary. Though tucked away from the lights of the big city, Crested Butte instills in its youth the idea that nothing is impossible, and every year its alumni embark on their own paths – venturing far or sticking close to home – to achieve their unique versions of success. Three of these alumni – Pearce Roemer, Sara Murphy and Corey Tibljas – have blazed separate trails into the notoriously hard-won film industry.
Pearce Roemer Pearce Roemer’s path to success began on the slopes of Mt. Crested Butte. A Crested Butte Academy student, Pearce spent his high school years surrounded by some of
the most talented skiers and snowboarders in the country. In search of sponsors, these riders spent much of their time filming one another and making their own ski movies, giving Roemer ample opportunity to learn about editing as he helped his friends piece together “sponsor me” DVDs to send out to companies. Luckily for Roemer, two of the Academy’s coaches – Christian Robertson and John Chorlton – recognized the power and future of films and editing; they, alongside Roemer and another student, built the Academy’s media lab from the ground up. While the Academy nurtured Roemer’s passion for film, the seeds were planted far earlier. He vividly remembers the day his mother, Ruth, came home with the original Star Wars trilogy on VHS. Ever ahead of the game, George Lucas included behind-thescenes featurettes on the tapes, which had a great impact on Roemer. “I don’t think I had
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credits like his most recent, It. Roemer has achieved an incredible amount in a short time. He noted, “I’m most proud of the friendships, contacts and career I’ve built. I knew no one when I moved to Los Angeles, and I’ve been lucky enough, after a lot of hard work, to find myself looking back at a very fortunate career. Not every film you work on can be an award winner, but almost all of them are battles you can be proud you conquered and notched into your belt.”
Pearce and irritable co-worker behind the scenes of It.
Terri Murphy
Film director Sara Murphy.
really been able to comprehend what went into making a movie before watching those. I suddenly realized that there was an entire world behind the world building that went into all of my favorite movies,” he said. Roemer got his first opportunity to work in film the summer after his senior year in high school, when director Ed Zwick decided to utilize his Crested Butte home to complete post-production on his film, Blood Diamond. Roemer reached out and ended up as the crew’s post-production assistant for the summer, earning his first credit on a major film. Though he considered Blood Diamond an incredible experience, when Roemer attended Penn State, he pursued finance, seeing it as the safer bet, a good fallback should his passion for film fade. After graduation in 2010, however, he found his zeal for film had far from dimmed, and when offered a job as a post-production assistant on a film called What’s Your Number?, he jumped at the chance. 92
Though he wanted to explore areas outside of editing, Roemer’s next project, X-Men: First Class, found him once again in an editorial position. Luckily, the shoot was behind schedule, giving Roemer the chance to work on set. Ultimately, he found that experience insanely boring, sending him happily back to the editing studio. Roemer’s work on X-Men ended up advancing his career: the film was challenging and demanded long, strenuous hours. His 20th Century Fox bosses took notice of his dedication and stayed incredibly loyal to him throughout the years. Roemer has remained an integral part of the X-Men franchise, working as second assistant editor on X-Men: Days of Future Past, and then as first assistant editor on X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (to be released in late 2018). Five years down the road, he hopes to be cutting films as a main editor, a goal he is edging toward as he continues to nab high-profile film
Sara Murphy For Sara Murphy, working in film was never the plan. Murphy was born and raised in Crested Butte, and after a brief stint in Florida, she finished high school at the Crested Butte Academy. From there, she pursued engineering at the University of Washington before studying philosophy and political science at Brooklyn College. Through someone she was dating at the time, Murphy learned that the legendary Philip Seymour-Hoffman was in search of an assistant – a role that Murphy soon filled. The job, though she didn’t know it at the time, would be the launching pad for her career in film. After four years as Seymour-Hoffman’s assistant – during which she worked on her first film, Capote – Murphy ran development for his production company, Cooper’s Town, for five more years. Murphy described Seymour-Hoffman as “smart, generous, insightful and
demanding.” Through him she was introduced to all aspects of the industry: directing, acting and producing; SeymourHoffman’s skills ran the gamut. Murphy found herself fascinated by production. She was taken, as she explained it, “by movie magic; how they are made; how beautiful and wonderful it is to come together to make something beautiful.” After her years with Cooper’s Town – and a stint in Italy after questioning if film was truly what she wanted to do – Murphy began to work independently. She teamed up with a filmmaker friend, and the two raised funds to shoot their first movie, Land Ho!, in Iceland. For Murphy, whose experience was chiefly in development, Land Ho! was her first role as a true producer. Though it came with its share of struggles and learning curves, she embraced it and, in her words, “got hooked.” Though Murphy is certainly not opposed to working on big-budget films, for now she works predominantly in the independent film sphere, crafting films and taking them to festivals around the country. A few of her projects include Gemini, Morris from America and Hunter Gatherer, with the last taking awards at the Denver International, Manchester International and SXSW film festivals. Currently, she is working on two films: If Beale Street Could Talk and The Mountain. The Crested Butte Film Festival has featured Murphy’s work and two years ago invited her to discuss her role as a producer. Murphy lauds producing as her dream career: “When I love it, I love it, and when I hate it, I still love it.” She’s drawn to the constant challenges, from nurturing relationships to crafting strategies for making the film and putting it out into the world. Her work pushes, entertains and inspires her. That does come with a price, however: the difficulty of finding work-life equilibrium. She’s currently re-focusing and re-prioritizing, to balance her personal and professional lives. With all her professional achievements, Murphy takes even greater pride in her relationship with her little brother Dex, another Crested Butte alumnus. The two live together in Los Angeles, and though they’ve had their ups and downs, Murphy counts her brother as her closest friend. Looking forward five years, the producer’s goals are simple:
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Corey Tibljas, specialist in challenging, high-speed action filming.
to find work-life balance, to continue producing and, above all, to be happy.
Corey Tibljas In 1999, young men Corey Tibljas and Ben Somrak had an idea. Both passionate big-mountain skiers, the two found an incredible lack of media showcasing their sport. There was no way to show what they were doing: no YouTube videos, no competition coverage and, for that matter, few competitions to be covered. They decided to change that. They bought a camera and a computer and, through trial and error, taught themselves to use them. Over time their skills progressed, and when they did get stumped, they had their idols at Matchstick Productions for guidance. With that camera, computer and dream, Two 94
Plank Productions was born. Tibljas and Somrak had one goal: to make their mark on the ski industry. Nineteen years down the road, the company has grown and changed in ways the two couldn’t have imagined. Tibljas took the helm, as Somrak left around 2009 to establish his own construction company. Two Plank spent many years producing feature-length freeskiing films, the last being Because, which debuted in 2012. Because turned out to be a launching point for Two Plank, as the company’s ability to produce highly technical films in incredibly remote, hard-to-reach places caught serious attention. After its premiere, the phone lit up with people wanting Tibljas and his crew to manage equipment and to get shots in difficult locations, in harsh conditions, within a short time range. Two Plank
pivoted its focus, and a new chapter began. Now, Tibljas is a man constantly on the move, as he manages contractors working on projects across the country. Two Plank branched out from ski films to collaborate with a variety of producers and large-scale production companies, fulfilling high-level content, production, management and logistical needs. As Tibljas defines it, the company is now “a one-stop shop,” focused on fast-paced action sports projects. The team just finished working on the second season of TORC – The Off-Road Championships – and is now location scouting for a feature film called Soul Drift, about the culture surrounding drift car racing. Tibljas has built a company that has surpassed his dreams and allowed him the opportunity to work with incredible people. He emphasizes his love and appreciation for the people who have helped make Two Plank all it is. One project that particularly inspires pride for Tibljas is his final feature film, Because, which allowed him to work with Willis Barnette, Austin Gibney, Jeffrey Loewe and Lydia Stern, among many others. The movie earned seven nominations at the Powder Video Awards, taking home the win for Best Point of View Cinematography and earning runner-up for Line of the Year. Looking back, Tibljas realizes he always had the “itch” to work in film. In seventh grade, when asked to fill out his future business card, Tibljas wrote: “Ski film producer.” He has achieved that goal and pushed far beyond it. As he explains, Two Plank allows him to pursue “the limitless horizon of where you can take something.” The continual challenge – and the magnetic pull of the next great project – keeps Tibljas engaged, on his toes and loving “the thrill of the chase.” Roemer, Murphy and Tibljas prove that growing up in a small town doesn’t have to limit a person’s reach – even in the film industry. For Crested Butte youngsters who aspire to follow in their footsteps, Roemer said, “The best advice I can give is to truly push for your dreams. When you find yourself trying to decide whether to give that extra little bit of effort on something... go and do it. The effort will make your success at the end of the day that much sweeter.”
