SUMMER 2013
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Crested Butte’s Oldest Real Estate Company
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N PARAID ISE
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OPERA IN PARADISE July 15-29
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Summer 2013
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CONTENTS LONG STORY SHORT 10 FROM THEIR BRAINS TO YOUR BOOKSHELF
by Arvin Ramgoolam The latest books for your library of local literature.
13 SPINNING STRAW INTO GOLD
by Sandy Fails Through a new program, interns will learn straw bale construction while building workforce homes.
16 A MUSICAL SCORE by Erin English Major movie composer Benjamin Wallfisch brings a cinematic flair to the Crested Butte Music Festival.
19 HIDDEN TREASURES by Katie Onheiber Clever clues lead to artistic new Letterboxes tucked away on Crested Butte Land Trust properties.
22 POSTCARDS FROM HEAVEN
A Crested Butte mobile app lets explorers send postcards from just about anywhere.
24 LISTENING WHEN COLORADO SINGS
by Sandy Fails Young activist Jackson Melnick will produce radio documentaries to honor place-based music.
27 WELL-HEELED ADVENTURERS
by Erin English As Eleven’s high-end travel operation expands around the globe, Crested Butte remains its hub.
30 PLAYING WITH OUR FOOD
The Taste of Crested Butte debuts in June with spicy deals, bartending rivalries and a mystery progressive dinner.
POINT OF VIEW
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103 BACK TO THE GARDEN
107 PLAYING LIKE A GIRL by Danica Baker
109 COMING HOME, AGAIN AND AGAIN
Crested Butte Magazine
by Dawne Belloise Flower power II : the next generation cultivates consciousness.
SheJumps brings women together outside in solidarity and sometimes in tutus.
by Joanne Reynolds Crested Butte through the eyes of a happy split-timer.
FEATURES
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THE DEER AND THE POSTMISTRESS by Cara Guerrieri
The summer a deer delivered the mail to Jack’s Cabin.
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WHAT’S IN YOUR BACKPACK? by Dawne Belloise
Don’t leave home without it: a list for fishing, biking, hiking, photographing and flower-seeking.
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HONORING THE BEAR SPIRIT by Molly Murfee
The most powerful animal spirit of native lore, the bear deserves our respect and responsible action. Page 55 : How not to be a problem human.
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BEYOND SOUND BYTES by Kathy Norgard
The Public Policy Forum makes sure we stretch our brains as well as our bodies.
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ODE TO THE CRESTED BUTTE TOWNIE by Luke Mehall
When it comes to bikes-about-town, beater can be better.
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LAND AGAINST THE SKY by Polly Oberosler
For three decades, young campers learned skills, collected tales and built character at the Skyland Camp just south of Crested Butte.
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THOSE CLEVER CORVIDS by Peter Bridges
Crows, ravens, magpies and jays make entertaining neighbors with their curious antics.
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DESPERATELY SEEKING SISKINS by Sandra Cortner Wanna-be bird watchers, may your patient sleuthing be beautifully rewarded.
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“TAKE YOUR SOCKS OFF AND DIG IN” by Shelley Read
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EYE CANDY
The Trailhead Children’s Museum : What better teachers than curiosity and delight?
A four-page photo gallery.
99 Xavier Fane
111 BASE CAMP CRESTED BUTTE
113 A HAITIAN EXCHANGE
by Gregory Pettys For this wanderer, there’s still no place like home.
by Donna Rozman Teaching pottery and learning gratitude.
PUTTING IN WOOD by John Norton
The woodpile : it’s not an obsession. Really.
114 CALENDAR 119 LODGING GUIDE 122 DINING GUIDE
123 FOODIE EVENTS 128 PHOTO FINISH
Summer 2013
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Vol. XXXV, No. 1
Published semi-annually by Crested Butte Publishing & Creative PUBLISHERS Steve Mabry Chris Hanna
EDITOR
Sandy Fails
ADVERTISING DIRECTOR MJ Vosburg
Art Director Keitha Kostyk
WRITERS
Danica Baker Dawne Belloise Peter Bridges Sandra Cortner Erin English Sandy Fails Cara Guerrieri Luke Mehall Molly Murfee Kathy Norgard John Norton Polly Oberosler Katie Onheiber Gregory Pettys Arvin Ramgoolam Shelley Read Joanne Reynolds Donna Rozman
PHOTOGRAPHERS
welcome to paradise. SUMMER MOUNTAIN STYLIN’ BY:
Free People • Johnny Was • Liberty Black • Farrah B. Minnetonka Moccasins • Richard Schmidt Jewelry
Nathan Bilow Dawne Belloise Trent Bona Sandy Cortner Raynor Czerwinski Dusty Demerson Shayn Estes Xavier Fané Alex Fenlon Braden Gunem John Holder Ben Hulsey David Inouye Kevin Krill JC Leacock Kurt Reise Andy Sovick Rebecca Weil
COVER PHOTO Raynor Czerwinski
ONLINE
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970-349-6211 mj@crestedbuttemagazine.com Copyright 2013, Crested Butte Publishing. No reproduction of contents without authorization by Crested Butte Publishing & Creative.
Making our livings,
HONORING
Editor’s note
OUR LIVES
Dusty Demerson
Commuting, Crested Butte Publishing style: Steve Mabry, MJ Vosburg, Sandy Fails, Keitha Kostyk and Chris Hanna.
Our spring Crested Butte Publishing meeting began with an impromptu glance at Steve Mabry’s photos: giraffes, lions and barefoot Maasai children herding goats. Steve had just returned from guiding the first official mountain bike descent of Mt. Kilimanjaro, an expedition that raised money to dig clean-water wells for African villagers. That scene reminded me how atypical this little publishing empire is. From this tidy, compact office on Coal Creek, Crested Butte Publishing & Creative produces the Crested Butte Magazine (now 35 years old), Mountain Flyer Magazine (a nationally distributed mountain bike magazine), Elk Mountain Real Estate Review, InRoom Guide, Explore Crested Butte mobile app, our town maps and the printing/design projects of clients both local and national. It employs and showcases three-dozen talented local writers, photographers and artists.
But most of the five people at our Crested Butte Publishing gathering wore running shoes. The opening conversation wasn’t about boosting profits or trimming costs; it meandered from Keitha’s upcoming climbing adventure to the kids’ hockey playoffs to whether Chris and Steve should try to get in a bike ride over lunch. Lifestyle is a critical factor here – as illustrated by the path we each took to this office. I’ve been on the Earth and in the biz the longest, moving to Crested Butte with my future husband in 1981 to work for the newspaper and find my inner mountain-woman. I began writing for the Crested Butte Magazine three decades ago, when Jeff Neumann ran the Crested Butte Printing press in the shed behind his house, and I became editor in 1986 shortly before becoming a mom. I loved my job – and the flexibility it afforded me to throw rocks in the creek with my son. MJ Vosburg was for years a loyal advertising customer of the Summer 2013
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Crested Butte Magazine as the marketing and sales director for Crested Butte Accommodations. After she had her second child in 1991, she stepped away from the demands and travels of that job. Instead, she took over as the Crested Butte Magazine’s advertising director, traversing Elk Avenue to visit business owners, most of whom were also her friends. Meanwhile, back in Missouri, Steve Mabry trained as a commercial pilot, but that travel-heavy career lost its appeal as he and his wife Sandra approached the birth of their son Ashton. So he aimed for the mountains instead of the skies. He and friend Rob Murray considered purchasing a bustling publishing company in Denver, but then learned that Crested Butte Printing was on the market. So they camped up Cement Creek, rose early to don khakis and tame their sleeping-bag hairdos, and struck a deal to become Crested Butte Printing and Publishing. Both avid bicyclists, Steve and Rob had befriended Springfield bike shop employee and fellow athlete Chris Hanna. Once settled in Crested Butte, they convinced him to bring his computer and graphics skills – and his bike – to the mountains. When Rob moved back east, Chris stepped up as Steve’s business partner in Crested Butte Publishing. They also supported Brian Riepe as he started Mountain Flyer and eventually became partners in that magazine as well. Keitha Kostyk, a New York girl who honed her artistic and graphics skills at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, joined the team six years ago. A former full-time kayaker, she turned her considerable energy toward professional publication design, while polishing her moxie at climbing, snowboarding, skiing and mountain biking on the side. The five of us enjoy and take pride in what we do, but, as Chris said, we’re “not interested in life being just about working and commuting.” Now that he has a family, Chris often bikes home to 8
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eat lunch with wife Sonya and young Elise in her pink princess outfit. MJ and I do our best magazine brainstorming on the hiking trails. Keitha balances times of intense design work with times of intense adventuring. Steve loves to bike, fish, hike and ski; he considers his life in Crested Butte a year-round “stay-cation.” How different life would be if we worked for a huge publishing conglomerate, toiling long hours, cranking out publications for anonymous clients, and staring at the bottom line more often than at the mountains rising around us. “We’re more intimately involved with our customers,” Chris noted. “We see each other at ballgames and restaurants; maybe our wives are friends. It reminds us to think about our ethics. Ultimately it’s more fun and satisfying.” MJ commented, “If I were doing this for an urban publication, it would be all about numbers and quotas.” Instead of pressuring people to buy advertising, MJ views the job as a way to stay in touch with people she cares about. “We talk about their health, what their kids are doing, what they skied that day – and eventually we get around to advertising.” As the long-time editor of the Crested Butte Magazine, I’m grateful that it isn’t a purely commercial endeavor for anyone involved. Working with some exceptional writers, photographers and artists, my goal is to convey, and thereby reinforce, the best of this community. I love this place, I think it has a lot to teach the rest of the world, and I’m honored to help capture that beauty and character in printed form. Luckily, my Crested Butte Publishing associates and the magazine contributors share my affection for Crested Butte and respect for what we’re creating. And this community has supported our efforts even during some wobbly economic times. It’s affirming, really, to know that a magazine like this can thrive, even when it is driven less by the numbers than by the heart.
— Sandy Fails, editor
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From brains to bookshelf
By Arvin Ramgoolam, Townie Books owner and literary gourmand
The latest books for your library of local literature.
The valley’s writers have been burning up their keyboards of late. The following books by local authors were published in the last year. Parents Who Don’t Do Dishes Written by Richard Melnick, this breath-length work is a cure for the common parenting book. Filled with unconventional wisdom and irreverent advice, PWDDD is a fun read even for not-yet-parents. After battling cancer during his sons’ early adolescence, Richard wanted to impart some advice to his boys. For example, in a chapter on sovereignty, he explains, “As sovereign beings, we have a trade agreement and a security pact, though mostly we have an emotional and spiritual treaty that allows us to feel safe, supported and free to be authentic.” Deep stuff understood by children, but adults should heed it as well.
Water Wranglers George Sibley, author of Dragons in Paradise, offers us his newest tome, Water Wranglers: The 75-Year History of the Colorado River District: A Story About the Embattled Colorado River and the Growth of the West. In his deeply researched book, Sibley illuminates the history of the Colorado River District, which defends the region that produces 70 percent of the Colorado River water but only contains ten percent of the state’s population. Water Wranglers “is ultimately the story of the minority seeking equity justice and respect under democratic majority rule – and willing to give quite a lot to retain what it needs.”
This Cursed Valley Larry K. Meredith’s novel of the West is a riveting story of a curse and tumultuous Colorado expansion. A classic book among Western Slope history buffs, This Cursed Valley returns to print in a special tenth anniversary edition with previously unpublished material and an introduction by Anne Hillerman. Beginning in 1879 with a curse on the Crystal Valley from an enraged Ute Holy Man, the novel unfolds over fifty years throughout old Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Carbondale, Marble and Schofield, Colorado. 10
Crested Butte Magazine
Down the Fall Line Down the Fall Line by James McGill is a love letter of a book about the upper Gunnison Valley, life and love. Beautifully written, Down the Fall Line is environmentalist-Oklahoman McGill’s first non-technical work. Recommended reading for nights around the campfire and in bed with the person closest to your heart.
All Plucked Up All Plucked Up is the second novel of the uproarious Silverville Saga series by Gunnison locals Kym O’ConnellTodd and Mark Todd. With the quirkiness of small-town Colorado multiplied ten-fold, Silverville swells with weirdness on every page. All Plucked Up is the western version of author Carl Hiaasen’s work with space aliens, ranchers, hippies and con men. Western State Colorado University professor Mark Todd is required reading for frequent visitors and residents of the Gunnison Valley.
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E LE VE N
C R E AT E S U N FO R G E T TA B L E E X P E R I E N C E S . W H E T H E R YO U A R E C AT- S K I I N G O U R CO L D S M O K E P OW D ER I N T H E R O C K I E S , R EEL I N G I N B O N E FI S H O N A B A H A M A S F L AT, O R R I D I N G I C E L A N D I C H O R S E S T H R O U G H VA L L E YS O F VO LC A N O E S A N D G L AC I E R S , O U R I N S P I R I N G E X P E RT G U I D E S A N D H O S P I TA L I T Y T E A M WO R K W IT H YO U TO C R A F T A B E S P O K E A DV E N T U R E T H AT S U ITS YO U R G R O U P ’ S I N T E R E S TS A N D S K I L L S . O U R AU T H EN T I C A N D C H A R M I N G P R O P E RT I E S A R E O F F T H E B E AT E N PAT H , B U T W EL L WO RT H T H E J O U R N E Y — E AC H O N E I S C H OS E N TO D E L I V E R T H E B E S T T H AT N AT U R E H A S TO O F F E R . W E W I L L S H OW YO U , YO U R F R I E N DS , A N D YO U R FA M I LY T H E E X P E R I E N C E O F A L I F E TI M E .
+1.970.349.7761 info@elevenexperience.com Summer 2013
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Attraction Based Consciousness: A Guide to Mastering the Energies of Love We hear that it is wiser to love unconditionally, but how exactly do we do that? In this Law of Attraction-based book, Corinne Cram and Barb Pachla give us an instruction manual for love. Filled with illustrations and exercises, Attraction Based Consciousness presents methods for a life of health, wealth, loving relationships, fulfilling work and spiritual enlightenment. With its step-by-step process, it succeeds where related books fall short.
