Winter play, outside the box
By Stephanie Maltarich
John Holder
We really needed to get outside during the pandemic. The Met Rec District and its winter recreation partners helped make that happen. In the dim late-afternoon light of mid winter, in the parking lot near the Van Tuyl trail system in Gunnison, dozens of elementary school children clicked off their Nordic skis and scurried to find their parents. Their excitement was palpable, and their numbers surprising; during the 2020-21 winter, Gunnison Nordic’s youth program grew by 300 percent. In the Gunnison Valley, as in many places, the pandemic prompted a desire for people to spend more time outside. In autumn 2020, it was clear that demand would continue through the winter. Many recreation organizations expressed worries about the upcoming season and their ability to meet increased needs while operating safely amid the novel coronavirus. The county’s Metropolitan Recreation District (Met Rec) listened. 28
Hedda Peterson, Met Rec manager, recalled, “We started to hear shared concerns throughout the community about the need for locals to stay active during the Covid winter. At the same time, some partners were concerned about overcrowding in the backcountry as well as the organizational capacity needed to keep the programs going that help get folks outside.” The concerns aligned with one of the Met Rec District’s new program areas: increasing access to recreation. So the staff convened partners to share resources and grow programs, working to ensure that, even in the time of Covid, Gunnison Valley residents had access to affordable and safe winter recreation. To accommodate this level of community collaboration, Met Rec provided a more flexible funding approach; it pledged up to $30,000 in matching funds to catalyze the work of the partners and to encourage support from other entities. As a special recreation district, Met Rec is funded by property tax, and its work focuses on park and recreation needs for county residents. Since 2001, Met Rec has awarded over a million dollars to support local recreation. For the winter campaign, along with Met Rec’s pledge, the Town of Crested Butte committed $11,300, and