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ohbejoyfulchurch.org
RE GENER ATIONS
SUMMER-FALL GATHERINGS CULTIVATE CONNECTIONS TO EARTH, ART AND ACTIVISM. By Molly Murfee
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“One of the greatest causes of the ecological crisis is the state of personal alienation from nature in which many people live.” – Robert Pyle, “The Extinction of Experience,” 1975
Dusty Demerson
Voices of other hikers washed over us in waves – distant murmurs, slowly growing in prominence until individual words crashed over us as we passed on the path, then receding and finally giving way to the metallic song of the white-crowned sparrow and a breeze sifting through the needles of the Engelmann spruce. We were hiking in silence into the wilderness, this group of seven women, and the introduction of human voices into this world felt stark and intrusive. At the trailhead, after stashing our cell phones in the car, we’d held a ceremony imbuing natural objects with the pieces of our lives we wanted to release, before laying them to rest under the broad arms of a skunk cabbage or hucking them into the dark gash of the ravine below. To each her own. On our walk in, we paused to listen to water dripping off moss, the wing beats of bees, our own breaths mingling with the exhalations of the fir. Throughout our day together we engaged in meditations on nature stimulated by mindfulness teacher Mark Coleman; explored free-flow writing prompts adapted from author Natalie Goldberg; and became inspired through the words of writer, spiritual ecologist and nature mystic Geneen Marie Hagan. We probed questions in our journals about how nature fed us emotionally, physically and spiritually, and we venerated special spots on a hillside, like individualized altars, constructed with found objects such as stones and fir cones, woven together with human-introduced elements of string, paper cutouts and mirrors. In the end we spoke from the heart about how we could bring the solace and peace of nature into our hectic lives, a living balm placed over too many lists and not enough time. Closing with a thanksgiving prayer inspired by the Iroquois, we journeyed back to the village, exhausted, satiated, exhilarated. As modern humans, we seldom venture anywhere without some sort of goal – 97
Molly Murfee
departing, achieving, pivoting, returning. For this brief and precious day, part of a Regenerations class series I offered last summer with artist Ivy Walker, we walked into the woods without our sights set on a peak or a pass, but on the process of experiencing what nature had to offer. Rarely do we hike with friends without speaking, or sit utterly still with no agenda but to notice and absorb. Rather than rapidly logging miles, we found a different way of being in nature – through open space, awakened presence and an exploration of our own creativity. Our mental, emotional and spiritual disconnection from nature skyrocketed in the 1950s with a rise in technology indicated by the advent of television. Instead of going outdoors to socialize or recreate, children and families found their entertainment inside. Yet even before that, nature vocabulary had already begun disappearing from our songs, literature and art – the public ways in which we engage in cultural conversation. And now in a society even more saturated with screens, our drive to connect with nature becomes less and less as we addict ourselves to the dopaminelike gratification of instant information and social media. A mountain of research documents 98
the benefits of immersing ourselves in nature. Modern civilization is plagued with depression, obesity, attention and mood disorders. Conversely, even brief and simple experiences in nature foster feelings of awe, wonder, gratitude and reverence. Our brains, bodies, feelings, thought processes and social interactions become drenched in positive effects. A study by biological scientist Lucy Keniger details the results of interacting with nature: increased self-esteem, improved mood, decreased anger and frustration, plus reductions in stress, blood pressure and cortisol levels. Through the calm induced by contact with the earth, plants and wildlife, our psychological wellbeing improves. We become capable of diminishing violence and amplifying inspiration. From a social perspective, those engaged in nature experiences feel less self-importance, growing their altruism, kindness and generosity. Yes, the world contains more than us and the skin we occupy. We are indeed a part of something much larger. This is where the Regenerations series begins – with the philosophy that we must reconnect with nature on a fundamental level, first for our own emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing and rejuvenation. We
start by laying our spines upon the earth, engaging in such musings as locating the root encounter that originally grounded us to the land and its inhabitants. We restore. We then use writing and visual art as tools to investigate our experiences, thoughts and feelings about the enveloping environment. We journey through forests of words and their impact, give birth to landscape sculptures that equally honor beauty and destruction. We experiment with both skill of the craft and utter freedom of expression. Through this creativity, we reweave and strengthen the heart-strings we tie to nature – whether we remember those ties or not, whether we’ve lived only in the city, our last connection to nature exists somewhere in the genetic pathways of past generations, or we simply lost touch with nature in the everything of all-too-much. Richard Louv, who wrote Last Child in the Woods and coined the term “nature deficit disorder,” stated, “As the care of nature increasingly becomes an intellectual concept severed from the joyful experience of the outdoors, you have to wonder: where will future environmentalists come from?” As our national monuments are threatened, along with safeguards that protect our air, water and soil, many feel a sense of despair at the potential destruction
UNCOMPROMISING ATTENTION TO DETAIL
Dusty Demerson
of that which we love. In the Regenerations series, we uncover mantras that empower us, by engaging in deep conversations with the natural world. We pay tribute to the wisdom of grief in the hero’s and heroine’s journey toward empowerment and positive action, rather than becoming immobilized, buried beneath a heavy blanket of overwhelm. We learn to process and express such raw emotions as rage, anger and frustration through captivating visual art and compelling, organized writing. The practices in Regenerations are not only wilderness-immersion tonics for the frazzled existence of the modern world; they also draw out each person’s unique voice and creative expression, finding intriguing pathways through which to communicate a love of the natural world and dismay at its destruction. “Modern artists have the opportunity to send the message that nature is worth paying attention to and to help awaken curiosity, appreciation and respect for nature… Artistic creations that help us connect with nature are crucial at a time like this, when nature seems to need our attention and care more than ever,” stated the authors of “How Modern Life Became Disconnected from Nature” in Greater Good Magazine.
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Department of Psychology professors at Oberlin College seem to concur: “If people feel connected to nature, then they will be less likely to harm it, for harming it would in essence be harming their very self.” We believe that everyone – every community member, every dabbler, every professional artist – has something to say and may choose to do so effectively and creatively. Regenerations. To bring into renewed existence. To replace that which is injured and give it a new and more vigorous life. This is our hope. Ivy and I are here to shift the paradigm, to be a part of the cultural revolution that honors nature and creates policy and practices that support it. We believe we can impact the world by encouraging connections to nature, and the use of writing and the visual arts to process our experiences there – from inspiration to hopelessness, revelry to rage. We aim to 100
facilitate people’s confidence in their creative expression, and to send those people home to their own communities armed and excited to express themselves in the public arena with intentions of inciting change. What can exist when we enter a deep conversation with nature? When we’re listening to something other than ourselves? Returning to ancient connections? Living in harmony rather than opposition? We see a world in which this is possible. This is our innovation against the rising despair, devastation and frustration our political climate is generating. This is our vehicle for combining our greatest light with that of others, collaborating for a different way of being and a brighter, more respectful path forward. The Regenerations series started with monthly classes last summer, led by nature/ environmental writer Molly Murfee and artist Ivy Walker, a Certified Nature-Connected
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Coach. Molly and Ivy will offer several classes this summer; they can also design custom experiences for individuals or groups. Their single-day outings or multi-day retreats focus on tuning into nature, creativity and “expressive activism.” Find out more at earthartactivism.com.
RESOURCES “Disconnect from Nature and Its Effect on Health and Well-Being,” by Jack Gelsthorpe (Natural History Museum: London, England) “How Modern Life Became Disconnected From Nature,” by Selin & Palin Kesebir (Greater Good Magazine: Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley) “What Happens When We Reconnect with Nature,” by Kristophe Green and Dacher Keltner (Greater Good Science Center)
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Indomitable (almost) newspaperwoman Sylvia Smith.
By Brian Levine
The turbulent local history of fiery 1900s newspaperwoman Sylvia Smith, as might have been related by her friend and printing assistant Mary Sistig (Quinn).