Donn Piatt: Gadfly of the Gilded Age
Nathan Bilow
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powerhouse
130 Elk Ave.
Outdoor Seating! montanyarum.com
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best apres adventure bar ” ‘
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In a year filled with books about Abraham Lincoln, Peter Bridges’ book Donn Piatt: Gadfly of the Gilded Age is a look at the era of Lincoln from a different angle. A campaigner for Lincoln at first, Piatt became a harsh critic of him for being too outspoken. In this well-rounded and fascinating biography, Bridges presents Piatt as diplomat, historian, journalist, judge, lawyer, legislator, lobbyist, novelist, playwright, politician and humorist. Unafraid of Democrats and Republicans, Catholics and Protestants, Piatt was a stout believer in the founding principles of the Constitution, most importantly the first amendment.
Climbing Out of Bed These rock climbing and mountain town essays were penned by Luke Mehall, who came to Gunnison as a Western State College student and discovered climbing and his “true self” during his 11 years in the valley. These stories deal with friendship, hitchhiking, couch surfing, buildering (climbing buildings), road tripping, dumpster diving, extended camping experiences, dirtbag living, love, loss, wanderlust and Zen dishwashing. Published first as an e-book, the printed volume came out this summer. George Sibley compared Mehall to Jack Kerouac “on a good day.”
Nathan Bilow
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Note: Sibley, Mehall and Bridges are contributing writers to the Crested Butte Magazine.
Spinning straw into gold
By Sandy Fails
Through a new program, interns will learn straw bale construction while building workforce homes.
This straw bale home built by Community Rebuilds in Moab will serve as a model for low-cost, energy-efficient housing in Gunnison and Crested Butte. Photo courtesy of Community Rebuilds of the Central Rockies
People might assume you have to be a rich person or a hippie, or preferably a rich hippie, to build a “natural home” (made of adobe, straw bale, straw-clay or a mixture called cob). A new nonprofit, Community Rebuilds of the Central Rockies (CRCR), is countering that myth by using straw bale construction to build affordable housing in Gunnison and Crested Butte. CRCR overlays three goals: to construct energy-efficient homes, provide education on sustainability, and improve workforce living conditions through affordable housing opportunities. CRCR will use student interns to construct small, passive solar, straw bale homes from foundation to finish in four months. The first home will be built in Gunnison as early as this year, the second in the Crested Butte area next summer; eventually, director Dusty Szymanski hopes to reach the eight counties surrounding Gunnison. The first two CRCR homes are part of a pilot project providing information on straw bale construction to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development housing program. The original Community Rebuilds in Moab has completed five homes. Szymanski, an outdoor educator and builder who owns Straw and Timber Craftsmen, Inc. in Gunnison, worked with the founder to form the CRCR chapter. As of press time, CRCR’s first recipient family was
undergoing certification, which includes meeting lowincome qualifications. Szymanski plans to use eight interns for the Gunnison project, four of whom will be Western State Colorado University students in architecture, engineering, social work or related fields. “They’re people who want to impact the world and get their hands dirty before entering the workplace,” Szymanski said. The interns will learn about all aspects of building, communicating with the homeowners and working with the land, plus the environmental consequences of construction decisions and the social implications of creating housing. Szymanski will bring in experts and “inperts” (local specialists) to cover specifics like permaculture and solar electricity. He appreciates the chance to teach people about smart natural building, since a technique is only as good as the builder who’s using it. Even good contractors make mistakes when switching to unfamiliar materials, which unfairly undermines the reputation of those materials, he said. Interns receive no salary, but get free housing, a food stipend and college credit if desired. The recipient families typically get involved with planning and building the home and learn how to repair and maintain it. CRCR got a USDA grant and will provide research on the potential use of straw bales for the USDA’s mutual Summer 2013
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Andy Sovick
With wooden siding over straw-clay walls, this house blends seamlessly with neighboring homes in downtown Crested Butte.
self-help build program. CRCR board members are also doing fundraising and grant writing, and Szymanski pointed out that each donated dollar helps train future sustainable builders while reducing the building and living costs for a local, low-income family. Since straw bale construction is labor intensive, it makes perfect sense to combine hands-on education with the creation of affordable housing, he said. Each home will be under 1,200 square feet, with three bedrooms, a gable or hip roof, and all natural materials: straw bale walls, adobe floors, clay plaster coatings inside and lime plaster outside. The home cost (not including land) will be less than $110,000. Not only will the home be
affordable to build; it will be “incredibly energy efficient” with minimal utility bills, according to Szymanski. Highquality straw, an annually renewable waste product, will come from nearby Alamosa or Grand Junction. While straw homes didn’t fare well in the tale of the three pigs, straw bale walls “can be built to last for centuries,” he said. CRCR invites people to apply as participating families for next year, or intern for the four-month semester, or donate funds to make it all happen. “The program accomplishes so much at one time,” Szymanski said. For information, visit communityrebuilds.org.
The healthy-houses revolution Szymanski noted that just as the food revolution is steering us away from processed, genetically modified edibles toward clean, wholesome, earthfriendly ones, a similar shift is stirring in the housing world. Homeowners are moving from toxic construction and finish products toward natural, healthy materials, like wool carpet, recycled wood, bamboo floors, and walls made of mud, straw and clay. Crested Butte has two strawconstruction homes within town limits. The first, with stucco over straw bale walls, looks like a natural home. But a newer Smithworks Construction house, whose walls are filled with a straw-clay mixture, has a Victorian-style design 14
Crested Butte Magazine
and exterior wood siding, so it blends in with the homes around it. A handful of other diverse, straw-constructed structures have been built near town, from Larkspur to Nicholsen Lake. A number of local builders now specialize in healthy construction practices, from natural homes to traditional methods using reclaimed, earth-friendly and non-toxic materials. “It’s not necessarily more expensive, but you might not be able to order materials right off the shelf. You have to know where the resources are,” said Michael Weil of Green Robin Builders. “It’s worth going to the trouble to have a conscience when you build.”
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A musical score
By Erin English
Major movie composer Benjamin Wallfisch brings a cinematic flair to the Crested Butte Music Festival.
Other than the blockbuster films playing at our cozy Majestic Theatre, Crested Butte shows little sign of Hollywood’s glitzy influences. But if you ask around, you’ll learn that a famous filmmaker (Edward Zwick), a top television director (Gail Mancuso) and an Academy Awardwinning film director/ producer (James Cameron) live here during part of the year. And occasionally a big-name actor breezes into town, like Bill Murray once did, shimmying with locals at the LoBar on New Year’s Eve. This summer, the Crested Butte Music Festival will bring another dose of Hollywood to the Butte with its new music director, Benjamin Wallfisch, a young, ambitious conductor and composer who has scored dozens of major films, including Pride and Prejudice, V for Vendetta, Jane Eyre, The Escapist, Life in a Day and Eat, Pray, Love. Signing a contract with Wallfisch was a major coup, with Festival Director Alexander Scheirle courting him for the position after the two met in Europe years ago and offering him the job in 2009. That’s also when Wallfisch received a career-changing phone call from legendary composer and music producer Hans Zimmer, and Scheirle graciously released him from his contract. This time around, Wallfisch has set aside his many commitments to wholeheartedly focus on the Crested Butte Music Festival. “What a wonderful thing to spend three weeks with a group of exceptional musicians, with the shared 16
Crested Butte Magazine
task of performing some of the great orchestral repertoire, and even more so when you get to do it in such beautiful surroundings,” he said. In addition to his credibility in the film industry, Wallfisch has conducted orchestras all over the world, earning numerous awards, nominations and accolades. He scored his first major film, Dear Wendy, at age 24. “Writing film music is something I've wanted to do since I was about eight years old, ever since I first heard those iconic scores John Williams wrote in the ‘80s, such as E.T. and Star Wars,” Wallfisch said. “In fact that was my very first ambition, even before I started conducting; I was a bit of a geeky kid in that way. So it's wonderful to have now worked on over 40 feature film scores. Working in the movies is definitely one of the most exciting things you can do as a musician.” With “dashing good looks and a charming personality,”
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Wallfisch will captivate audiences and infuse energy into this summer’s festival, according to Scheirle. “He’s very uplifting and positive, and he brings some glamour with him. He’s a mature person and wellgrounded in the music world.” Wallfisch will conduct three performances: “Have a Beer with Beethoven” on July 11, “An Evening of Mozart and Mendelssohn” on July 14, and “Symphony in Flight” on July 20. And in honor of Wallfisch’s specialty, the Music Festival and Crested Butte Film Festival will co-host a special presentation on July 10: “Concert Halls to Film: The Conductor Composes.” At this free event, Wallfisch will discuss his experiences composing for film and show excerpts from The Escapist, Atonement and Anna Karenina that showcase his music. “The process of writing film music is complex and multifaceted,” Wallfisch said. “It's always great to let people ‘behind the scenes’ in that journey.” As the festival’s music director, Wallfisch looks forward to bringing “great music” to audiences this summer. He may also find himself autographing the occasional poster, ticket stub or magazine article as word of his arrival spreads around town. “Many people who live here don’t understand the caliber of musicians we bring to the festival,” Scheirle said. “The quality of the festival is really high, and people don’t care how small a town it is. It’s amazing that we can attract these elite performers to Crested Butte.”
FILM SERIES JOINS SUMMER LINEUP Catch some touching, funny movies this summer through the Crested Butte Film Series at the Center for the Arts. The Center and the Crested Butte Film Festival are collaborating on the series, which will open with Searching for Sugarman on June 22. Other films on the slate (subject to change) are Sideways (July 11) as part of the Crested Butte Food & Wine Festival; Luna Fest Films for, by and about Women (July 18); Queen of the Sun (August 15); Moonrise Kingdom (Sept. 19); and a grand finale on October 17. See cbfilmfest.org. 18
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Hidden treasures
By Katie Onheiber
Clever clues lead to Letterboxes hidden on Crested Butte Land Trust properties – with artistic treats concealed inside.
The Summer 2010 Crested Butte Magazine introduced readers to Letterboxing, an international phenomenon that has spread to our wild backyard. Letterboxing combines hiking and treasure hunting. Seekers use clues to search for hidden containers that house special stamps. They use these to imprint their personal journals and then leave their own custom stamp marks in the Letterbox logbooks. Thanks to three Crested Butte artists, you can now find beautiful stamps hidden in Letterboxes on some of the valley’s most beloved landscapes, those preserved by the Crested Butte Land Trust.
When Karen Janssen thought about hiding Letterboxes on Crested Butte Land Trust properties last summer, she contacted local artists Steph White and Gail Sovick, and the collaborating commenced. “I was brainstorming ways to get people out onto Land Trust properties, kids in particular,” said Karen, who sits on the board of the Crested Butte Land Trust. Letterboxing, with its dash of treasure-hunt adventure, the artistry of the stamps, and its multi-generational appeal, seemed a perfect activity for both residents and visitors. Karen selected the Land Trust parcels to highlight, and the trio conjured up a list of appropriate images. “We wanted to feature the different uses of the properties as well as iconic scenes,” said Steph. “We came up with nine stamps featuring ranching, wildflowers, wildlife, mountain biking and specific landscape images of the area. Namely, all the things that make the Land Trust’s work vital to our valley.” A stamp can be produced by carving into square rubber erasers. Karen, Gail and Steph opted for linoleum blocks, available at art supply stores. These allow for more detail and durability. After drawing the designs on paper, they transferred the artwork to the linoleum blocks and carved away the negative space with printmaking tools, leaving the final image. “My favorite Letterboxes I’ve found have handmade stamps that are specific to the place they’re hidden and have some sort of story behind them,” said Steph. Once the snow melted, the three scouted locations to hide the boxes and started writing clues. Last summer, eight boxes were hidden on various Crested Butte Land Trust parcels, including the Woods Walk, Gunsight Bridge and Washington Gulch. “Some are easier to access and find than others,” said Karen, “so the experience can be tailored to whatever the group feels like doing.” Andrew Hadley got wind of Letterboxing from the Crested Butte Land Trust’s newsletter. He took his kids, Nola and Liam, out for a Letterbox hunt on the Woods Walk and the Budd Trail. “The kids love treasure maps and scavenger hunts,” he said. “So it was the perfect thing to do on a beautiful summer day. They enjoyed playing a game that Summer 2013
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was very different from anything they’d done before. All their senses were alert. They got to use their minds and their bodies.” When nine-year-old Nola discovered the extraordinary stamps inside the Letterboxes, each representing its location, she was inspired to create her own, something she could imprint on the pads in the Letterboxes that would represent who she is. “A log cabin would be my dream home if I could live anywhere in the world,” said Nola. Using a piece of orange, recycled traffic cone, Nola carved a log cabin to produce her one-of-a-kind stamp. Letterboxing lures family and friends to share time outdoors. “It’s often easier to get kids out hiking if they have a goal, and this is the perfect thing,” said Karen. “It’s really satisfying to follow the clues and finally come upon the hidden treasure. It’s something that people of all ages can do together.”
Become a Letterboxer Letterboxing began in 1854, after a park guide in Dartmoor National Park, England, left a bottle near Cranmere Pool. Inside was a calling card, along with an invitation to those who found the bottle to add theirs. Visitors started leaving selfaddressed postcards in the bottle, anticipating they would be returned by mail by the next park visitor. Today, there are more than 50,000 Letterboxes internationally. Visit www. atlasquest.com or www.letterboxing.org to discover where Letterboxes are hidden worldwide. For Dawne Belloise’s initial Crested Butte Magazine article, see the Summer 2010 archives at crestedbuttemagazine.com. Meanwhile, here’s how to get started as a Letterboxer.
Get ready : Start with a map (if you’re unfamiliar with the area), a rubber stamp and a notebook for stamping. Your stamp can be hand-carved or commercially made; it symbolizes you. If you don’t have a stamp, simply sign the logbook in the Letterbox. Packets with clues, a basic map and a Letterboxing “passport” are available for $5 at the Chamber of Commerce, Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum and Crested Butte Land Trust office.
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Know what’s out there : You can visit www.cblandtrust.org to get the clues for each Land Trust-preserved area hiding a Letterbox. The website provides updates on which boxes are currently out, for Letterboxing is a seasonal sport in Crested Butte.
Create your trail name : A trail name (your real name or a meaningful nickname) is your personal identity, and while not necessary, it can enhance your Letterboxing experience.