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“Anarchist,” people called her, but I’m not sure about that. Sylvia Smith was definitely a fervent suffragette, independent and strong souled. A trade unionist and syndicalist. “Anarchist” was one of many appellations hurled at her – along with “Bolshevik” and “town killer” – during that first trial in 1912 and the three-year drama that followed. I first met Sylvia in Marble, Colorado, in 1909. She employed me on her newspaper at $2.50 per week, and we soon became friendly. She told me about her teaching job at Jack’s Cabin, near Crested Butte, in 1898. She was 35 then; had previously lived in Lake City; was well versed in the Classics, history and literature. But teaching wasn’t her passion. She wanted to be a journalist. In 1900, Sylvia started writing and publishing the Crested Butte Weekly Citizen.
Although she was a tall figure of distinctive calm, her newspaper was afire, as if burning in an assay furnace. Everyone soon learned how much Sylvia hated railroad barons, mining magnates and large corporations. She also bellowed for women’s rights and unions. No one on Elk Avenue bullied or intimidated her. She was her own impregnable bulwark. Still, Sylvia was no Emma Goldman… perhaps a bit of Margaret Sanger and Emma Langdon… but certainly not an anarchist. Sylvia stood five feet, eleven inches and weighed about 160 pounds. She had light brown hair, blue eyes and a powerful face ending in a strong chin. She was athletic and loved to skate. Loved the mountains. I can’t see her plotting to kill steel plant managers or political leaders, as some have intimated. And I know for sure Sylvia had nothing to
1907 portrait of mining magnate Channing Meek, Sylvia’s nemesis.
do with Channing Meek’s death in August 1912. What happened to him was more like a prophecy from Sylvia’s later newspaper, the Marble City Times: “Destiny keeps her appointments and redresses many wrongs.” Sylvia unabashedly used her writing to launch cannonballs at the mighty trusts. Early on, at the Crested Butte Weekly Citizen, she hurled all sorts of evils against the cast-iron engines of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG). Sylvia cursed the railroad’s passenger and freight rates, aging train cars, paltry services, hard seats, cold environs – the lot. At the same time, she boldly challenged John D. Rockefeller and the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I). Sylvia took on CF&I’s poor minesafety record, falling wages, badly stocked company store, heinous scrip issuance and lagging interest in the Crested Butte community. The bile never ceased rolling out of Sylvia’s Washington printing press. By 1908, CF&I and D&RG retaliated by making life quite Spartan for her Crested Butte business. Fortuitously, the town of Marble didn’t have a newspaper. Unfortunately, it had the same foes. Under the banner of the Marble City Times, Sylvia renewed her call for equal suffrage and pontificated against sprawling trusts and the insidious Wall Street. Sylvia found her significance in such controversies. Marble’s businesspeople were generally
Press room of The Marble Booster in 1914.
dismayed by her syndicalist leanings; most of all, Channing F. Meek, president of The Colorado-Yule Marble Company. He and The Knickerbocker Syndicate of New York had recently raised millions of dollars in development capital and didn’t need adverse publicity. Old mills were being refurbished and new structures built; quarries enlarged; a hydro-electric plant installed; pipelines and tramways completed; and more miners’ houses constructed. The Crystal River and San Juan Railway even saw significant improvements. And the company benefitted with lucrative marble-production contracts. More quarry and mill workers moved to Marble, edging the population toward 2,000. Why wouldn’t Marble’s businesspeople favor Channing Meek? Once again, Sylvia called out stock promotion chicanery and disregard for worker safety. Her headlines against the company resounded between White House Mountain and the quarries like Marble’s own Mother Earth. Seeking to silence Sylvia’s combative clangor, Channing Meek funded journalist Frank Frost to run The Marble Booster, an obvious promotional organ. Yet, loud as Frost chimed, he couldn’t out-ring Sylvia’s diatribes against Meek and Company, especially in the matter of building a new mill directly in a known avalanche area.
Wouldn’t you guess? On March 22, 1912, around 6:40 in the morning, a massive snow slide cascaded down Mill Mountain, crushing the new mill. The Marble City Times had astutely predicted this misfortune. But by then, Sylvia’s tirades had alienated most townspeople, so they hadn’t listened. Meek, no longer willing to suffer Sylvia’s damaging words, induced Mayor Paul Tischhauser to hold a town meeting to discuss Sylvia’s fate. Frank Frost glibly reported that more than 200 citizens attended this meeting, though he didn’t mention it was conspiratorial. Those in attendance included C. E. Budlong, police magistrate; W. R. Frazier, Colorado-Yule’s chief clerk; the town’s preacher, Mr. J. A. Walton; a gaggle of other town and company officials; plus a number of regressive womenfolk. In their patriotic wisdom, they determined that Sylvia must leave town. The next day, 25 townspeople approached Sylvia at the Marble Hotel, where she maintained rooms. She was shown a petition with 232 signatures – a document she neither accepted nor complied with. Marshal Richard Mahoney and Special Officer John Fisher proceeded with Plan B, escorting Sylvia to the log and metal surrounds of the town jail – for her own protection, of course. At 4:35 the next morning, Marshal Mahoney coldly led Sylvia onto The Crystal 105
1907 shot of the Marble City Hotel, where Sylvia lived.
River and San Juan Railway, sending her to Denver under threat of incarceration should she ever return to Marble. It was Sylvia’s first complimentary excursion on the D&RG. On April 23, 1912, with the backing of women’s organizations and Governor Shafroth, attorney Charles Witwer filed a lawsuit on Sylvia’s behalf in Gunnison County District Court. Witwer sought $22,500 in actual damages, plus $30,000 in exemplary damages from 37 of Marble’s good citizens, The Colorado-Yule Marble Company and The Crystal River and San Juan Railroad. Witwer based the complaint on “conspiracy to commit wrong.” Legal proceedings proved enlightening. No witnesses denied what happened in March 1912. All admitted to disregarding Sylvia’s civil rights to silence her opinion. All witnesses testified the newspaperwoman’s words had been intentionally inflammatory. Sylvia offered no objections. All proclaimed her newspaper detrimental to The Colorado-Yule Marble Company, the town’s almost sole source of income. Again, Sylvia offered no denials. Her articles were evidence. (Her articles also exhibited her concern for the average 106
Colorado Yule Marble quarry 1913.
worker’s safety and wellbeing, but the corporate viewpoint was highlighted.) Then, on August 12, 1912, while legalities were still in limbo, Channing Meek and four others were riding a tramcar on a steep incline, not far from the quarry, when it broke loose. Panicked, all jumped before the tramcar crashed. Only Meek
incurred serious injuries. He died two days later. Yes, there were rumors regarding Sylvia’s involvement, but they were absurd. Finally, in April 1913, Gunnison District Court decided in Sylvia Smith’s favor. Judge Thomas J. Black ruled any statements printed in the Marble City Times, no matter how harmful or
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Town of Marble, 1915.
malicious, could not justify unlawful actions by any individual or group. Sylvia was awarded $10,345 in damages, plus $592.97 in additional costs. Fourteen defendants in particular were found guilty of malice, including Marble’s mayor, judge, editor Frost, the town doctor and three townswomen. An appeal was filed and another year passed before the court’s final judgment. While listening to the proceedings in the Gunnison County Courthouse, I wondered if Channing Meek had always been Sylvia’s foil. Or was it providence that Meek -- once president of the Colorado Coal and Iron Company (CC&I) and later The ColoradoYule Marble Company – had become Sylvia’s Machiavellian prince? John Osgood had a similar past with CC&I and the marble company, but Sylvia never questioned Osgood’s socialistic capitalism: his building of towns, schools, hospitals, libraries and recreation halls for his employees. But Meek, in both Sylvia’s Crested Butte and Marble newspapers, was portrayed as a sharper in tweed clothing borrowed from Tammany Hall. Although the court upheld the original ruling, I left Gunnison strangely unsettled. It had been difficult for me to sit among Marbleites after what they’d done to Sylvia. Somehow the court’s final judgment didn’t feel strong enough. It seemed as if it was okay that lawlessness still ruled in Marble, that the First Amendment could fall under the gun of the Second. A few years later, my husband and 108
I moved to Denver. There, we soon reacquainted ourselves with our old friend Sylvia Smith. She’d become a freelance journalist for the Denver Post, but somehow she didn’t seem the same. She often told us of the groups that had come to her aid back in those crisis days: like the National Women’s Suffrage Association, Colorado State Federation of Women’s Clubs, Colorado State Editorial Association, Governor Shafroth’s office – an impressive list. She also told us about when she went back to Marble for the last time, in June 1915. She was accompanied by attorneys Crump and Witwer and Gunnison Sheriff Pat Hanlon. She wanted to recover her printing plant and ultimately found it, in the basement of Kobey’s Store, but it was ruined beyond use. That sapped life from her, even more than trying to collect from Marbleites what the court had specified. Many refused to pay what was owed, so their businesses were attached. But then they just filed bankruptcy, and that was that. When my husband and I last saw Sylvia, she was taking journalism classes at the University of Denver. We were drifting apart then, mainly due to everyday life and distances and Denver’s continued growth. More years passed, and we were all inundated by the Great Depression. In 1932, we read of Sylvia’s death in her Denver home, 129 West Alameda, on February 27, and it didn’t seem right. She was only 67 and had never quite got back the feistiness that had been taken from her. Still, I was proud to have known her.