Schedule a tour today
WilderColorado.com 970-641-4545 20
Crested Butte Magazine
Start hunting : Using the clues, map and a little common sense, explore and find the Letterboxes under rocks or nestled into tree nooks and other clever places.
Stamp your place : Once you find the Letterbox with the stamp and inkpad inside, use that stamp in your notebook. Then, leave your own stamp’s imprint in the Letterbox’s logbook. The logbook stays with the box, and you’ll fill your notebook with stampings as you explore the scenic parcels preserved by the Crested Butte Land Trust.
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Postcards from Heaven A new Crested Butte mobile app lets adventurers send postcards from just about anywhere.
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new Explore Crested Butte app, tallying more then 30,000 user sessions. “We’re above the industry norm for session time and retention,” Hanna said. Visitors can plan their vacations with the app and tap into maps and information on events, deals, restaurants, shops, lodging and services once they arrive. With one touch, users can call a business, go to a website, get GPS directions or access the ski resort’s “powder cam” and snow grooming reports. “There’s been a huge migration to mobile information, so you can have all your resources on your phone,” Hanna said. “And people like Explore Crested Butte because it’s not some company cranking out 500 apps for 500 places; we designed it specifically for Crested Butte.” Photo: Alex Fenlon
While basking in triumph or beauty, revelers can share the glory by beaming digital postcards from almost anywhere – the bar, playground, concert hall or summit of Teocalli Mountain. The free Explore Crested Butte mobile app (available for both iPhone and Android platforms) boasts many capabilities, but the postcard feature is one of the most amusing. Senders take a photo (or select one already on their phones) and follow the easy “send a postcard” steps: choose a postcard template, customize the text, add any desired adornments and dispatch the creation to a friend or post it to Facebook or Twitter. The process can be simple or sophisticated; tinkerers can select different stamps and logos or add special effects, like making their photos black and white or sepia-toned. “It’s practical but super-fun, and it helps get the Crested Butte brand out there in the social media,” said Chris Hanna of Crested Butte Publishing, creator of the app. By spring, more than 4,000 people had downloaded the
The Explore Crested Butte mobile app is available for download through iTunes or the Android Market.
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CRESTED BUTTE MO UN TA I N R ES O RT Summer 2013
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Listening when Colorado sings
By Sandy Fails
Young activist Jackson Melnick will produce radio documentaries to honor place-based music.
As Jackson Melnick, 18, listened to a friend last winter crooning a song she’d written about Crested Butte, he started thinking about how place can inspire music, though not necessarily music that makes it to mass pop media. Eventually those musings led him to launch Colorado Sings, a radio documentary project that aims to share and honor place-based musicianship. Melnick intends to travel the state interviewing and collecting songs from a wide array of musicians. He’ll turn those materials into 12-18 half-hour segments that will be distributed via website and podcast beginning next winter and through public radio if they garner widespread interest. He expects each program to be about half conversation and half music. “I have a wild love of what might be called Americana or folk music,” Melnick wrote about the project. “I’m working under the suspicion that Colorado is full of amazing big-shot and small-time songwriters who tell gorgeous tales of where they live, how they live and why they live. I hope to share their sounds and stories through radio, and to ground myself as an artist creating in the world of music.” The project might sound ambitious for an 18-year-old who grew up in Crested Butte and just finished his freshman year at Deep Springs College in California. But Melnick is hardly a typical young adult. For four years in his teens, he hosted a weekly radio program on KBUT community radio, produced recordings for local musicians and interviewed touring bands. He started busking (playing street music) when he was ten, connecting with dozens of fellow musicians. Also during high school, Melnick was involved with Crested Butte’s Mountain Roots Food Project and with efforts to prevent a massive mine on Mt. Emmons. He took 24
Crested Butte Magazine
off the second semester of tenth grade to independently explore Israel, Palestine, Ireland and Spain, first volunteering at an orphanage in the West Bank and later living with a traditional Irish musician and poet and a family in Catalunya. His former high school counselor, Jennifer Read, was skeptical at first of Melnick’s many proposals and ideas. But
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his energy, maturity and out-of-thebox thinking taught her to trust him. The curly-haired young man didn’t just envision; he rolled up his sleeves and made things happen. Read wrote about him, “Over the years Jackson has become a force within our community and within the world at large…. He has big ideas and an indomitable zest for life.” For his Colorado Sings project, Melnick already has a list of people he wants to interview and record. He’ll supplement that with “some grassroots exploring,” hitting the word-of-mouth circuit in the coffee shops and bars of Colorado’s small communities. On his website, Melnick discusses the diversity of placed-based music: “That lady who works at the coffee shop in the morning and in the afternoon sits on her stoop plucking her guitar and singing about the change of seasons. Or that all-star band you saw on stage, singing about coming over that next mountainside, a moment that so reminded you of what you felt when first traversing Colorado’s mountain passes. Or the old Spanish caballeros who may still sing their great-grandfather’s songs when moving cattle. Or the Indians whose songs have longest been heard by the hot spring caverns and eastern plains. Or the high schooler who writes about being kissed on the ski-hill. “These songs are not intended to be the next big hit (though some of them might be), but rather a poetic echo of where their front door sits and back door leads,” Melnick wrote. To raise money for the recording equipment, travel and post-production costs, Melnick started an online Indiegogo fund-raising campaign last spring. He also requested suggestions of place-inspired musicians to add to his growing slate of contacts. Melnick plans to travel solo, “but I have an open place in the front seat for anyone who wants to come along,” he said. Find out more or contact Melnick at cosings.org. 26
Crested Butte Magazine
Well-heeled adventurers
By Erin English
As Eleven’s high-end adventure travel operation expands around the globe, Crested Butte remains its hub.
Alex Fenlon
Eleven is building its brand on a peak level of service and comfort for its affluent clients.
What started in 2010 as a high-end snowcat-skiing operation called CS Irwin has evolved into a year-round, luxury, outdoor adventure operation called Eleven, with destinations across the globe and headquarters in Crested Butte. Chad Pike, senior managing director and vice chairman of Blackstone Europe Real Estate, is the multi-millionaire behind Eleven, which currently offers five-star lodging and guide services in three locations: Crested Butte; Wiltshire, England; and Le Miroir, France. Additional properties are being developed in Harbor Island, Bahamas; Northern Iceland; and just down the road in Almont. Pike, an avid fly fisherman and skier in his early forties, is planning eleven unique travel experiences in communities like Crested Butte that are small, authentic and well off the beaten path. In the Gunnison Valley, Eleven has snapped up a number
of properties. In Crested Butte, the company owns The Irwin Building on Belleview (Eleven’s administrative offices and home base for the guide service/cat ski operation) and Scarp Ridge Lodge on Second Street, which was the first of Eleven’s lodging destinations, opening on 11-11-11. Eleven recently renovated the building next to Scarp Ridge Lodge, which will accommodate guest spillover starting this summer. The company also purchased the Crested Butte International Lodge and Hostel (which has retained its original budget-traveler look and feel) and a condominium in the Axtel Building in Mt. Crested Butte that serves as a daytime rest and relaxation area for Scarp Ridge guests who are recreating on the mountain. A major renovation project is underway in Almont at the former White Water Resort, another property now owned by Eleven. The new incarnation, Taylor River Cabins, is slated to Summer 2013
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Marlow
Travelers can rent the seven-bedroom Scarp Ridge Lodge for $12,500 per night, including chef services, spa treatments and guided adventures.
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Crested Butte Magazine
open in the fall as a getaway for fly-fishing aficionados and hunters. With high-thread-count sheets, personal chefs and luxurious spa treatments, Eleven destinations are designed for the well-to-do. Renting the seven-bedroom Scarp Ridge Lodge runs around $12,500 a night, and a stay at Taylor River Cabins will cost between $1,000 and $1,500 per person, per night. The company regularly uses the word “bespoke,” which means “highly customized,” to describe the Eleven experience—and Marketing Director Jennifer Jeffery said the staff will do whatever it takes to make a visitor’s stay memorable. Delivering on Eleven’s “bespoke” promise could mean stocking the lodge with a guest’s favorite fine liquor or hanging an assortment of clothes in the bedroom closet in a guest’s size and favorite colors before his or her arrival. Creature comforts aside, Eleven heavily promotes its guide service, promising clients the finest experiences in hiking, skiing, fly fishing, mountain biking, rock climbing or other favorite outdoor activities. Pike was so taken with the guide staff he initially brought on board in Crested Butte that those individuals now work for the Eleven global brand. “I think he never intended for the staff to be based here,” Jeffery said. “He started with Alan [Bernholtz] and a few core people. He’s found some really talented, smart, well-educated people in this valley that he trusts.” Bernholtz, a former mayor of Crested Butte, started as a guide for CS Irwin and is now head of operations for Eleven. Earlier this year he and his wife and their twin boys moved to Miroir, France, so he could open Eleven’s Chalet Pelerin, a small lodge with access to off-piste skiing and heli-skiing in winter, mountain biking and hiking in summer. As the company develops other properties around the globe, Bernholtz will get them up and running. He said the experience of moving to France had been nothing but “fantastique.” “It’s nice to work for a company that has good family values, rewards people who work hard and isn’t trying to conquer the world, but just provides a high-end adventure travel service in some unique and special places,” he said. For Crested Butte, Eleven should bring a boost in tourism, press coverage (Scarp Ridge Lodge was recently voted one of the “Ten Coziest Hotels in America” by the Wall Street Journal) and respect for local guides — both those employed by Eleven and those with other local outfitters that partner with the company. Eleven is a travel brand backed by big money, but the company isn’t on a mission to bring glitz and glamour to Crested Butte à la Aspen. Instead, it wants to highlight what is good and true about our town. “[Pike] has purposefully decided not to invest in trendy, high-net-worth locations,” Jeffery said. “What we are primarily selling is the experience and the adventure.”
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Playing with our food The Taste of Crested Butte debuts in June with spicy deals, bartending rivalries and a mystery progressive dinner.
The best part of expending calories is finding the most delicious way to replenish them. With equally tempting recreation and cuisine, Crested Butte specializes in both parts of that equation. A new event, Taste of Crested Butte, will celebrate that culinary excellence June 19-22, with some magnificent dining, friendly rivalry and a pinch of mystery. The Taste of Crested Butte grew out of Restaurant Week, during which local eateries, lodgings and recreation vendors offer deals and discounts, often playing off of Crested Butte’s elevation of 8,885 feet (e.g. dining or lodging packages for $88.85). Those “incentives” will continue this year, but three additional events will add some pizzazz to the festivities. • Private chef’s dinner. On Wednesday or Thursday evening, diners can host four to eight people in their home or participating accommodation, with dinner prepared by one of Crested Butte’s notable chefs. Customers purchase tickets ($88.85/person) in advance and coordinate with the chefs on the evening’s menu. • Bartender challenge. Bars and restaurants will feature their cocktail contenders all week. The top two cocktails, based on customer voting, will face off on Friday, June 21, at Montanya, with celebrants sampling and voting on their favorite. Also that evening, four bartenders will compete in 30
Crested Butte Magazine
three judged events: an Iron Chef-type mixology contest, a secret-ingredient challenge and a speed competition, with the four bartenders racing to fill an order of multiple complicated drinks. An MC will liven up the proceedings, and costumes are encouraged. • Mystery progressive dinner. On Saturday, June 22, curious diners will gather in a town park for welcome cocktails and gorgeous mountain views. While sipping and visiting, participants will receive a ticket revealing the first of three stops on their evening’s tour. Each subsequent course will be revealed by clue, leading diners from one fine dining experience to the next. People can sign up as singles or groups. “We want this inaugural event to be successful; then we could move it to a slower time of the year,” said Rachael Gardner of Crested Butte Events. She is working with Crista and Kaitlin Ryan of Sparkplug Productions to create Taste of Crested Butte for the Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce. Gardner added, “We have such phenomenal restaurants here, it just makes sense to have an event that highlights our culinary sophistication.”
Find out more at www.tasteofcb.com.
Expect More. Expect More.
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HOME TOUR TO SHOWCASE FIVE UNIQUE HOUSES The doors will open to five stately Crested Butte houses on Friday, August 2, for a home tour to benefit the Center for Restorative Practices (CRP). The houses were chosen to highlight the work of local architects, builders, interior designers and artists. The structures range from historic to new; one has been featured in Mountain Living and another in Colorado Homes & Lifestyles. Proceeds from the tickets ($60 in advance, $65 the day of the tour) will help subsidize services offered by the CRP. The nonprofit Center for Restorative Practices assists Crested Butte and Gunnison individuals in times of crisis, providing mediation, advocacy, counseling, restorative conferencing and education at no cost or on a sliding scale. The Center also works with agencies such as Juvenile Services and Victim Services. Call 970-641-7668 or visit crp-gunnison.org for information.
GO to GO!
FOR THE YOUNG AND THE CURIOUS
Museum adds children’s exhibit The Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum last summer opened the interactive Betty Spehar Children’s Exhibit, with self-led and parent-administered activities for children 3-12. The youngsters’ activities are paired with items of interest for adults, so parents can learn and be entertained while their children are engaged. The exhibit is named for long-time educator and Crested Butte native Betty Spehar. Another favorite for people of all ages is the miniature town exhibit, with a train that chugs around a tiny model of Crested Butte, circa 1920. The museum is located at Fourth and Elk in downtown Crested Butte. 32
Crested Butte Magazine
100 S PE N CE R AVE N UE , G U N N I S O N & 235 W. HW Y 50, S A L I DA
BAC KATTHER A N C HFUR N I TU R E. C O M
Summer 2013
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Summer 2013
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gallery
From the simple to the sublime, collectable fine art prints and canvases of Crested Butte and Colorado. Visit the gallery on Elk Avenue for a personal tour.