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CHOOSING EACH OTHER
TIMES HAVE CHANGED, BUT THE RESPONSIBILITIES AND TREASURES OF COMMUNITY HAVE NOT. By Molly Murfee // Images by Lydia Stern
COMMUNITY IS A SIGN THAT LOVE IS POSSIBLE IN A MATERIALISTIC WORLD WHERE PEOPLE SO OFTEN EITHER IGNORE OR FIGHT EACH OTHER. IT IS A SIGN THAT WE DON’T NEED A LOT OF MONEY TO BE HAPPY; IN FACT, THE OPPOSITE. —JEAN VANIER, COMMUNITY AND GROWTH
Living in a mountain community can be a strange amalgamation of human movement. At one point, I lived in a home surrounded by neighbors: an owner of a local eatery, après-ski bartender, artist, teacher, ski patroller. Now, locals can find their homes surrounded by dark windows, revolving doors, and those not subject to skipping Christmas dinner to serve other people theirs. The boom-bust economy that dominates these high-mountain havens also prompts swells in culture, body and breath. People come. People go. The chairlift operator here only for a season. The investor chasing the glimmer of a brighter
opportunity. The departing local who finally couldn’t take the pressure. The pop-up realtor from somewhere else capitalizing on a hot spot. Those who engage in the battle of staying become like a trove of rubies, glinting through the dirt and moss. A small-town community is an intricate tangle of relationships, the hand-woven fibers dyed in a variety of colors, weaving themselves through and around each other, sometimes touching, sometimes knotting. We serve as each other’s bosses, coworkers, counselors, teachers, students, mentors, teammates – sometimes all at once. The hats we wear are plumed with flourish, 111
frayed baseball caps, touks pulled low over our eyebrows. Hoodies. They are jaunty, professional, outrageous, subdued. We’ve got to be flexible, able to nimbly interact with anyone regardless of the hat they’re wearing at the time, even to switch gears midconversation. We know not to talk business at the polka dance, when the simple hat of friendship supersedes all others. Neighbors in a community exchange cups of sugar, feed each other’s dogs during vacations, water the garden. Neighbors see us in our bathrobes taking out the trash, offer us a drink when the day has been particularly hard. They trade high-altitude gardening tips over the fence, taking time to philosophize about the weather. We know when it’s each other’s birthday, if a family member is sick. Neighbors ask about that trip to the secret desert and really want to know what amazing things we saw. We understand why someone was a little too drunk too early, and we don’t hold it against him or her the next day. We let people have their bad days heavy as the base of a thundercloud, their jagged-hot angry days, their scream-at-the-top-of-yourlungs crazy days. We see each other’s flaws, inconsistencies and insecurities, and they just wash over us like a breeze because we know we parade about with the same. In small communities we’re constantly exposed, and instead of feeling naked, we settle into our exposure, flaunting ourselves like flags in a windstorm. People know our names, 112
jobs, passions, modes of recreation, hangups, loves and fears. It’s okay. We all have them. In this Black Sheep Tribe community, we are family. Bonds beyond genealogy. We choose each other. We say hi to each other at the post office, even if we pissed each other off the night before at the town council meeting, or hurt each other’s feelings after a stressful week. We forgive. We let people make mistakes. We get mad at them – sometimes really mad – and eventually we have to let it go. Too much resentment clogs up the works.
We burn Grumps at a bonfire in the sacred center of the community, just to make sure nothing’s lingering that might get sticky later. Ideally, we don’t communicate through the fear-ridden buffer of lawyers or hide in the parliamentary process of government. We grab an actual nut and face the discomfort of talking through an issue and coming to resolve, working to find creative consensus, even if it makes us squirm. We speak honestly, listen compassionately. Community. Communicate. Commune. Experiences layer on top of one another
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like strata of geologic bands accumulated over the epochs. We bond over the first snowfall, and the biggest, and the least. The best wildflower season, the hottest chicken dance. We’re initiated through all sorts of muddy, awful-weathered off-seasons that make us want to crawl out of our skin; navigating the North Face lift and its intimidating terrain; time and more time. We come together for Vinotok and Flauschink and the Red Lady Ball, knowing what they mean and why they’re important. Our temple is the wild. We love the grit and dirt and rough-edged nature of the alleys, people and peaks. We expand, punch-drunk in the beauty, drinking deep of the stillness and spaciousness. The epicenter of our soul is this place. Our duty is to love, care and revel in it. Something in common. Community. Being in community is going to our neighbor’s benefit – like a personalized version of localized health insurance – bidding on silent auction items our friends made or gave that we don’t really need. We’re there when a community member commits suicide, gives up on fighting with diabetes, gets a divorce. We help them build their houses, haul wood, eat – for whatever reason
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they can’t provide food for themselves. Community members listen and console and dance together. It’s stuffing envelopes for HCCA, helping prepare the feast for Vinotok. It’s hiking a peak for someone struggling with cancer. It’s a donation of time and participation. This is the place of the potluck, the fall funeral, the wedding on the Woods Walk. This brings us together – our concern for each other and this place. Our desire for the wellbeing of the whole. We sink our fingers into the muskyloamed roots of history, proud to know the old-timer names, honoring our historians like rock stars. We know what aspects and times of day offer the best corn snow, and the lineage of businesses that have occupied a particular space. We know the secret hideouts of the heirloom thornless raspberries as well as the wooded fairyring circles of sweet chanterelles and sifted sunlight. Being a community member is not, therefore, synonymous with being a consumer. It’s not a relationship that can be bought or sold, a commodity to be acquired, an instantaneous designation. It is an honor to be earned. This, perhaps, is where the difference begins. At one point we all made a choice. We chose here. We chose not making a six-figure paycheck, not having shopping convenience and bulk, not needing a code of dress or manner. We chose to not always have the latest fashion or fanciest house or newest car. Most of us didn’t care about those things anyway, so the decision was easy. What we did choose was rugged terrain and wild proximity. We chose adventure and freedom. And we all knew. It was a common bond, a common value, a common experience that tied us together, a secret card we knew we’d all played. The yinyang demands of the universe declared we must make a sacrifice. We chose to sacrifice money with all of its entrapments. Common unity. We giggled at our good fortune. That has changed. In the world of the Internet and easy air travel, people no longer have to make that sacrifice. You can email from anywhere. Skype, overnight mail, fax and text. You don’t have to forfeit a salary. The bond of choice that once tied the community together is fragmented. And with that comes a different value system, a different sense of expenditure – one that is connected to the perceived material necessities of a
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Hilltop cabin on prime 8-acre lot overlooking the lake with views to the Castles & Ohio Crk. Valley. Interior includes full-round log detailing, 2 fireplaces. Gated community. 4 Bed | 3.5 Bath | 4,585 SqFt | $1,250,000
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society where appearances matter, rather than a chosen simplicity with a richness of experience in a wild, wild home. And so, the community becomes threatened by the lack of affordable housing; neighborhoods turn into investments and income rather than homes. It is threatened by straight lines, shiny surfaces and a phobia of dirt and weirdness. Money, the insidious haunt of greed, and too many people too disconnected from this earth. It is threatened by people who don’t say hi, or introduce themselves, or find it interesting to chat up the slightly offbeat local next door. It is threatened by stringent attitudes and cross-cultural clashes forcing transplant cultures onto the local culture – trying to change it without taking time to listen, observe, absorb and take part. It is threatened by fear. The slow ease and friendliness of the country community is threatened by the persona and habits of the big city – the hurried pace, the lack of knowing the neighbors, the need for amenities and pavement. The “I get what I want regardless.” The polish. The reserve. The “get out of my way; I’m on a bike ride, a ski run, a hike.” The perception that you can buy whatever you need, or buy off whatever is in your way. Our eyes used to twinkle at each other from across the street, the restaurant, the lift line, in the knowing. Now, we cling to each other like lifeboats. To become a community member means accepting what is, relishing it, loving it. Indeed, people should come here to celebrate what it is, not to change it. Not to force shiny, newer, better, bigger on it. Not to tame it or its people or its culture. Pull your eyeballs up from the cemented sidewalk, the glare of handheld devices. Don’t avoid interaction by scurrying back to the safety of your own walls, the entrapment of your cars. Sit on a bench. Look people in the eyes. Acknowledge their unique presence in the world. A popular poster on how to build community advises us to plant flowers, sit on our front stoops, open our shades. Be available, be open, be interested. Allow opportunity for chatting, as through these small interactions, relationships can grow. Commune. Unity. Spend time. Spend some more. Be patient. Volunteer. Get dirty. Get uncomfortable. Listen. Forgive. Accept. Become a part.
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Win ged huntin g partners
Following the ancient (and demanding) art of falconry, Katherine Browne hunts small game with her cohort, a red-tailed hawk.
Paul Coleman
By Caroline Singleton Katherine Browne has stories unlike anyone else’s. Like that time travelling across the country with her bearded dragon and her redtailed hawk Artemis. After checking into a motel, she let the lizard wander around the bathroom floor while she showered. But the lizard squeezed underneath the door, and when Katherine came out of the bathroom, the hawk was within inches of eating her hapless reptile. Such is the life of a falconer. Katherine has been a falconer for 12 years. Living in Gunnison, she works at Prois Hunting Apparel for women. She also owns a ranch, West Elk Equine, where she breeds, trains and sells horses, mules, mammoth donkeys and Nigerian goats. She’s also involved in rescue and rehabilitation of animals. Katherine fondly remembers her first chance to see raptors up close, when presenters brought in rescued birds during elementary school wildlife talks. Later, during an internship in the Costa Rican jungle, Katherine met a woman named Fiona who was also in the program. While studying captive-bred macaws that were released into the wild to raise their chicks, they had many conversations. Fiona mentioned that her best friend in England was a falconer. Before this, Katherine had no idea people still practiced falconry. She began
devouring books about the subject and found a sponsor to introduce her to the sport after moving to Oregon. Falconry is the hunting of wild quarry in its natural state and habitat, by means of trained bird of prey. Falconer and bird enter into a unique partnership. After the bird accepts the falconer as its collaborator, the two work in unison to capture wild prey. The falconer rewards the bird with food, using each catch first to feed the bird and then perhaps herself. The origins of the sport go back to 2000 BC. In fact, the goshawk then was also known as the “cook’s hawk,” because the bird would keep its master’s pots and pans full of meat. Native to North America, the red-tailed hawk is a popular species to use. These hawks are widespread, hardy and relatively easy to train. Red-tailed hawks perch up high, using that vantage point to spot prey. Then they swoop down, catch and kill their victims with their feet. Falconry is the most regulated method of hunting in the United States. To begin, a falconer must find a sponsor and be an apprentice for at least two years. To trap a bird and start training, the person must first pass a challenging test about biology, regulations and best falconry practices. The mews, or aviary, must be inspected by the Colorado 121
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Department of Wildlife. Additionally, when a bird is trapped or released, this must be reported to both state and federal officials. On top of that is the hunter’s safety course and small game license. Many potential falconers are deterred by all of the regulations and requirements. Making it through the apprenticeship requires determination and commitment. But big rewards await those who persevere. Katherine said, “One of my favorite things about falconry is that it’s all an advanced form of bird watching. Every day you get to see things that happen in nature that most people never see. It’s the most fair-chase form of hunting out there, because rabbits and other prey animals have been escaping birds of prey for thousands of years; whereas they haven’t been running from bullets that long in the biological scheme of things.” To begin the process, Katherine catches a bird of prey with a specialized trap. According to Katherine, it’s like an alien abduction, with the falconer being the abductor. The falconer slowly gains the trust of the bird as the hawk observes: “This alien feeds me.” The training is centered on food. Katherine’s first task is to get the bird to sit on her glove, followed by the bird hopping to the fist. In under a month, the bird should be flying free. “The reality in falconry is that the bird is making the decision to come back to you, and it is totally free and untethered and has a choice not to.” This makes training that much more important. “The struggle with falconry is not having them learn that they don’t need you.” Katherine works diligently to show the bird that when hunting with her, there are great food and prey opportunities. The Gunnison Valley provides a challenging landscape for hunting. When Katherine’s hawk catches a rabbit, she lets it eat a large portion of the animal. She instills that when the hawk catches something in the wild, it is rewarded with a larger meal. (In other locations, some falconers will have their birds go for multiple kills.) In the wild, birds have a staggering 70-80% mortality rate within the first year. Falconers reduce this by building the hunting skills of the bird. Under a falconer’s care, the mortality rate is around 5%. Katherine’s ultimate goal is to release the bird back into the breeding population. From time to time, she will see her former birds perched in Gunnison public lands. Working with a hawk has its own set of dangers. Katherine’s last red-tailed hawk, Kit, was aggressive and indignant when she
Katherine Browne and Artemis the hawk.
missed prey. Katherine recalls a time when she had to pull Kit off her head like “a bad piece of Velcro.” Birds of prey have a noble and graceful reputation, but Katherine commented, “They’re these beautiful, stunning creatures that can pull these amazing maneuvers, but sometimes they have trouble landing on a branch.” Katherine will typically keep a bird for one to three years. At some point, she knows it’s time to release the bird back into the wild. In preparation for this, she’ll feed the bird well and ensure that it’s in optimal physical condition. Even hawks that are trapped as juveniles will readily leave the falconer and return to the wild. It’s legal for licensed falconers to keep birds for their lifetime, but Katherine said, “I’ve never felt right about keeping a wild animal forever.” She continued, “For me, there’s a huge spiritual aspect to hunting, and I have a great deal of respect for the birds I work with and the animals we pursue.” When it’s time to say goodbye, “It’s sad for me. I don’t think they mind.”
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In a we of stor ms
What a long-time wilderness ranger learned from her close encounters with mighty mountain weather.
Dusty Demerson
By Polly Oberosler I woke one morning to a drizzling rain tapping on the tent. I hauled myself out of my sleeping bag and threw back the tent flap to survey the situation. Yup, it was raining all right, but not hard, so I walked over to the kitchen area, ducked under that tarp and started some coffee. Karen, my Forest Service partner, soon followed, so I started a light breakfast while she turned out the horses to graze. The two of us were going to head out that day to clear a trail, but we decided to stay put for at least a while to see if the weather would clear. It had been a while since we’d updated our maps on trails and signage in the West Elk Wilderness, and that rainy morning gave us an opportunity to catch up. The signs hadn’t had any attention for more than 20 years, so we’d been inventorying them and trying to give the office personnel some sense of the condition of trails and the use they 124
were getting. While it rained, we got all that info onto a map. As we sat snug in the tent with a fire going and the wood stove ticking as it heated and cooled, I could see what was going on outside through a slit in the flap. The wind was whipping the large canvas tarp we used for a vestibule. Before long it started to gust, and I saw the tarp straining against the ground anchors that held it down. If the anchors pulled up, only the tent poles would be holding the tarp. In that lashing wind, the flying tarp could pull over the whole tent! I threw my paperwork aside and jumped up, and over the rumbling howl of the wind, I yelled at Karen that we were going to lose the tent. The two of us grabbed the bottom of that tarp as it heaved upward, and, with everything we had, we managed to keep it from taking flight. The wooden tent poles
bowed as they fought the tug of the wind. We were both on our knees, and I heard a loud CRACK I’ll never forget. Both our heads swiveled toward the sound, then pivoted up to see a two-and-a-half-foot-diameter tree spiraling through the air a few yards from us. It flew and landed in slow motion with a huge thud. Time stood still. Karen and I looked at each other, then she ran to the highline. Karen’s horse was panic stricken; the top of that tree had landed just a few yards short of where she was tied. I stayed with the flaying tarp until that microburst subsided. Then I stood and began to tremble as I watched one of the loose horses make laps around the camp. We were all unnerved. The big tree had broken off about eight feet up its trunk, and as it had fallen it had pushed over some other standing trees. I was shaking to the core, but we were unhurt.