327 elk avenue, crested butte / 970 901 0087 / jcleacock.com
The summer a deer delivered the mail to Jack’s Cabin. By Cara Guerrieri
“That reminds me of the deer that delivered the mail,” my mother, Phyllis (Spann) Guerrieri, said when the big buck in the Jack’s Cabin cemetery seemed reluctant to leave. We had stopped at the old cemetery between Crested Butte and Almont so Mom could help her grandkids make grave rubbings of the relatives buried there. Although we made a racket opening the metal gate, the buck just lifted its head and stared at us, a bit challenging, as if we’d invaded its personal property. It was thigh deep in the overgrown grass beside the graves, its rack framing Paint Mountain to the east. Only when we walked toward Great Uncle Imobersteg’s plot did the buck leap the four-foot
iron fence and disappear into the hay meadow beyond. Meanwhile, my mother waited – presumably for one of us to ask, with appropriate incredulity, “A deer delivered the mail?” – and grandson Julian took the bait. Of course, that was all the encouragement Mom needed to launch into the story of how her grandmother, Olive Spann, the last postmistress of the town of Jack’s Cabin, once had a tame deer that helped with her U.S. Postal Service duties. It was the summer of 1934, and Olive’s husband, Lang, Summer 2013
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Left : Lee and Lois Spann bottle-feeding the young orphan. Right : Olive Spann, the long-time postmistress of Jack’s Cabin, in 1954. Opposite page : Lang Spann (right) watches the future “mail deer” playing with the family’s ranch dog.
had found an orphaned fawn and brought it home. Olive bottle-fed it, and it followed her around the ranch like a dog. When she milked the cow, fed the chickens or worked in the garden, the deer was behind her. And when she made her daily trek to the Gunnison-to-Crested Butte train to pick up the Jack’s Cabin mail, the deer followed. The once thriving town of Jack’s Cabin, which had
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boasted a grocery store, baseball team and school, was well on its way to being a ghost town in 1932. Nonetheless, its residents could still pick up their mail at the official post office — Olive’s house. So every day Olive and her deer went across the road, along the edge of the hay meadow and down near the East River where the train stopped. There the engineers would hand her the mailbags. Then
she and the deer would head back to her house, which also served as a makeshift restaurant for riders and ranchers who stopped at the big trough to water their livestock. Although it was a short distance to and from the train, Olive had broken her hip a few years back and it pained her to walk, as it would the rest of her life. Her gait was uneven and her limp pronounced, so it wasn’t too long before Olive rigged up a little harness so the deer could carry the heavy leather mailbags for her. The deer got to know the routine so well that as soon as Olive got the harness out, it would get to prancing. And when it heard that loud, dirty, coal-fired train puffing up the valley, the deer would head toward the tracks. Whether or not Olive was with her unusual helper, the engineers would load the mail onto the
deer. After a time Olive didn’t even bother going down to the train. The deer was faster and brought the mail back lickety-split. So that’s how it went that summer, a deer delivering the Jack’s Cabin mail all by itself. Until one day…the day the deer didn’t come back. One can only imagine Olive’s panic. Not only was her postmistress job at stake, but she was probably committing
Summer 2013
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a federal mail-tampering crime as well. In fact, her fear of the law kept her from telling the story until she was quite old, and then she only told it to select family members. But that day, she sure as heck looked for the deer — at the train stop, in the barn, around the corrals. She scanned the hay meadows and beyond, but there was no sign of it. And no sign of the mail. Some time later, the phone rang. One long and two short was the Spann ring on the party line, and Olive picked it up. “Come and get your goddamn deer,” shouted the stationmaster from Gunnison. Sure enough, the deer had hitched a free train ride. “Grandma Olive went and got her deer,” my mother said. “And that was the last time the deer delivered the mail.” The kids looked incredulous. “Is that true?” Julian asked. “Of course it’s true. That’s how Grandma Olive told it
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to me,” said Mom. “But what happened to the deer?” “I never knew, but times were tough back then, food was scarce, and I imagine they…” Mom’s voice trailed off as she looked at the wide eyes of this young generation for whom pets are pets and meat comes from the store. And then she looked toward the meadow and Round Mountain as she spoke. “It does make you wonder if maybe, just maybe, that big buck we saw a few minutes ago was a descendent of the ‘mail’ deer of Jack’s Cabin. Kind of like all of us, I’d say. Our ancestors helped settle this little valley and it’s good to remember their lives and their stories.” And then she trundled off, pushing her walker toward the next gravestone and leaving the rest of us to ponder her tale, the magic of a deer in the cemetery, and the history of a special little ghost town.
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970.349.6114 • 318 Elk Avenue • Box 1081 • Crested Butte, Colorado 81224 Summer All information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.2013
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R E A L E S TAT E T H AT F I T S YO U R L I F E S T Y L E
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what’s in your backpack? BACKPACKS, A NECESSITY OF MOUNTAIN LIFE, THE COUNTRY COUSIN TO THE INDISPENSABLE CITY SCHLEP BAG. HIGH-ALTITUDE LIVING REQUIRES PACKS LARGE ENOUGH TO HOLD A DAY OR TWO OF LIFE AND ACCOMMODATE DRASTIC WEATHER CHANGES. OF COURSE YOUR PACK CONTENTS DEPEND ON YOUR ACTIVITY, BUT YOU’LL NEED TO STASH CERTAIN MANDATORY ITEMS WHETHER YOU’RE HIKING, BIKING, PLAYING IN THE WATER OR JUST DALLYING OUTSIDE.
Story by Dawne Belloise >> Photos by Nathan Bilow Summer 2013
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Always carry Rain gear A simple, lightweight rain jacket or poncho that folds nicely into your pack will arm you for those late-afternoon summer showers.
Warmer clothes Take a jacket or hoodie because the weather can change and temperatures plummet in a heartbeat. It has snowed in July.
Sunscreen & lip balm Yes, we’re closer to heaven AND the sun, which gets very intense. Use at least 30 SPF.
Water In high-altitude dryness, your body needs far more water than you think, so hydrate often. Visiting from the lowlands? This will help with altitude sickness.
Snacks Especially if you’re from lower elevation, you need the energy of protein bars, nuts and, luckily, dark chocolate.
Headlamp or flashlight If you get caught out at night, even in some darker parts of town, you’ll need to find your way – and to see the bears who cruise our streets and alleys.
mountain biking Crested Butte has some of the best trails in the West for mountain biking, plus bluebird days to make it perfect. Road cyclists usually carry everything in their back pockets, but if you’re a mountain biker, you’ll need a larger hydration pack. In addition to the ‘always carry’ items, Alison Fuchs of Big Al’s Bicycle Heaven offers this list for pedaling into the mountains.
Tools / multi-tools spare Bike parts, like a whole rear derailleur.
Tire levers Spare inner tubes Air pump & patch kit Gels, energy power food and real food like a sandwich or pizza.
Duct tape & zip ties for whatever breaks.
gone fishing? Whether you’re a serious fisherperson or a dabbler out to cast your line in our fabulous waters and soak up some sun, here are must-haves to lure the fishies and ease your day, according to Craig McManus, guide/owner of C.B. MacTrout. He carries a pack for hike-in excursions and a fishing vest for casual days on the river.
Fishing vest 1. First aid kit and epi pen 2. Spare shoelaces, because they only break when you’re five miles away from the car 3. Toilet paper 4. Bug repellent 5. Fisherman’s forceps, nippers, six rolls of tippet, boxes of various wet and dry flies, two bottles dry shake, various bottles of agents for drying flies and waxing the lines, tools 6. A net - in case you nab the big one! 7. Fishing license. It lives in the vest.
Fishing backpack 1. Towel, rags 2. Basic fishing tools, rods 3. Wading shoes/sandals/waders 4. Stream thermometer to determine what’s hatched in the water 5. Weights and bobbers 6. Add sleeping bag, tarp, more food and water purification pump if more than five miles in and/or spending the night.
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In Crested Butte, who would think of leaving their furfaced buddies at home when pursuing outdoor activities? Like their owners, dogs need to hydrate, so have enough water for both you and your pooches. Up here, dogs carry their own weight – and packs – according to Leigh Butcher, owner of Oh Be Dogful pet ranch and sitting services.
Hiking
photography
From downtown Crested Butte, you can walk to a hiking trailhead in eight minutes and stand amid luscious alpine views soon after, but you should still go prepared. Irwin guide Billy Rankin suggests these, in addition to the ‘always carry’ items.
It’s a given. If you’re in our valley, you should carry a camera regardless of your outdoor activity. But those venturing out for the sole purpose of capturing our mountain glory via camera are offered this list by photographer Dusty Demerson.
First aid kit with painkillers
Camera With extra batteries
Especially if you’re heading far into the mountains. Billy learned this when his girlfriend broke her leg eight miles into a Utah canyon.
Map and / or compass
Variety of lenses, filters Tripod That doesn’t weigh a ton
Toilet paper And a baggie to carry it out.
Fire starter kit In case you have to spend the night out. Billy uses a lighter and a baggie of dryer lint because it’s lightweight and highly flammable. Others use cotton balls soaked in Vaseline or other petroleum jelly.
Flashlight Pen & notebook
blooms Exploring this Wildflower Capital of Colorado, Kathy Darrow, author of Wild About Wildflowers: Extreme Botanizing in Crested Butte, carries these items.
Books Her own, plus Weber and Whitman’s Colorado Flora: Western Slope; Robert Shaw’s Grasses of Colorado; and Field Guide to Sedge Species of the Rocky Mountain Region by local botanist Barry Johnston
Hand lens/magnifier for peering into flowers
Binoculars to spot distant plants and wildlife
Reading glasses Notebook or sketchbook
Swiss army knife or Leatherman
to record special finds, locations and thoughts
Power food
chocolate & Vitamin I
A book or Kindle
(ibuprofen) are the prime ingredients of her first aid kit!
Something to read while you’re waiting for the perfect light
shrooms Local fungiphiles have their secret places to find these little earth dumplings. To find the fungi, it’s critical to have an experienced personal guide, not just a book. Many poisonous mushrooms look similar to the scrumptious ones.
recyclable grocery sacks Sharp pocket knife Never pull the mushroom with its base; cut it at the ground surface.
Mushroom id book Insect repellant for the deep woods
Compass It’s easy to get turned around in tree stands, and cell phones seldom get service where the mushrooms grow.
Bells You don’t want to surprise the bears, plus the tinkling amuses the woodland faeries who care for the mushrooms.
doggie snacks Poo bags Collapsible water bowl
Toys, balls, frisbees Leash Dogs must be on leashes in designated wilderness.
THE MOST POWERFUL ANIMAL SPIRIT OF NATIVE LORE, THE BEAR DESERVES OUR RESPECT AND RESPONSIBLE ACTION. By Molly Murfee
I once lived in the Wood River Valley in the interior of Alaska. It was only accessible by a 20-mile walk - through thousands of acres of Sitka spruce, over mounds of glacial moraine and alp lilystudded passes, past herds of caribou, through the churning chocolate waters of a glacial river that surged with the warmth of the day. From there, millions of acres of untamed, unkempt, untrammeled wilderness crept, gorged, tumbled and asserted itself boldly and freely. My mornings and evenings were filled meandering along the Wood River in the braids of glacial till left behind by eons of scouring, breathing in every second of the sunrises and sunsets that lasted for hours, turning over stones and looking for footprints. This was a particularly telling activity in the morning, to discover what creatures had moved about in the dark-less night while the humans were sleeping. One sunrise the sandbank revealed an entire community. A thread of moose track strolled through. Wolf tracks intersected. Caribou. Finally, a lumbering set of grizzly tracks twisted through the others. I placed my footsteps carefully among them, weaving my presence with theirs. Temporal petroglyphs in the silt. I bent 46
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down to touch where they once stood. I imagined these same creatures sniffing my footprints to see what kind of creature I was. These were my neighbors. We lived in respect of each other’s presence, creating wide berths around each other’s territory. I felt proud, honored, fulfilled. This was a community ripe and full. While my heart swelled with each of these creatures, it was the grizzly that touched me the most, gave me the greatest sense of awe. Coming from a place that had annihilated this great bear, I found the grizzly’s company the most comforting. This was wholeness. The Northern Athapaskan of Alaska rarely uttered their word for “bear,” instead bestowing honor by calling him “Grandfather.” For Native American cultures across the continent, the bear represents transformation, growth and renewal. Every winter bears enter into the earth womb, crawling into that source of all life, most in isolation. As the earth sleeps, so do they, in a death-like slumber deprived of food or water. When they emerge in spring, the world emerges with them. Every tribe on the continent practiced initiation rites that mimicked that of the bear. Every tribe had sacred
Kurt Reise
Summer 2013
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geography – landforms or grounds where spirits were believed to live or frequent. Initiates were taken to these places of wilderness. There, they endured prolonged isolation, fasting, symbolic death and rebirth. When the initiates awoke, they had been born into a new life. For the Dakota, this was called “making a bear.” They endured near death without fear of annihilation because they shared the bear’s power of resurrection. Hunting tribes considered the bear the shaman of the animal world. For the Yavapai, he was indeed the first shaman. Bears could tell the future and shift their forms to become people or other animals. For this, they were the most powerful animal spirits for a shaman to seek as a guide and helper. The Bear Shaman endured rites like those of other initiates, but to much more severe degrees; the human body was taken to the limits of its endurance. For the Eskimo, this included a vision where the aspirant offered his flesh to Bear. Bear tore the candidate’s body apart, drank his blood and ate the meat from his bones. The shaman’s soul rose to look down on his body, his bones now scattered across the ground. He called his bones by name to reassemble them. New flesh grew. When his body became whole, he reentered it and came back to life. The Bear Spirit became his guardian for the rest of his life – guiding, counseling and protecting. Bear Shamans wrapped themselves in the skins of bears, wore necklaces of bear claws and painted bear sign on their bodies. They smoked pipes carved in the shapes of bears, used bear grease in ceremonies, kept bear teeth in their medicine pouches. They could become bears and traverse the worlds of life and death. For the Plains tribes those of bear powers were the greatest healers. For the Pueblo, shamans who healed the sick shared the same name with bear. Their strongest medicine – bear root. In both the New World and the Old, the bear is the God of Vegetation, the plant gatherer of the animal world. Tribes such as the Lakota and Cherokee observed the bear 48
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rooting in the ground, eating grasses, forbs, seeds, berries and nuts for sustenance; yarrow, kinnikinnick and redwood sorrel for healing. In these tribes’ mythology, it is the bear that discovers medicine. Bear that shares the healing with the chosen through dreams, giving them the most powerful medicine. The healers gathered plants like the bear, cleaned wounds with a bear claw. Because of its iconic power over winter, bear medicine, with its spring of rebirth, was powerful enough to bring the gravely sick back to life. The Cheyenne and Arapaho refused to eat bear because he was considered to be a relative. The Pueblo saw bear as transformed people, so eating one was akin to cannibalism.
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John Holder
If a bear had to be killed because it was threatening a village, it was done under intense ritual, only by spiritually powerful individuals who possessed the bear as guardian spirit. The ceremonies of the Pueblo for a slain bear were the same as for a human. The Navajo sprinkled it with pollen and sacred stones so its spirit might come back to life. The bones and hides held power and were disposed of in particular ways. Scapulas and kneecaps could be used for divination, but many times only by Bear Shamans. In Crested Butte, one bluebird summer day I sat on the sunny deck of the Eldo, having a beer with friends. Suddenly, what looked to be a large black dog darted between the Last Steep and the Mexicali Grill. As it ran slew-footed down the sidewalk, we realized it was a black bear. In its wake, a string of tourists chased it, shutters clicking, as if this were an orchestrated Disneyland attraction. At night, I wake to hear bears shuffling through the alleyway. I walk to the window. A black bear has dragged a bag of the neighbor’s garbage into our small yard, and is pawing through it, tasting the most desirable morsels. I watch, simultaneously awed at the mere two feet between me and the bear, and deeply saddened. He’s a garbage bear. Far from the majesty and freedom of the grizzly that roamed the Wood River Valley. Far from the respect given by the Navajo and
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Pueblo. We have not offered this bear stones and pollen and dreams. We have offered him our neglect. I pick up my emergency whistle and blow as hard as I can. He startles and runs into the darkness, leaving his score of garbage behind. The black bear, Ursus Americanus, the “American Bear,” is the only bear species found exclusively in North America, the only one to have evolved here. The common ancestor of all bear species is over 30 million years old. The black bear’s ancestor crossed the Bering Land Bridge over three million years ago. By 500,000 years ago, the black bear we know today was in existence. The grizzly is more recent, ambling over a mere 100,000 years ago. Humans? Only 30,000 years ago did we step on this continent. While black bears used to cover the United States, Alaska and Canada, their habitat has become spottier. Nevertheless, the bear’s occupation of this land predates our own by 2.9 million years. Black bears can actually be brown, blond, cinnamon, blue-black or white. Males can weigh 250-600 pounds, with females a slim 100-400. Typically, they weigh 160-220. Males can be six feet long, nose to tail; females three to four. Standing on all fours, they’re around three feet high. They can see in color about as well as we do, and hear twice as well. But by far their strongest sense is smell. There have been recorded incidents of bears reacting to food from over five miles away. Black bears live an average of 18 years. Unfortunately, few die of old age, though black bears have never been prone to disease. Humans are their main cause of death – they’re hit by cars, hunted or poached, or euthanized as “problem bears.” Seeing a black bear in the wild is a rare treat. But most of our encounters, regrettably, are in town. Bears consume three times more food in late summer than in the spring. During this time they eat as many as 20 hours and pack on more than two pounds and 20,000 calories in a day’s work. This binging is called
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hyperphagia. What throws them into this state is photoperiodism – the amount of sunlight in a day as well as the sun’s angle. Toward late fall, after they’ve gained enough weight, bears enter a kind of walking hibernation. During this phase they eat and drink little. Their body systems slow down. Blood flow to their limbs gradually decreases. By this time, they have chosen their dens. They’ll often try a den out for a few days before bedding down for the winter. Pregnant sows enter their dens first, followed by sows with cubs, then sub-adults and finally grown males. They emerge in the spring in the reverse order. Dens must be dry and cramped, with only enough room to turn around, so the bears don’t lose their heat. Dens can be under brush piles, tree roots, rock ledges, tree cavities, fallen treetops with leaves piled around, or cavities formed by erosion and deadfall. The dens are lined with about eight inches of grass, leaves, moss and other forest litter, but it is the bears’ fat that truly keeps them warm. A good den maintains about 65° F temperature. Unlike true hibernators like ground squirrels, a bear can be easily awakened. A hibernating ground squirrel you could throw around like a football (although this isn’t very nice), but you should abide by the adage, “Let sleeping bears lie.” A sleeping bear in the summer has a heart rate of about 40 beats per minute. When entering hibernation, these beats decrease to 32, 20, then 10 over a period of weeks. The bear’s normal 100° F temperature drops to 91°. Breathing slows to one breath every 45 seconds. Its metabolism functions at 50% of normal, so it consumes half the food energy. It doesn’t need to drink, eat, urinate or defecate. One of the most unique qualities of bear hibernation is its trick of anabolism. During hibernation, the bear’s body burns only fat, not carbs or proteins, so it loses little bone and muscle mass. The burning of fat produces several byproducts, most of which the bear reuses. One by-product is water, solving the
Photo: Trent Bona
conundrum of not drinking for five to eight months. Urine production is low due to the consumption of fatty tissues. What little is produced is reabsorbed through the bladder walls where it becomes carbon dioxide, water and ammonia. The ammonia combines with glycerol, another fat by-product, to form amino acids, which in turn produce new proteins. These proteins are used to repair bone and tissue loss. When bears emerge from their dens in the spring, they don’t eat for two weeks while their systems start back up. Once that happens, their primary diet is of the new green shoots of grasses, spring flowers, skunk cabbage, catkins, young leaves and the soft inner cambium layer of tree bark, all rich in food value and low in difficult-to-digest cellulose. As an omnivore, a bear’s diet will range from spring shoots, to summer berries (such as mountain ash berries, raspberries and service berries – making it a great disperser of seeds as it travels up to 15 miles a day), to fall acorns (bears are famous for raiding squirrel stashes). Up to 85% of a bear’s diet is plant material. Of the remaining 15%, most of the protein comes from insects – ants, tent caterpillars, bees and their honey. Bears are constantly turning over rocks and ripping up rotten logs to find these little treats. A bear might take injured and small animals, but it is hardly a carnivorous, stalking predator. While a bear can run more than 30 miles an hour, it cannot sustain this speed for long, and prefers its food easy to get. A male black bear’s range can be as much as 250 miles in Colorado, while females keep their territory to 80 square miles, but it can be as small as 10 square miles. Territories will only be allowed to lap if there is an abundance of food. A female cub, however, might occupy some of her mother’s range and the mother will expand her territory to make room. Both males and females come into sexual maturity at around three years old, although males may take a little longer. The hottest month of mating is June. During the three to five days
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the females are able to conceive, these normally solitary creatures are inseparable – eating, bedding and mating. Once the deed is done, they go their separate ways. A female can come into heat again that summer, even giving birth to three different cubs from three different fathers that winter. An equally fascinating bear fact is that of delayed implantation, or embryonic diapause. If an egg is fertilized in June, its implantation on the uterine wall is delayed until fall, when the sow’s body knows she has enough weight to make it through the winter. If she doesn’t, the embryo will fail to attach and simply slough away. If she has enough fat and the fertilized egg implants, the cub will be born prematurely two to three months later. It actually takes less of the mother’s energy for the cubs to nurse than it does for her body to nourish a placenta. Cubs are only half a pound when born, about the size of chipmunks. By the time they leave the den, they’ll have gained five pounds. They’ll stay with the mother for the year, denning with her for the winter and emerging with her in the spring. After the second winter she’ll push them on their way, and they’ll wander up to 60 miles to find their own territory. The bear’s biology, with its anabolism and delayed implantation, is perfectly synched with the cycles of nature. In our fragmented, overpopulated lands, the black bear is one of the last vestiges of true wilderness. We’ve killed off the grizzly, the wolf and, almost, the wolverine. We’re privileged to still have the black bear as our neighbor. We have travelled a sorrowful road, from the most powerful Shaman Spirit known to the original people of this land, to the trashcan-tipping bears that struggle to stay alive in the bit of territory we’ve left them. And so I wonder, as humans here in this highaltitude community, can we muster enough responsibility in our actions to restore the dignity of this grand creature? And in the process – can we restore our own?
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Bears have superior navigational skills, intelligence and long-term memory. They can remember what day is trash day and where that juicy bird feeder was last year.
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When bears are allowed to get into garbage and food around our homes, it leads to their death. A bear that gets into garbage may eventually break into windows and doors. Once this happens, the bear is often killed. Most relocations fail. Bears dropped off 39 miles from home have an 80% return rate. Even with 170-mile relocations, 20% of the bears return. If they don’t, typically they find other communities’ trash to raid. The majority of “bear problems” can be remedied if we problem humans take a more conscientious role.
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TRASH Invest in a good bear-proof trashcan and latch it properly. Don’t put out your trash until the morning it is due. Bear-trash interactions could be dropped to 2% by this simple action. Scrub your trashcan periodically with an ammonia-based product like Pine Sol to reduce odors. Don’t throw bad food in the garbage; freeze it until trash day.
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BIRD FEEDERS Bird feeders are a high-caloric, easy score for bears. Find other ways to lure birds. Install a birdbath or nesting boxes. Plant native bushes, trees and plants of different heights to mimic natural habitat. Attract hummingbirds with lupine, columbine, larkspur, monkshood, scarlet gilia and Jacob’s ladder. A pesticide-free yard encourages bugs and worms, which birds love. If you must have bird feeders, take them down when bears are active in summer and fall. Use a feeder with a feed pan. Hang the feeder 10 feet off the ground and 10 feet away from anything the bear can climb. Bring feeders in at night. Clean seeds and hulls underneath. Buy quality feed without millet, which the birds discard. Bears aren’t picky.
AROUND THE HOUSE AND YARD Keep a clean camp, even at home, and reduce bear attractants. Keep your grill inside a lockable shed or clean it thoroughly after use. Wipe the outside with cleaner. Wipe down patio tables and chairs. Store pet food inside. Pick up food scraps in the yard. Never leave coolers outside. Don’t leave food in vehicles. Lock windows and doors of your car and house. Cover your windowsills (frequently) in Pine Sol. Summer 2013
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SEEING A BEAR AROUND TOWN Educate your neighbors on how to bear-proof their yards. Tell local law enforcement when you see a problem; the law requires precautions so bears aren’t drawn to human spaces.
IF A BEAR GETS IN YOUR SPACE Bears understand territory. Let the bear know this is yours and it’s not welcome. Make noise: bang on pots, yell, use an air horn. Spray the bear in the face with a high-pressure hose or a super soaker (put a touch of vinegar in the water). Bear spray must be squirted at the bear. Spraying it around the house is an attractant. Personaluse mace and pepper spray don’t work. Real bear spray costs around $50 a can.
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If you see a bear, remember it is a wild animal. Do not approach it. Bears prefer flight over fight. They want to avoid an encounter with you. A bear might huff, snort, stomp or make popping sounds. These aren’t attack signals; they mean the bear is uncomfortable and wants you to leave. If a bear stands on its hind legs, it’s trying to get a better whiff of you. Don’t run. Speak to the bear in a quiet, low, even-toned voice and back away. Change your route or skirt far around the bear. If the bear begins to approach, still don’t run. Don’t climb a tree – they’re better at this than you are. Make yourself bigger by standing
CAMPING Lock all food in your vehicle, out of sight. Don’t store food in your tent or leave coolers outside. Keep a clean camp; burn your grill clean and wipe down tables.
on your toes and waving your arms over your head. Get together if in a group. Yell, throw rocks and slowly back away. There are few predatory black bears that see humans as food. If this is the case, they’ll approach silently, ears back, in a stalking manner. Follow above instructions. If a black bear attacks, do not play dead. Fight back. But the odds of being attacked by a black bear are one in a million. You won’t see a grizzly here. If you visit grizzly country, the guidelines will be different from those for our black bears.
RESOURCES
CRESTEDBUTTE-CO.GOV Click on “Town Code” for info on trash, bird feeders and such; fines can reach $1,000. WILDLIFE.STATE.CO.US Click on “Wildlife Species,” then “Species Profiles,” then “Black Bear” for biological info and practical hints. Living with Bears: A Practical Guide to Bear Country by Linda Masterson Giving Voice to Bear: North American Indian Myths, Rituals, and Images of the Bear by David Rockwell.
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photo by Thomas Rutherford
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Crested Butte’s Public Policy Forum makes sure we stretch our brains as well as our bodies. By Kathy Norgard, Forum board member Photos by Nathan Bilow
“Civic virtue is about participation. It’s about taking an interest and playing a role in the governance of your lives.” — Gary Hart
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Inspire your passion.