John Holder
Dusty Demerson
Storms like that happen frequently in the mountains, littering the forest floor and often closing whole sections of trail in minutes. It’s part of the plan, for when the trees fall, they provide housing for small wildlife and bugs and become a haven for lichen that play a big part in the carbon balance in old-growth forests. Broken on impact, the tree limbs biodegrade to provide nutrients for the soil and material for nesting birds. Some of the evergreens release their seeds when they hit the ground, starting new trees on a path to life. When the trees grow old and tumble, they open the way for sunlight to reach the immature trees and other plants that carpet the forest floor. The cycle is unending. Some storms come in like lambs and softly soak the large meadows cleared by lightning-sparked fires hundreds of years ago. The grasses nourished by the ash grow thick and, in their autumn death, provide the food 125
J.C. Leacock
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for flowers and herbs nearer the ground. The seed heads fall and lie snug under winter snows to sprout new plants in the spring. Mice and voles under the snow feed on the grass heads, too, and use the dead grass strands to make nests that in spring give nesting birds an easy start. The voles in winter push up topsoil as they navigate their underground terrain, and in the spring these dirt ridges act as small dams, giving the thirsty new plants an added boost. All part of an interdependent system. Other storms arrive ominously, with the distant thunder sounding like the roll of a timpani, its sound bouncing around the thick, water-laden clouds like a giant pinball machine. Generally, you have plenty of warning and can take cover before the storm arrives, but not always. One such storm my husband and I heard coming, but we were unable to find a good spot to stop. We eventually got caught in an open meadow, with the lightning releasing the CLICK followed almost directly by the BANG! I picked up the pace as large splats of rain and small hail hit my face, and we were soon in a fast trot with packhorses in tow. The trail already had two inches of water in it as we splashed forward looking for any suitable cover. I saw an opening in the trees plenty big
enough for us and the horses, and we ducked in there, quickly stripped the bridles off the two saddle horses, tied them all and ran down into the tighter trees for a dry spot of real estate and a possible escape from the all-too-close lightning. We crouched under a tree for about an hour before the storm passed and we could move. Later my husband discovered we’d been crouched on top of an old latrine pit. Ah well, it was not recently used, and we were dry. Ironically, that finger of trees became my Forest Service camp for the next 20 years. The more violent storms tend to bring heavy, dark clouds, which indicate the presence of wind and often come with lightning and hail before the rain. In an incredibly complicated exchange of atomic particles, the nitrogen-rich atmospheric moisture, in combination with lightning, creates nitric acid that falls attached to the rain, becoming easily ingested plant food. Those well-fed plants grow and give off moisture that evaporates to eventually feed the clouds, so the process starts all over again. Horses have an inherent fear of hail because they’re so thin skinned. Typical hail in the mountains isn’t large, but it hurts when it hits. I was riding an older horse once at 11,000 feet, and when he sensed hail coming our way, he took off running to the trees, with me on him. Once he was under thick tree limbs, he stopped, and we waited out the small storm. Lightning was always my biggest fear when in the woods, but I’ve come to realize it’s only a part of the dynamics of a storm. That’s not to say I don’t take it seriously, especially with four metal shoes on each horse that perfectly ground them with me astride. But truthfully the wind-whipped trees scare me more. I’ve reached the point where I pick the leeward side of a drainage or stand of trees to hide from the rain, choosing not to tempt fate being on the windward side. Summarily, creeks can swell so large from a locally heavy storm that they can carry boulders four times my weight. After watching the water rise nearly into my tent in the night, I’ve learned to camp far enough from waterways. Just as the storms cycle with the animals and plants, so do they with me. I’ve learned, out of self-preservation, to move with them, understand them and hopefully survive them. Even with what I know of storms, they’ll still throw things at me I’ve never seen; I always stand in awe.
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Not your ty pical commute
For this shuttle runner, jogging to Aspen is all in a day’s work.
Chris Miller
By Stephanie Maltarich On most days last summer, I started my drive to the West Maroon trailhead shortly after dawn, as the early light peeked through the aspen trees. But on this stilldark late-September morning, my headlights illuminated the way through the thickening snowfall. I passed the tiny town of Gothic and meandered through the valley before the road started its gentle climb. In these mountains, dark means dark: no streetlights, porch lights or neon signs. Usually I’m thankful for the glow of stars or moon in the deep night sky, but now the twinkle was veiled by falling snow. I yearned for some artificial light to help me navigate the narrow, rocky, scary road ahead. This was my summer job commute:
driving the 40-plus minutes up to the highly trafficked yet achingly beautiful West Maroon trailhead. Sometimes the commute induced stress, as I imagine rush hour does for folks who live in the city. The drive followed a rough and narrow mountain road where I hoped I wouldn’t encounter oncoming traffic. When I did, I had to reverse while creeping toward the edge, relying on my quasi-savvy driving skills. This particular September morning grew more exciting as the sideways-blowing snow coated the road and stifled my view. I told myself I’d be okay… as long as I didn’t end up in Emerald Lake. After 50 minutes and 16 mountain miles, I finally arrived at the trailhead. I sat
in my cozy, heated car, not ready to brave the crisp, cold air and snowy ground in my thin trail-running shoes and barely-there jacket. There was also a great pop radio station from Aspen that I could pick up at the trailhead; it was always hard to leave that, too. As first light broke through the clouds, I dragged myself out of the car. I had to run to Aspen, after all. Yes, my commute was far from finished. As a Maroon Bells Shuttles runner, my commuting also involved jogging 10.2 miles uphill, over a high alpine pass and back down to the Aspen trailhead. Evan Ross, founder of Maroon Bells Shuttles, is a mountain guide, endurance mountain bike racer, avalanche forecaster 129
Stephanie Maltarich: “Nice view from the office today.”