I was still a Crested Butte summer resident on September 11, 2001, when a series of coordinated terrorist attacks rocked the United States and suspicion quickly fell on al Qaeda. Everyone I spoke to was in shock about this horror. It changed our lives in a single day. In the midst of that, a Crested Butte friend puzzled, “I wonder what our part was in this whole tragedy.” Even in his sadness, he wanted more information before he drew any conclusions. I have never forgotten that question. In 2003, the United States government continued its response to this attack. We were bombarded with media updates. Our response to the original acts of violence was meting out still more violence. After watching United States military tanks cross the Iraqi border on her television screen, the Reverend Christine Geer, an Episcopal priest in Crested Butte, called together diverse persons who shared her interest in public policy. Like my friend, Geer had questions. She questioned our response to 9-11. She wanted more, in-depth information about what was happening in the larger world. That meeting gave birth to Crested Butte’s Public Policy Forum. One of Geer’s core beliefs was that sustaining a democracy requires much more of its citizens than showing up at the voting booth every two years. She said, “People in Crested Butte are privileged to live in a beautiful place where they take care of their bodies and enjoy the outdoors. However, as citizens, we must exercise not only our bodies but also our brains so as to be informed, socially active and responsible.” The Reverend Geer and her original committee envisioned drawing a diverse audience to the Forum. They wanted the whole spectrum of this community to participate: ranchers, college students, businesspeople, service workers and vacationers. Those founders wanted to create a meeting place where ideas and views on a particular issue could be openly exchanged. I was grateful when the Forum began its presentations. I knew that life was not as simple as the sound bytes of information I received from the media. Now I’m one of the privileged who lives year round in Crested Butte. Here at the end of the road, sheltered in the beauty and magic of this place, I sometimes feel removed from problems in the world beyond. But the Forum brings the world up-close and personal and re-connects me to the larger picture. Having lived forty years in a major metropolitan area, home to several colleges and universities, I’ve heard many outstanding speakers address a myriad of subjects. Often, though, those presentations were somewhat homogenized, with no space for discussion, disagreement or audience feedback. By contrast, I’ve found it stimulating to watch conservatives and liberals rub shoulders at the Public Policy Forum presentations and exchange varied views in a civil, respectful manner. All voices are encouraged and
welcomed. The question-and-answer period following each speaker often draws lively exchanges between audience members and presenters. Larry Mosher, a retired journalist and former editor for the High Country News, was a founding member of the Forum and became its third president, following Christine Geer and Emily Collins. Mosher vividly recalls that the Public Policy Forum’s first speaker more than ten years ago addressed “The Roots of 9-11: From Colonialism to Islamic Radicalism.” Having spent a large portion of his journalism career as a reporter in the Middle East, Mosher views his participation in the Forum as an extension of his professional life, promoting factual reporting and encouraging thought and public discussion. Mosher recounts one evening in 2005 when Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, professor at Bethlehem University, spoke about “Solutions in the Israel-Palestine Struggle.” As moderator for Qumsiyeh’s talk, Mosher had to ask an audience member, Jim Kingsdale, to hold his enthusiastic interruption until the conclusion of the talk. During the question-and-answer period, Mosher called on Kingsdale, who apologized for expressing his disagreement during the presentation. Later, over lunch, Kingsdale told Mosher that by his listening all the way through Qumsiyeh’s talk Summer 2013
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Ellen Weiss, National Public Radio senior vice president, discusses “the revolution in journalism” with her Forum audience.
and then reading some supporting information, his views had changed, and he was grateful for the opportunity to hear another side to an issue that had been emotional for him. “That’s the essence of the Forum,” said Mosher. “Although some of the Forum’s topics arouse emotional responses from audience members, our mission is to move beyond emotions to facts. It is a medium to get people discussing facts and modifying and making informed opinions.” After hearing a talk about medical marijuana, I learned how important marijuana can be for people suffering from chronic or acute pain. I had never given medical marijuana much thought and certainly had no scientific information to support a view one way or another. Forum speakers have included United States senators, ambassadors, authors, activists, biologists (e.g. Janine Benyus in 2012, speaking on “Biomimicry: How It Can Help Sustain Us”) and a retired Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor. The 2013 line-up will focus on issues facing us all, from health care to water. Gerald Nelson, a senior research fellow in Environment and Production Technology, will discuss one of our world’s hottest topics, global warming. This season, everyone can attend the Forum at no charge, a change from the admission fees charged in previous years. The new policy for this non-profit organization, which relies on donations to meet its expenses, is an experiment to encourage even more community participation. That does not mean it is a “free-for-all,” said Jim Schmidt, who accepted the president’s gavel from Mosher in 2012. “The Forum continues to be a place for civil discourse, discussion and disagreement.” Schmidt has served on the Crested Butte Town Council for 23 years, six of those years as mayor, and has had many different careers. He now drives the Alpine Express van between Crested Butte and the airport, and he recalls talking to Forum speaker Ted Turner, a media mogul, businessman and philanthropist. Turner told him a story about being picked up at the St. Petersburg airport in Russia by Vladimir Putin. Turner’s network was broadcasting the Goodwill Games being staged in Russia. With that story in mind, Schmidt reminds us to “be nice to whomever picks you up from the airport!” Schmidt believes the Forum is a way to exercise your mind in a place where
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many come to exercise their bodies. He has been involved with the Forum since its inception because “it’s the good part of going to school. There are no tests afterwards.” Why do prestigious speakers agree to come, since the Forum only pays for airline and lodging expenses? Surely Crested Butte’s natural beauty attracts them. But they also are eager to participate in the Forum’s unique expression of democracy and to share their information and experience in an interactional manner. Addressing the Forum in 2007, retired Senator Gary Hart said, “Civic virtue is about participation. It’s about taking an interest and playing a role in the governance of your lives. Your presence here tonight, not on my account, is a demonstration, I think, of civic virtue. You are participating in the ideas that affect America and affect our world.” As Christine Geer commented, “Good public policy requires more than mere politics.” I attend the Public Policy Forum because I want to learn and be informed. Sometimes in listening to dialogues about global issues, I find answers to the question, “What is our part in this?” The Forum stimulates discussion, the first step toward taking informed action.
JULY 10 Jack Cochran, MD, FACS: “Health Care Reform”
AUGUST 7 Stephen Grace: “Western Water Crises”
JULY 17 Phillip Walker, JD, MPhil: “Afghanistan: Dangerous Ground”
AUGUST 15 Andrew Stahl: “Ethics of the Forest Service”
JULY 24 Tom Gold: China JULY 31 Joseph Cirincione, MS: “Nuclear Nightmares” 66
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AUGUST 21 Heather Hurlburt: “Drones: The Future of War” AUGUST 28 Gerald Nelson, PhD: “Global Warming and Food Production”
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TOWNI Ode to the Crested Butte
By Luke Mehall Once they’re awakened from winter hibernation, townies (beater bikes perfect for cruising town) rule Crested Butte. In no other place on God’s green earth are they respected more than here. Watch how they command traffic: a seasoned Crested Butte driver will slow down from an already crawling pace to wave a townie and its rider across the 68
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NI E Sorry, automobiles, you’ll have to wait your turn when the two-wheelers take over Elk Avenue for the Bridges of the Butte 24-hour townie tour. Alex Fenlon
street, on to their destination. It’s as if the normal rules of our industrial society were flipped upside down. Humanpowered transportation gets priority. Nearly everyone has a townie, and some use their townies more than their cars. Certainly within town limits, Crested Butte specializes in the slow pace of the townie. Summer 2013
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Photos from Braden Gunem’s Townie Series
Some townies are a bit flashy; others
are equal parts art and mode of transportation. The best will stop passersby dead in their tracks, to admire its character and beauty. Some aged townies barely function for more than the few blocks they are needed. They are rarely locked, even in front of a bar, which increases the chances they might be stolen – and they are occasionally stolen, followed by pleas in the newspaper that the trusty bikes be returned. And, yes, they are sometimes returned — after being found discarded in the yard of someone who knows the owner or recognizes the bike from reading the plea in the paper. This is a connected community, and the townie is one of our connections. Like many who are a part of this community, I don’t actually live in Crested Butte. I used to, but even when I did, CB was base camp to bigger adventures, to the mountains, rocks and the trails. A couple of years
ago, my last summer living in Crested Butte, I saw the townie in a different light, that of the night. With some friends I signed up for the 24-hour Bridges of the Butte endurance townie extravaganza. This was an extreme idea: see how many laps around Crested Butte you could pedal in the hours of a single day. Our warm-up was the Chainless Race that took place earlier in the week, an equally insane event involving a couple hundred costumed freaks descending seven miles into town without a single stroke of a pedal. Physically it might not have been much of a warm-up, but metaphysically it was. Our team was the Chihuahua Chasers, named after a harrowing incident where we chased a tiny dog around Gunnison for several hours as it cheated death running across the highway and through nearly every major intersection of town. For the Bridges of the Butte, we draped ourselves in costumes and assembled Summer 2013
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When fire danger nixed the July 4th fireworks last year, locals retrofitted their bikes with lights and staged an illuminated townie take-over.
a stable of townies that we hoped could hold together for several loops around town. The daytime circuits were fun, with the bystanders’ cheers fueling our stoke for this ridiculous test of stamina. The nighttime laps were unforgettable – bikes lit up like spaceships, riders not recalling what lap we were on, and not caring because what mattered was our presence on the townies and the stars looking on in approval. Our team members traded townies, and my personal favorite was a smooth-flowing lowrider, borrowed from a friend of a friend, mine for the moment. Sitting comfortably in the saddle, I felt like a kid lost in play, enjoying the simple pleasure of riding a bike for what it is, one of man’s finest inventions. Surrounded by my friends, cruising together like a bike gang – gangsters of love. On the east side of the course, where there were no houses and the town turned into dirt roads heading toward the mountain, another crew had stopped. Decked in a hundred lights, with townies of all variations, they had obviously spent some time preparing for this moment. A small stereo softly serenaded us. The stars winked. It was a classic moment, very out of this world, but very Crested Butte. No words needed to be exchanged; we just soaked it in, and then pedaled some more, in our own little townie heaven.
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FOR THREE DECADES, YOUNG CAMPERS LEARNED SKILLS, COLLECTED TALES AND BUILT CHARACTER AT THE SKYLAND CAMP JUST SOUTH OF CRESTED BUTTE. by Polly Oberosler
hen I was nine years old, I attended the summer camp called Skyland southeast of Crested Butte, where the golf course is today. There’s virtually nothing there now that tells of the camp and how it helped shaped young lives for 30 years, except for the name borrowed from the camp for the residential community there. In fact, the ground itself has been altered to fit the scheme of the golf course. But many of us have memories that can’t be bulldozed and skills learned at camp that we still carry with us today. In the late 1940s, Gunnison Community Church Minister Mel Dorsett met Chuck Ruland, a Crested Butte rancher. After a few fishing expeditions to the Ruland Ranch, Mel
came to view a part of the ranch as a suitable spot for a boys’ summer camp, and a firm handshake sealed the deal; Skyland Camp was born. Work began on the camp in 1949 when Mel’s son and daughter-in-law, Merle and Audrey Dorsett, joined him and his wife Von in remodeling an old cabin on a bench overlooking the pastures. A spring box was built up the hill to trap subsurface water, and a pipe ran from the box to the lodge kitchen and branched to a Quonset hut that served as a shower house. The spring was fed by the melting of glacial ice that lies under much of Crested Butte Mountain; it was the coldest water you’d ever put your hands in. Coal and wood stoves heated the water for camp use. Summer 2013
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The Dorsett family scoured the valley to buy old ranch wagons that were converted into “covered wagons” for the boys to sleep in. The roofs were constructed of hickory bows covered with canvas to make them rain proof. Small dressers were made for the wagons and flaps were sewn in the canvas for doors. Young legs clambered up and down the short ladder placed against each wagon, where four campers slept under the incredible night sky. The boys spent many nights beneath their army blankets listening in wonder to coyotes yipping in the distance. In 1953, small Quonset huts were constructed with rough-sawn lumber from the Rozman mill in Crested Butte, and the roofs were made with oak bows shipped from Tennessee and covered with tarpaper. The camp expanded its main lodge with logs harvested from the debris field of a large snow slide up Oh Be Joyful, and constructed a second lodge up the hill on the shore of the lake to become part of the “girls’ camp.” For the lodge fireplaces, the camp owners purchased bricks from CF&I’s abandoned coke ovens under Big Mine hill. They also bought cabinets, benches and tables from the Company Store when CF&I closed it. The ties for the fruit cellar, still visible above the current clubhouse, came from the railroad line that shut down with the mines. Skyland Camp had been raised from the death of the coal town it overlooked. Before the camp acquired power, kerosene lamps lit the buildings. The camp never had indoor bathroom facilities; everyone used outhouses. In fact, one camper recalls the fourhole outhouse being quite the social gathering spot for the girl campers. I remember Grant Lake, named for Chuck’s father, being draped with bright yellow and white lilies that bloomed all summer. Their fat green leaves provided pads for little brown frogs to catch the early-morning sun. The open water reflected images of Crested Butte Mountain, which towered over the lake, providing quite a backdrop as I learned to paddle a canoe.
“From my time at Skyland Camp, I took away incredible lessons that are part of who I am today. In doing this story, I discovered that my dad, Forrest Cranor, built many of the dressers, cupboards, tables and benches for the camp, which also touched my heart. I spent a few summers in my teens opening the camp for the Dorsetts by turning on the spring water and sweeping the lodges. It was always quiet there looking down on the Ruland Ranch, amid the aspens leafing out for spring.” —Polly Oberosler
Skyland campers came from all over the U.S., and they were instilled with values they would carry with them their whole lives. “We come to camp to learn to make decisions” was a phrase spoken often, primarily in reference to choosing daily camp activities, but it was also a mantra for individualism. Nobody held your hand, but they were there to pick you up if you fell. Camper Tom Stimson said, “One of my most vivid
memories was being greeted by Merle and Audrey Dorsett when my parents drove me to camp from Denver. I can still see Merle’s handsome, confident face, the wise, fatherly aura he radiated, and of course his cowboy hat and boots, blue shirt, blue jeans and bolo tie. Audrey had on a long skirt, pretty cowgirl shirt, spoke in this very distinctive and soothing voice, and had the biggest, friendliest smile I’d ever seen. As this was the first time I’d ever gone away for a month, I was a bit scared when my parents drove off. But meeting the Dorsetts pretty much wiped away those uncomfortable feelings, and when I caught my first garter snake a few minutes later under the main lodge, well… I was totally hooked on the place and was convinced I could hold out for at least a month.” A camper could try many outdoor activities, from horseback riding to target shooting. On hiking and backpacking trips, campers were chaperoned to peaks and high mountain lakes all over the north end of Gunnison County. When there were too many campers for an activity, the counselors used the game of “horsengoggle,” which was similar to “rock, paper, scissors”; the winners were in and the others picked another activity for the day. On rainy days, everyone worked in the craft shop, learned first aid or played games in the lodges. Time was never wasted; campers were always learning and interacting. Tom added another memory: “hiking the old railroad bed to Floresta and picking wild strawberries along the way. After all these years, I can still see this giant toad sitting in a puddle of rainwater in the road. It felt like I had discovered Summer 2013
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a new animal species, and the other campers were in awe of me because I had the guts to actually pick it up!” I remember hiking to the Bulkley Mine, where we slid down the old coal chute, laughing hysterically as we all got covered with coal dust. In the evening, campers sat around a large firepit singing songs like “Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night,” my favorite song. On some Saturday nights, the elder Dorsett, Mel, would tell tales. He had a slow, gentle voice, and he told stories with incredible animation that captured my imagination. On Sunday mornings, the campers gathered for church service on the hillside. Tom described Merle delivering the weekly sermon “with the most amazing, peaceful view of the mountains in the background, and Bob and Ann playing flute and I think oboe or clarinet music to start and end the ceremony. Sometimes Merle’s dad would also give a sermon in this incredibly soft and soothing old cowboy voice. I can also remember the eerie howl of coyotes in the distance, which added an even more mystical feeling.” The day began early at the camp with the “counselors in training” starting wood and coal fires in the shower houses and then waking campers. Marsha McCreight Cole recalls dragging herself from bed into the cold to start the fires or help prepare breakfast. I remember lying in my bunk bed wide awake at 5 a.m. with my army blanket pulled tight around my neck against the chill; I could hardly wait for the day to get started. All campers participated in helping Mrs. Miller as she prepared meals. Depending on your age, you peeled potatoes, filled wood boxes, cleared the table, scraped plates or washed dishes. Work ethic and co-habitation were lifealtering lessons taken from a summer at altitude. Working together was vital
Thanks to Audrey Dorsett and to campers and counselors Marsha McCreight Cole, Jo Sedmak Laird, Tom Stimson and Sean Duffey.
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to the efficiency of the whole, but individualism was never compromised. You were encouraged to be yourself and make the tough decisions, ultimately teaching you to take responsibility for your own choices. Sean Duffey (camper in the early 1970s) recently posted on the Skyland Camp Facebook page: “It was the best thing that ever happened to me and has shaped my life since. I think of those times often. Unmatched beauty! The hikes up Smith Hill and the backpack trip up West Elk Peak I will never forget. “I recall the coal-burning stove that kept the wash house warm in the mornings. Ever since then, if I ever smell coal burning, my mind takes me back to those misty, cold mornings at camp, washing up before breakfast at the wash house, and then Merle inspecting our fingernails and our hair before we could eat, and sending us back to wash our hands and comb our hair again if we didn’t pass the inspection.” After 30 years of helping youth become adults, the Dorsetts were forced to dismantle the camp in 1979 when that part of the Ruland Ranch sold. It was a sad time for former campers and many people in the valley, because the camp had stood for so long as a bright spot in their lives. The camp buildings, once constructed of recycled materials from around the area, then came full circle, being sold to start a new life on other properties around the Gunnison Valley. The boys’ lodge now rests below the Brush Creek Road a mile or so from the camp, and the girls’ lodge sits in Crested Butte as a private residence, as does the Ruland homestead cabin. The small Quonset cabins are scattered from Parlin to Gothic, serving new owners. The only remaining structure at the camp location is the old fruit cellar that was behind the boys’ lodge, its entryway recalling a treasured time in the lives of youth under the Colorado skies.
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Crows, ravens, magpies and jays make entertaining neighbors with their curious antics. by Peter Bridges
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Ben Hulsey
Not all visitors to Crested Butte know how rich we are in corvids, Latin Corvidae, the good-sized family of goodsized birds whose largest members are the ravens. Corvids are not just big, but also bright. Their forebrains are relatively as large as those of apes and, scientists say, they demonstrate ape-like intelligence. Our town has five kinds of corvids – crows, gray jays, magpies, ravens, and Steller’s jays – each distinct from the other. True, both our crows and our ravens are big and black, but even a neophyte bird-watcher can see that a two-foot-plus black bird saying Prruk from a rooftop is no crow. A sixth local corvid, Clark’s nutcracker, prefers forests to life in town, and it carries pine seeds in its cheek pouches to mountain caches. Dr. Chris Floyd, expert on birds in our area, points out stands of conifers high on Gothic Mountain that must have grown from such caches. Our loveliest corvid is the Steller’s jay. In summer it stays mainly in the forest. In deep winter, when we put out bird feeders – not wise in summer because they attract bears – a pair of Steller’s jays will often come into our yard. They are beautiful, big and midnight-blue, with heads and pointed crests that are nearly black. They are also clever, and have been known to imitate the cry of a hawk, presumably to make real hawks believe the local jay-hunting license has already been issued. The first creature named for Steller that I ever knew of has vanished from the earth: the Steller’s sea cow, a larger cousin of the dugong and manatee. Decades ago I saw its thirty-foot skeleton in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, labeled “extinct as of 1768.” There were also, I learned through the years, a Steller’s eider, sea eagle, sea lion, jay...
but who and when was
Steller?
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Georg Wilhelm Steller was a German naturalist, born in 1709, who joined the staff of the Russian Academy of Sciences and in 1741 sailed with Vitus Bering to Alaska. In addition to his birds and animals, he discovered a myriad of plant species on the Northwest coast. He died at 37 in Siberia and never got to Colorado. I am glad his jay did. Our other jay is the gray one. (We never see blue jays here; they stay mainly east of the Rockies.) Gray jays are sometimes called camp robbers, a name probably acquired when they discovered that miners’ camps contained good things to eat. Today they follow me on a summer hike, hoping for parts of my sandwich. On Mt. Crested Butte, a skier eating outside may lose French fries to an audacious jay. There is also a less attractive side to the gray jay. It is omnivorous, and its diet ranges from nestlings of other species and small rodents to moose ticks, carrion and slime mold. Whether it prefers such fare to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches has not, to my knowledge, been scientifically determined. Crows as well as some other corvids like to live around humans. Paul Ehrlich notes that they have entered our
psyche, as witness crowbars, crow’s nests, scarecrows, eating crow...and certainly Dr. Ehrlich, eminent scientist and our summer neighbor at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) at Gothic, several miles north from here as the crow flies, has much to crow about. I know a wooded neighborhood in Virginia where, a quarter-century ago, scores if not hundreds of crows would greet the dawn and a solitary runner with their raucous cries. I rather liked that corvid choir, but its population was decimated by the West Nile virus and remains smaller than it once was. West Nile has, so far, not hit crows or humans in Crested Butte, but we have long had fewer crows than, say, magpies. Perhaps we will have more crows in this region in the future. Another scientist/neighbor at RMBL, Dr. David Inouye, notes that crows have lately become summer residents in Gothic; they were first spotted nesting there in 2010. Another example, it seems, of a species moving uphill – Gothic is five hundred feet higher than Crested Butte – as the warming climate affects our mountains. Crows are not, I think, brave birds, but they know the value of cooperation. In Crested
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Butte, six or eight crows will band together to expel a far larger hawk from their airspace. Seeing them go after the hawk reminds me that a flight of crows is called a “murder.” I am not sure that such an aggressive flying circus ever comes to actual combat, let alone execution, but it’s a good show for us humans below. I find our magpies more interesting than our crows. Perhaps that’s because they have brighter garb. Our magpies are the Pica hudsonia. Their tails are very long, and the top of the birds, bill to tail, is black, but their shoulders and bellies are white and blue-green and show well when they fly. Magpies are at least as intelligent as other corvids, and they are bold. I find our
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Crested Butte magpies bolder than they were a few years ago. A crow will not engage me; a magpie will. One will come near me in our yard, studying me closely, and when I talk to the bird, it listens. I have no doubt that with time, I could teach it to say a word or more and take food from my hand. Magpies have learned to do these things elsewhere, as one may see on YouTube. But although magpies are bright in body and mind, I see them as somewhat prickly. Our chocolate Lab is more pleasant company. I feel no need to pet a magpie. Occasionally I see a congress of magpies in my neighborhood. Fifteen or twenty birds will come together, stalking up and down on the lawn across the street. I have not found a good scientific explanation for this – or, indeed, for various sorts of human assemblies. Our biggest corvid is the raven. Ravens are not numerous in Crested Butte. Do they disdain urban garbage? Certainly our crows and magpies – and bears – do not. But the raven is a rather haughty creature, big enough that it fears few other predators, and perhaps it prefers the countryside, except when, in winter, the hunting and scrounging are less fruitful out in the forest. In autumn, during humans’ hunting season, David Inouye has found that ravens will fly toward a gunshot sound, no doubt hoping to share the prey. Our kind of raven, Corvus corax, has been in America for two million years. At a guess, it came to these parts after our glaciers receded ten thousand years ago. Perhaps
human reverence, if not liking, for ravens goes back that far. In the Northwest, the Haida and Tlingit saw the bird as a clever deity, even the Creator. The raven is the national bird of Bhutan. The Celtic god Bran was, if not a raven, a being close to that – which prompted the need of the superstitious English to keep a half-dozen ravens at the Tower of London. I will not honor the raven as a deity, but, like Edgar Allan Poe, I find mystery in the raven and take off my hat to one perching atop our Old Town Hall. I intend no disrespect to our other birds. Our tiny hummingbirds migrate, incredibly, to Central America. We enjoy our handsome robins, even if they, too, leave for winter. The grandest of all birds hereabouts is the golden eagle. We also have bald eagles, but for unfathomable reasons they leave us in spring to fly north to the Yukon. The golden eagle lives here all year, and we see them soaring high above town. One August day, I climbed Mt. Axtell with my wife and friends. I walked the high green ridge a little ahead of the others to the cairn where one looks steeply down at Green Lake and the town beyond. As I reached the cairn, two golden eagles that had been perching on the rocks below me flew out, to glide on their great wings over the lake and woods. Longfellow said we could make our lives sublime; those birds made my day sublime. Corvids, can you provide me such a moment? No matter; I enjoy your company, as you do mine.
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CRESTED BUTTE MO UN TA I N RE SORT
Nathan Bilow
Desperately seeking siskins? Wanna-be bird watchers, may your patient sleuthing be beautifully rewarded. By Sandra Cortner Peter Pan, E.T., Harry Potter — through so many fictional characters, we feed our yearning for flight. Perhaps that explains our fascination with birds. The little creatures go freely where we big creatures cannot, except via space ships and airplanes. On the other hand, humans get to go to happy hour in a bar, where I found myself discussing local dove-sightings with my lady friends over a glass of wine. Were they ringnecked or mourning doves? When I got home, my husband, the real birder of our family, listened to my description, then looked in his big book. “They are Eurasian collared doves. Definitely not native. Introduced from Europe into the South.” Okay, so my husband has been birding much of his life, but when you’re a newbie, bird watching is for the birds. No doubt you’ve experienced this frustration: a lovely burst of color perches on your lilac bush, but as soon as you try to get a good look at it, off it flies. Darn! Where’d it go? Why can’t birds be stationary, like wildflowers, awaiting your close inspection? Instead, the feathered songsters
tempt you with their beautiful trills while cleverly concealing themselves behind leaves and branches. Don’t feel bad. Even experienced birders don’t have X-ray vision. Most birds’ plumage serves as camouflaging — to protect against predators and novice birders trying for a positive ID. So, what’s a wanna-be to do? In my case, marry someone with lifelong experience. Otherwise, get yourself a good pair of lightweight binoculars, a local bird list and a detailed bird book with color photographs. The Sibley Guide to Birds, written and illustrated by David Allen Sibley, is our bible, with its maps of ranges; descriptions of birds, including calls; differences between males, females and similar species; and my favorite — accurate color drawings of the birds both perched and flying. As a new bird watcher, think of yourself as a detective, searching for clues to solve the case of the missing unidentified bird. To succeed in your quest, be curious and patient, speak softly and move slowly. Birding is a solitary or two-person pastime. No dogs (even on a leash) or cats. If you can find a partner who knows more than you do, so Summer 2013
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Rebecca Weil
much the better. While you wait for a bird song or rustle in the trees or bushes, read that Sibley guide cover to cover. The best time to find your prey is in the spring or summer when the males are singing to the females. Hang out at your neighbor’s birdfeeder. Better yet, hang one of your own. Maybe your neighbor knows the birds and will teach you. Our first feeder, stocked with sunflower seeds, dangled from the clothesline in our downtown back yard, proving that we didn’t have to be in the boonies to bird watch. I gazed from the bathroom window while the chickadees and pine siskins darted from spruce tree to feeder and back. Underneath, spotted towhees or white crowned sparrows scratched for insects. Occasionally my husband politely asked me to leave my perch so he could use the toilet in privacy. We developed a friendly rivalry with our neighbor over whose feeder could entice the most rosy finches. After spending summers near snow patches atop the surrounding peaks, the finches wheel around in large, skittish flocks during the winter, stripping the platform feeders of their sunflower seeds within hours. They’d show up at our place, then fly over the roof to Tony and Kathy’s to gorge, and then return to us. For several summers in the 1990s, the black and yellow evening grosbeaks with their large bills would descend upon the feeder and let it twirl them like a merry-go-round. We keep a notebook of all the species we’ve identified. Some were migrating, like the sand hill cranes that showed up
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each year the first week in April. We could hear them calling to each other, although we could barely see them high above. We also spotted what we think were four whooping cranes, white with black wing tips against the sky. My friend who lives past the cemetery would call me on the phone, “They just flew over headed up Kebler. Did you see them?” Or after we moved down valley, I’d call and alert her. “They are coming your way; keep an eye out.” My observant husband is the master of identification. Holding binocs to his face, he murmurs, “Pale yellow breast, black cap, grey back…” As I try frantically to see the bird hidden in the leaves, he points at it. Startled by his movement, it takes flight. Now he is more specific. “Look past the tall grass to the tree in the shade that bends right; it’s on top of that shrub behind.” Most of the time, I can get a fix on the bird. Sometimes I can’t and have to settle for his murmur. Once he has translated from murmur to mind, he’ll pull out our dog-eared bible and
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slowly thumb pages before choosing the correct bird. If I’ve seen it, I’ll flip through quickly and slap down my finger. “That’s it!” Greg doesn’t settle for anything but certainty, and he patiently shows me the differences between what I thought the bird was and what he thought. Color is probably the first thing anyone notices. It can help with identifying until you get to the plain little brown birds like wrens, kinglets or sparrows. Often the name incorporates the color: yellow-headed blackbird, vermilion flycatcher, whitetailed ptarmigan or red-winged blackbird. Sometimes the color is subtle. For example, the red appears only on the shoulders of the male blackbird, and it’s most obvious during mating. Once, there was no question about what we had seen. On Navajo Bridge over the Colorado River a few miles downstream from Lee’s Ferry, we saw a researcher holding a radio antenna. She pointed down at the river, and there they were, eight or nine California condors perched on rocks with large white numbers and small transmitters affixed to their wings. Rescued from extinction, and one of the biggest and rarest birds in North America, the spectacular condors quickly soared away, out of sight within seconds. Had we been a few minutes earlier or later, we would have missed this once-in-a-lifetime sight. This, of course, is why we watch birds. Although less strenuous than climbing a mountain or skiing, bird watching is no less rewarding. And unlike wildflowers, those elusive birds make music for your ears. Find a bird checklist at rmbl.org (website of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory north of Crested Butte). Go to “data collection” and then “species.” But remember that the species found in the sagebrush area south of town will include birds, like the western meadowlark, which are rarely seen in the higher mountains around Crested Butte or Gothic.