and extraordinary all-around outdoor athlete. With the increasing popularity of the hike between Crested Butte and Aspen, he saw an opportunity to make a living while traversing the Elk Mountains by bike or foot. Clients who hike from Aspen to Crested Butte (or vice versa) can leave their car at the trailhead and a Maroon Bells Shuttles runner will jog over, retrieve the vehicle and drive it around so it awaits them at the end of their hike. With Crested Butte serving as home to so many super-fit athletes, Evan can easily find friends who want to “work” by running in the mountains. The job attracts people for both its simplicity and its beauty. Trekking over the iconic West Maroon Pass (12,400 feet) is gorgeous and fun – and even more so if you get paid to do it. Of course, shuttle runners have to start early and dash fast so the car beats the clients. The hike/run wanders through the Maroon Bells Wilderness, a place so breathtaking and awe-inspiring that people consider themselves lucky to see it once in their lifetime. It’s also the most popular wilderness area in Colorado, and the trailhead on the Aspen side continues to
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211 Elk Avenue | PO Box 1788 | Crested Butte Colorado 81224 | 970.349.6691 | bbre1.com
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break records each summer, with more than 300,000 people visiting in 2017. The turquoise lake poised beneath the striated Maroon Bells is perhaps the most photographed scene in Colorado. Designated by the original Wilderness Act of 1964, the area hosts a handful of jagged, 14,000-foot peaks, natural hot springs, stunning wildflowers in the summer and golden aspens in the fall. This hike is a bucket-list item for many, connecting two of Colorado’s finest ski towns, each with its distinct culture and flair. I’m not a self-proclaimed “endurance athlete” or even a serious athlete by Crested Butte standards. I enjoy “running” to Aspen, but it isn’t easy for me. After a handful of shuttles last summer, I settled into my routine. I always gave my best effort to run the uphills, but more often I found myself stopping to walk after about 30 seconds. On almost every trip I’d pause at West Maroon Pass, snap a quick selfie and send it to my mom with the caption, “Nice view from the office today!” I’d shove some water and gummies into my mouth and then let loose on the wild gallop downhill toward Aspen. Usually I’d be laughing and giddy, wanting to yell “I LOVE THIS JOB!” – and sometimes I did. My descent often resembled a two-step dance — skipping over rocks and avoiding depressions in the trail with my forward and sideways steps. Just me and my running shoes in the wilderness – I didn’t know if I would ever find another job to top this. Once I arrived on the Aspen side, I would check my watch to see if I’d set a new personal record. If not, I’d blame it on the distracting and enchanting wildflowers. I’d stroll along the shore of Maroon Lake, my feet and back often aching from the endless pounding on the trail. As I stopped to stretch my legs at the first bench, I’d peek over my shoulder at the Maroon Bells. The scene took my breath away every time – the striking beauty almost didn’t seem real. After a few moments to take it all in, I walked toward the parking lot to find my assigned car. But I always caught myself taking one last look over my shoulder, almost like I was scared it would be the last time. At the Crested Butte trailhead on that late-September morning, as shuttle season was winding down, I stepped outside the car into the eerie quiet. The snow was like a cozy blanket putting everything to sleep. The birds weren’t as lively with their chirping, and all of the insects seemed to
Photo : John Holder
Molly Eldridge BROKER / OWNER ~ CRS, ABR, RSPS, SFR
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K B U T Community Radio for the Gunnison Valley Studio 970.349.7444 • Office 970.349.5225 Diverse Music
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be resting. The creeks, lined with fragile layers of ice, moved with a more muted trickle. I picked my way through the slick snow, eventually popping out of the trees. Fields that had hosted sunflowers and columbines two months earlier now slept quietly beneath the white. In the silence, I remained alone. My usual attitude of trying to race myself and my own watch was deflated as I marveled at the contrasting red rocky peaks dusted in white snow. Instead of sprinting, I soaked in the tranquility and beauty while also taking a moment to mourn the end of a season. Change of pace, death, sleep and rest: fall was here. The frosted petals of fireweed and faded color of the tundra signified a shift I lamented, even as I welcomed the relaxing tempo. As I topped the pass onto the Aspen side, I realized I was in the clouds, but the snow was absent. As the saying goes in Colorado, “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes and it will change!” I carefully descended the braided, muddy and eroding trail, and as always, I thought about how we are loving our beautiful places to death. I want everyone to experience this lovely place so they’re inspired to protect it and to create a lifetime of memories in the wild. But I also want to preserve these places and allow fewer people to visit them in order to sustain them. It’s a constant conundrum we’ll face throughout our future in the West. The closer I got to Aspen, the more crowded the trail became. From the Aspen trailhead, most hikers only make the 2.8-mile trek to Crater Lake and back, the majority skipping the point-to-point route up and over to Crested Butte. I stepped aside for uphill hikers, said “hi” and waved to everyone I passed. People liked to ask where I was coming from, and what time I started. I must have looked like a girl on a mission. Sometimes I told people I was running to get a car for work that day, and they thought that was just so cool. I finally hit Maroon Lake, a little slower that day because of the snowfall. The snow itself didn’t slow me down; its beauty did. I didn’t mind. I found my bench and stretched my legs. I started on the path to the parking lot to find the assigned car, but paused to look over my shoulder, knowing it would probably be next year when – I hoped – I would see that view again.
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2018
23
August 5 & 6
BENEFITING
30 years of adventure
FOR MORE INFORMATION 970.349.5075 OR ADAPTIVESPORTS.ORG
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Summer events 2018
JUNE 2
CB Mountain Bike Association’s Natty Trails Day
3, 10, 17, 24
Farmers Market on west end of Elk Avenue
9
Evolution Bike Park opens for the summer
11
gO Girl programs, through August
11, 13, 14
Acting UP! YouTheatre program, CB Mountain Theatre (CBMT)
16
Open house, Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL)
16
Oh-Be-Joyful Steep Creek Race, class 5 kayak race
18, 25
Alpenglow concerts, Center for the Arts (CFTA) outdoor stage
20
Powerade Pinnacle Bike Series, through July 25
20-24
Crested Butte Bike Week
21
Crested Butte Film Festival (CBFF) monthly film series
22
Tour de Forks series, through September 8, CFTA
23-24
Bridges of the Butte 24-hour townie tour
23
ArtWalk in Crested Butte studios and galleries
23, 24, 29, 30
Wildflower Festival pre-fest walks and events
26
Public Policy Forum (PPF): Robert Ford on Syria
27-Aug. 15
gO Mom Camp
30
Black & White Ball, CB Mountain Heritage Museum (CBMHM)
30
CB Chalk Walk, CFTA
TBA
CBMT Ten-Minute Play Festival
JULY Sonya Hanna
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Nathan Bilow
Live from Mt. Crested Butte! free concerts every Wednesday
30
1
Wildflower Festival pre-fest walk
1, 8, 15, 22, 27
Farmers Market on west end of Elk Avenue
2, 9, 16, 23, 30
Alpenglow concerts, CFTA outdoor stage
3
PPF: Jennifer Kermode on affordable housing in the valley
4
Gothic-Crested Butte 1/3 Marathon
4
Independence Day parade, music, games, fireworks
5
Travis Meadows concert, CFTA
5-Aug. 11
Crested Butte Music Festival (CBMF)
6-15
Crested Butte Wildflower Festival
7
ArtWalk in Crested Butte studios and galleries
7
Caddis Cup Fly Fishing Tournament, Crested Butte Land Trust
8
BEERoque, CBMF
10
PPF: Charles Sykes on the Republican Party
10
Japanese Garden outdoor concert, CBMF
12
Fluxus Night community performance art, CBMF
13, 20
Crested Butte Writers’ Network meet-ups
14
Grin & Bear It Trail Run
17
PPF: Ellen Sweets on voting rights
19
Ladies Bike-cation Camps
19, 20, 21
“Falstaff” opera, CBMF
20-22, 27-29
Wildflower Festival post-fest events
23-27
gO Guy Camp
JULY cont. 24
PPF: Bryan Cunningham on cybersecurity
25-29
Crested Butte Food & Wine Festival
26
Book publishing panel with CFTA and the CB library
26-28
“Hedwig & the Angry Inch,” CBMT production
27
Comedian Josh Blue, CFTA
28
Living Journeys Summit Hike & Half Marathon
28
Ladybug Girl storytime, costumes, art, CFTA outdoor stage
31
PPF: Jon Bailey on “Hamilton” changing our perspectives
31
Redemption Songs & Sonatas, CBMF
Trent Bona
Xavier Fané
Petar Dopchev
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Summer events 2018
AUGUST
Rebecca Ofstedahl
2
Feast in the Field, Mountain Roots
2-5
Crested Butte Trail Running Vacation
2-4
“Hedwig & the Angry Inch,” CBMT production
3-5
Crested Butte Arts Festival
5
Turkuaz concert, CFTA
5-6
Crested Butte Open
5, 12, 19, 26
Farmers Market on west end of Elk Avenue
5, 11
Wildflower Festival post-fest walks and tours
6, 13, 20
Alpenglow concerts, CFTA outdoor stage
6-17
Acting OUT! YouTheatre program, CBMT
7
PPF: David Hawkins on climate change
9
Crested Butte Magazine’s 40th birthday celebration
10
Mountain Roots’ Kids Farm Stand
11
ArtWalk in Crested Butte studios and galleries
11
Mariachi on the Rocks, CBMF
14
PPF: Jeremy Suri on the American presidency
16
CBFF monthly film series: “The Disaster Artist”
17, 18
“Mary Poppins, Jr.” by YouTheatre, CBMT
17-19
Outerbike in Mt. Crested Butte
21
Historic preservation dinner, RMBL
23
Historic Pub Crawl, CBMHM
23-26, 31
“Farce of Nature,” CBMT comedy production
24, 25
CBFF film series: “Grateful Dead’s Long Strange Trip”
24-25
Big Blue Festival (paddle boarding) with KBUT
30
Literary Salon Series, CFTA Literary Arts Department
Dusty Demerson
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2
“Farce of Nature,” CBMT comedy production
1-2
Grand Traverse Run and Bike
1-2
Paragon People’s Fair
2
West Elk Bicycle Classic
2
Sunday Puzzle, CFTA Literary Arts Dept., Townie Books
2, 9, 16, 23, 30
Farmers Market on west end of Elk Avenue
7-9
Colorado Jazz Musicians Festival
8
Park to Peak to Pint Race
8
Beer & Chili Fest, Mt. Crested Butte
14-17
Wildflower Festival’s Fall Foliage Retreat
15
Junior Enduro Cup with Crested Butte Devo
15-16
ARTumn Festival celebration of art
16-22
Vinotok Harvest Festival (stories, feast, parade, Grump)
20
Sneak peek of the Crested Butte Film Festival, CFTA
22
ArtWalk in Crested Butte studios and galleries
22
Cart to Cart mountain run
22-23
Scorn Not the Sonnet workshop with David Rothman
27
Literary Salon Series, CFTA Literary Arts Dept.
27-30
Crested Butte Film Festival
28
Emma Coburn’s Elk Avenue 5K run
John Holder
OCTOBER 4
Community Iron Pour
7
Farmers Market at west end of Elk Avenue
11
Illuminations slide show, CBMHM
18
CBFF monthly film series: “Beirut”
25
Literary Salon Series, CFTA Literary Arts Dept.
Suzette Gainous
Find ongoing events through the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab, Trailhead Children’s Museum, town rec departments, Stepping Stones Children’s Center, Mountain Heritage Museum and Center for the Arts (culinary, literary, Tour de Forks and arts events). For updated calendar, see gunnisoncrestedbutte.com. 137
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CBMR CENTRAL RESERVATIONS
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AD PAGE 138
CRISTIANA GUESTHAUS
Bed & Breakfast Hotel 621 Maroon Ave., Crested Butte Cozy B&B with European ski lodge charm. Homemade Continental breakfast. Hot tub with mountain views. Private baths. Near free shuttle; walk to shops & restaurants. 1.800.824.7899 cristianaguesthaus.com info@cristianaguesthaus.com
AD PAGE 139
ELK MOUNTAIN LODGE
Bed & Breakfast Lodge 129 Gothic Avenue, Crested Butte Historic inn located in a residential neighborhood of downtown Crested Butte. Just two blocks off the main street. 1.800.374.6521 elkmountainlodge.net info@elkmountainlodge.net
AD PAGE 139
OLD TOWN INN
Hotel & Family Inn 708 6th Street, Crested Butte The warmth of a family inn; value, convenience & amenities of a hotel. Homemade afternoon snacks, yummy breakfast. Rooms with two queens or one king bed. 1.888.349.6184 oldtowninn.net info@oldtowninn.net
AD PAGE 139
PIONEER GUEST CABINS
2094 Cement Creek, South of CB Located inside National Forest, only 12 minutes from town. 8 clean and cozy cabins, with Cement Creek running through the property. Fully equipped kitchens, comfy beds, dog friendly, open year round. 970.349.5517 pioneerguestcabins.com pioneerguestcabins@gmail.com
AD PAGE 139
138
A Distinctive, Unique, Historic Inn Downtown Crested Butte
800.374.6521 ElkMountainLodge.com
The warmth of a family inn; the value and convenience of a hotel.
Call 1(888)-349-6184 to book! OldTownInn.net
Op e n Ye a r R o u n d • Po o c h e s We l c o m e
VIEW OUR CABINS INSIDE AND OUT AT PIONEERGUESTCABINS.COM | 970.349.5517
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DINING
Dusty Demerson
9380 • (970) 251-3000
CB BURGER CO. • 970-349-8958
Treasury Building, Ski Area Base
Mall at Crested Mountain, Mt. Crested Butte cbburgercompany.com
Home of Mt. Crested Butte’s best BBQ. Enjoy the casual fun atmosphere complemented by daily drink specials, live music and a 5,700 sq.ft. outdoor deck with unbeatable views.
Our handcrafted burgers are made with 100% Angus Beef, served fresh and never frozen, on Hot buttered buns. Serving lunch and dinner. Take out. Seasonal hours.
Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner
Lunch / Dinner
Lunch/Dinner
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COAL BREAKER COFFEE CO. 970-349-2229 Treasury Center, Mt. Crested Butte
Ad pg. 143
DONITA’S CANTINA • 349-6674 4th & Elk, Downtown
Ad pg. 142
JEFE’S MEXICAN EATERY 970-349-4450
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!
Mountaineer Square, Mt. Crested Butte
Head to Coal Breaker for your morning cup of coffee. Serving breakfast items, pastries and handcrafted deli sandwiches for lunch.
Coffee / Breakfast / Lunch
Dinner
Lunch
Ad pg. 143
Ad pg. 142
Traditional Mexican fare made just for you. Our stone patio is the perfect place for a margarita at 9,380 ft. Go big with a classic burrito, triple tacos, salad and more.
Ad pg. 143
LAST STEEP • 349-7007
LIL’S • 349-5457
PUBLIC HOUSE • 970-444-2277
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.
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.
Public House is a modern vision of a historic Colorado saloon that celebrates farm-driven food, local craft breweries, spirits and wine. The Tap Room is the best intimate live music venue in the West, and the Lofts offer three generously appointed king suites.
Lunch / Dinner
Dinner
208 Elk Avenue, Downtown
321 Elk Avenue, Downtown
Ad pg. 143
Ad pg. 143
202 Elk, Downtown publichousecb.com
Lunch/Dinner
Ad pg. 141
WOODEN NICKEL • 349-6350
WOODSTONE GRILLE • 349-8030
Hike, bike or drive to the Umbrella Bar! Enjoy a craft beer or a classic cocktail at 10,150 ft
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.
A family dining experience featuring hand tossed, wood stone pizzas and classic Italian-American cuisine.
Drinks / Snacks
Dinner
Breakfast / Dinner
UMBRELLA BAR AT TEN PEAKS 970-349-4673
Top of the Painter Boy Lift, Mid-Mountain
140
BUTTE 66 ROADHOUSE BAR & GRILL 349-2998
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.
Elevation Hotel, Mt. Crested Butte
Ad pg. 143
222 Elk Avenue, Downtown
Ad pg. 95
The Grand Lodge, Mt. Crested Butte
Ad pg. 143
come see why after 38 years our customers say
“the
food is better than ever!�
Get in here!
Burgers made with 100% natural Beef, never frozen, served on hot Buttered Buns fries made from colorado potatoes, hand-cut fresh daily, cooked in sunflower oil
970.349.8958
www.cbburgercompany.com 142
Open mid-June to Labor Day
Dinner Nightly 5:30 Happy Hour at the Bar and Sushi Bar 5:30 - 6:30 321 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
970.349.7007
208 Elk Avenue, Crested Butte
www.TheLastSteep.com
Trent Bona Photography
CB’S ONE AND ONLY SUSHI BAR
AMERICAN STYLE BISTRO CUISINE WITH SPECIALTY MARTINIS AND COCKTAILS Open Monday thru Saturday 5:00 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 143
PHOTO FINISH
We offer this page as a tribute to photographer and friend Tom Stillo, who passed away unexpectedly just before this issue went to press. We’ll miss Tom’s artistry, character and kindness. – The Crested Butte Magazine staff
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Tom Stillo
Ski Rental Delivery
Free Delivery and In-Room Fitting Choose the time and place for delivery. Usually the night before you start skiing is best. Your personal concierge will deliver and custom fit you with the latest in ski and snowboard equipment.
Slopeside Service If you have any equipment needs, we are just a phone call away. Our rental techs can meet you to make any necessary adjustments or replacements and get you back on the slopes quickly.
Complimentary Return When you are ready to return just give us a call and we will arrange to collect all of your equipment without imposing on your dining or travel plans. It’s that easy!
BlackTieSkis.com
970-349-0722
D I S C O V E R A unique opportunity for the best of both worlds. Aperture is the only place where you can build your dream home in a beautiful natural setting with mountain vistas, miles of trails, and river access all located within walking distance to the acclaimed restaurants and shops of Crested Butte’s historic downtown. Only 23 homesites available. ApertureCB.com | 970.349. 6692 | Charlie Farnan cfarnan@mountainoffice.com | Joel Vosburg jvosburg@mountainoffice.com | Bluebird Real Estate Mountain Office