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T h e Tr a i l h e a d C h i l d r e n ’s M u s e u m : W h a t b e t t e r t e a c h e r s t h a n c u r i o s i t y a n d d e l i g h t ? By Shelley Read
Photos by Nathan Bilow
So much of the world from that pint-sized point of view is tantalizing but untouchable – too fragile, too high, too dangerous, too messy to gather in your grubby little hands. Now picture approaching a bright purple fence, opening a small gate and walking into a lively land made entirely for you, where every item is kid-sized and beckoning to be touched. There’s a pirate ship next to a wooden jungle gym, musical instruments and art supplies galore, even a table dedicated to mess making. On one side of the colorful room, a farm grows vegetables, made of felt, to be plucked and delivered to a market complete with mini-carts and a cash register. On the other side, a sign – “Take your socks off and dig in!” – welcomes you to the Dig Pit, piled with soft plastic chunks and topped with shovels, dump trucks and hard hats. You’ve found kid heaven. Local and visiting families know this petite paradise as The Trailhead Children’s Museum. The Trailhead invites children, from babies to age 12, into a world that ignites their imaginations through hands-on play, art and science exploration. Located at the Mt. Crested Butte base area, The Trailhead’s exhibits provide the inspiration and raw material for creativity, and let the kids’ curiosity do the rest. The result is a magical place where children learn through choice, discovery, role-playing, and whatever fun they want to initiate. Kids rule at The Trailhead, and founder Kara Miller wouldn’t have it any other way. “The goal of The Trailhead has always been to provide a space where children can come and explore and learn through their play,” said Miller, a mother Summer 2013
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and former teacher with a tireless passion for stimulating young minds. Miller envisioned a local children’s museum in 2007 while sitting at home with her children, then two and four, wondering what to do on yet another frigid winter day. Once the idea struck her, this mom on a mission began creating the path to The Trailhead. With no background in this specific field, Miller began visiting children’s museums, first in Santa Fe, where she and her kids discovered their first “music garden,” and then others nationwide. “I ended up visiting 40 children’s museums to see what they had,” Miller laughed, “and I wanted all of it!” Before choosing what would be contained in a Crested Butte facility, Miller met with an unexpected obstacle while seeking support among local families. “A lot of people didn’t understand what a children’s museum was,” she said. So she showed them by opening a temporary space in downtown Crested Butte during the summer of 2008. Staffed with volunteer parents and equipped with a half dozen simple hands-on exploratory stations, the new attraction drew families, and the idea took hold. Miller amassed a dedicated board of directors who tackled the challenges of 501(c)3 designation and began to put The Trailhead on the map. In the fall of 2008, The Trailhead was officially born in an expanded facility in the Treasury Center in Mt. Crested Butte.
In response to great enthusiasm from locals and visitors alike, the museum expanded again into its current 2,700-square-foot space in the Outpost building in December of 2009. The museum now serves a remarkable 10,000 families annually, offers a variety of special programs at its facility and as community outreach, and boasts an array of exhibits as well as popular classes, summer day camps and after-school clubs. Miller emphasized that while the idea for the museum may have begun with her, it has flourished because of the commitment of many. Beyond the hard work of the founding families, “Crested Butte Mountain Resort and the towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte have also been tremendously supportive and helpful,” said Miller. She considers former Director Ross Tunkey and former Creative Director Kelly Frimel the “breath of The Trailhead.” Devoted founding member Katie Mueller has also worn many hats – including board member, director, development director and loyal volunteer – and Miller credits her with much of the museum’s expansion and success. The Trailhead continues to be guided by an involved board of directors and has grown to a staff of six. Executive Director Martha Clarkson happened to be in the right place at the right time to bring her life-long experience working with children to the growing Trailhead. A former preschool teacher turned school director with a master’s degree in education administration, Clarkson had just moved to Crested Butte from Vermont when she happened upon The Trailhead. “I saw the building and fell in love with what was going on here,” said Clarkson. “I told them, ‘Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.’ I just wanted to be a part of this.” Clarkson began as a curator and teacher last summer and took over as executive director in November 2012, grateful that Mueller and Frimel had the museum “all set up and thriving with everything in place.” The museum’s mission aligns perfectly with her educational philosophies. “Kids learn best through play,” said Clarkson, with a Summer 2013
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warm smile. “Art and imaginative play open up pathways that benefit all areas of learning. I have such a belief in the simple act of putting pencil to paper – or crayon to paper –and all the possibilities this creates.” Art is “a healthy choice” for all ages, she noted, and The Trailhead also has plenty of offerings for older kids. Sixweek classes as well as summer day camp sessions are available not only for the prekindergarten through third grade set but are specially designed for ages nine through twelve as well, with advanced workshops and themes like film making, graffiti art, precious metal clay design and masks around the world. The museum’s lower level is dedicated to a science lab where older children are enthralled by self-directed experiments, after which Clarkson often finds them upstairs playing the parts of waitresses or pirates. “You might be surprised how much fun the eight- or nine-year-olds have with our exhibits. Role playing can be fun and meaningful at any age,” she said. Above all else, Clarkson and Miller stress that The Trailhead is a place for parents and caregivers to interact with their children, where whole families can play together. “The museum is not a drop-off facility or a place to bring a book to read while your kids play,” said Clarkson. “On the contrary, our goal is to bring parents and children together to explore in a creative and comfortable environment where learning happens naturally. There’s an enormous benefit for both child and adult.” Trailhead board member Luisa Naughton agrees. Smocking up and sitting down with her five-year-old son Max at the Art Bar — an organized chaos of paints, brushes, markers, pipe cleaners, fabric, yarn and other items of creative fancy — Naughton praises The Trailhead’s role in the Gunnison Valley. “Here you’re focused on your child,” she said. “Kids can explore and choose and their minds get so excited. And parents get to play right along with them. In such a sports-oriented town,
this is a unique and great option for parents and kids.” Gunnison resident Molly Cudmore joyfully banged a djembe drum alongside her 20-month-old son J.J., while her five-year-old daughter Maddie navigated the jungle gym maze and her oldest son skied outside on the mountain. “When you go to other ski areas and you have younger kids, what is there to do?” Cudmore said. “I’ve been to a lot of ski areas, and I’ve never seen anything like this before. Our family loves it. So often kids can’t touch when they go into a place, but here everything tells them, ‘Go at it!’ and they do.” Such enthusiasm builds The Trailhead a strong local member base. It also enjoys a loyal following among tourists and collaboration with local schools and non-profits such as the Center for the Arts and the Crested Butte Music Festival. Several competitive art education grants also keep The Trailhead thriving. This winter the museum cut the red ribbon on an outdoor music garden similar to the one Miller fell in love with in Santa Fe. The Trailhead also purchased The Studio Art School and welcomed its founder, Melissa Mason, as program director to expand and enhance art class offerings. “My concentration is on keeping the museum an exciting and memorable experience for all who visit, while continuing to grow in a sustainable way,” Clarkson said. “Things are changing and evolving here monthly, daily even. And it’s driven by one question: what is best for the kids?” Ask the children up to their elbows in clay, making deliveries at the Garden to Grocery exhibit, or frolicking in the Dig Pit, and they’ll tell you: The Trailhead understands what’s best for young people. After entering the purple gate, they’re invited to dig into whatever intrigues them and allowed to walk their own winding path of discovery and play. Kids and parents agree; there’s no better education than that.
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The woodpile? No, it’s not an obsession. Really.
By John Norton
THERE WAS SEARING PAIN – LIKE SOMEONE HAD PUT A HOT IRON TO MY UPPER LEFT ARM. WHERE WAS IT COMING FROM? WHEN I TRIED TO MOVE AWAY FROM WHATEVER WAS BURNING ME, I MADE NO PROGRESS. THEN MY MENTAL LIGHT BULB SWITCHED ON. I WAS HOLDING MY RUNNING HUSQVARNA CHAINSAW, CUTTING ON A SMOLDERING TREE THAT WAS HUNG UP ON A HIGH POWER LINE. I WAS GETTING ELECTROCUTED. If the tree had dropped where I intended, this day would have been one of dozens of uneventful wood-cutting days I enjoy each year. But instead it had fallen on the power line. I’d cut the tree again in hopes of getting it off the line. The remaining portion of the tree had risen in the air, now entangled in the line. I’d started sawing again as I noticed the smoke begin to rise from the branches. The tree had begun moving downhill along the line, and so I followed, chainsaw above my head, chasing. That’s when the burning started in my arm. Safely separated from my chainsaw, I stopped by the Coxes’ nearby summer home. Judy was in and asked if I’d like a drink. “No, but I’d like to use your phone.” “I don’t think it’s working,” she said. “We’ve lost all our power.” “Sorry about running,” I said, “but I’ve got a call to make.” No one up Cement Creek had power for hours. Later that evening a representative from our power company came by our Cement Creek home. He found me reading by headlamp. “John,” the linesman said, “is that your handiwork up Summer Home Group?” I nodded. “Don’t ever fool with highvoltage lines and trees near them. You could have gotten electrocuted. Just call us when you see a tree near a line, and we’ll take care of it.” Summer 2013
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When we first got to Crested Butte in the mid 1980s, it seemed everyone burned wood for heat except Tony Mihelich, who burned coal at the Conoco. Although the bank hadn’t yet blown up, propane was somewhat feared. Natural gas hadn’t yet come to town. The only other option was electricity for heat, which everyone had and no one wanted to use because it was so expensive. There were woodpiles everywhere, and everyone cut, begged, bought, borrowed or stole wood for the winter. Burning wood was as much a part of our culture as skiing. Some people didn’t like the smell of the wood or the coal, but by and large I liked both smells, especially the coal. Eric Roemer isn’t joking when he says the restriction of wood stoves and the elimination of coal a couple of decades ago have had a negative effect on snowfall. The fires doubled as cloud seeding. Anyway, the burning is prohibited now in town and even in the county we pay a sin tax on our fireplace. Fires have always had a hold of me. On a river trip someone explained to me that if I didn’t build a fire, the night sky would be more visible. True enough, but sitting around in the dark doesn’t quite do it for me. So when we built our home up Cement Creek, there was no question about wanting some woodburning device. Our architect conceived of an airtight Rumsford fireplace drawing air from outside the house as an efficient way to throw heat. The firebox has a glass door, four feet by four feet, which provides a good view of the fire, and it acts for all intents like a big, builtin woodstove. With the sun and the fireplace, we stay pretty cozy all winter. Between neighbors who want dead wood removed and Forest Service permits, Cement Creek satisfies our wood needs. Putting in wood is a pretty straightforward operation. I sharpen the teeth on my chain; fill the chainsaw with fuel; grab a container of gas, an eight-pound maul, gloves, earplugs, sunglasses, a dog or two and a water bottle; and head out in our ¾-ton Chevy truck. The earplugs are a new addition,
The Norton family may run out of milk but they’ll never run out of wood. Photo Robin Norton
and I should have worn them always. My hearing has been compromised either by the saw or by listening to “Who’s Next” too loudly over and over again when I was younger. I know some people who can cut all day, but that’s not me. I’ve found that going through two saw-tanks of gas fills the truck bed and still leaves me with the energy to do something else. Three tanks or more and I’m toast, and I can’t haul home the wood I’ve cut. I’ll only split the wood on site if the rounds are so big I can’t lift them into the truck. That would mean an evergreen; even the biggest of aspens are smaller. Some of those evergreens don’t split too easily, but there is no round yet
found that can resist the continued entreaties of the eightpound maul. A difficult round might accept ten blows, 20, or 30, but at some point gives up its reluctance to coming apart. Working with the maul itself is like a reverse kettle ball exercise. I swing a softball bat late in each season with a bit more authority than early on, and I credit the maul. I recommend it for fitness, though you couldn’t use it indoors and you’d look foolish outdoors unless you were working wood. I even use it for kindling, which is overkill, but it gets the job done and the maul never gets stuck in the wood. Any given day, I might get some wood at lunchtime. To me, it’s just like going to the gym, except that the benefit
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is greater than fitness and strength because it includes heat and light. A neighbor up Cement Creek accuses me of having an obsession with wood. He drives by and claims I have three or four years’ worth of fires. He says it’s going to rot, and wouldn’t it be convenient for me and a neighborly thing for him to take some off my hands? He thinks I haven’t read Tom Sawyer. I’m not sure I have three years’ worth, but I have probably more than two. And while obsession might be too strong a word for my woodpile, I know where he’s going. There was a time when I was getting my business off the ground and my failures far outnumbered my successes. Cutting wood was one way I could feel useful in providing for the family. I could keep us warm. The piles did grow, and truly past where they needed to. Though this same neighbor does not pick through my piles for wood, he and I have found an agreeable way to work together. We call it the woodfor-food program. I deliver to him one full truckload of wood, probably threequarters of a cord, and he and his wife take me and my wife to dinner. Last year, we dined at the Crested Butte South General Store and ate cheesesteaks with fries and Cokes. I think he got the better part of that deal, although that is not a complaint about the cheesesteaks, which are the best to be found this side of Philadelphia. Other years, we have dined at the likes of Le Bosquet, where we had wine and a pretty square trade. The woodpiles on our property reach ebb tide each May. May is still cold enough to burn fires but a bit too early to cut because of the wet ground that comes with snowmelt. The air filter in the Husqvarana will have been cleaned, the teeth on the chain sharpened, the saw itself started against the chance the sparkplug needs replacing. The saw will be sitting next to the maul in the garage, and I’ll be waiting for the rites of spring: bringing that first tree of the season home so we’ll be certain of staying warm next winter. Yes, I’ve got to keep out in front of this game, but it’s no bother.
Getting ourselves back to the garden
Flower power: the next generation of Crested Butte activists cultivates consciousness. by Dawne Belloise
“We are stardust, billionyear-old carbon. We are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden...” — Joni Mitchell (from the song “Woodstock”)
T
hey were born of the generation that ushered in the revolutionary Summer of Love in 1967. They are twentyand thirtysomethings, longhaired, dreadlocked, educated, organic bio-musicians living in harmony and understanding, often under a shared roof. And they are cultivating a healthy lifestyle through gardening, drumming circles, dance, yoga and spiritual exploration in much the same way their parents or grandparents did half a century ago. Crested Butte’s next generation of activists is rebooting that back-to-the-land idealism, replanting the heirloom seeds of the Flower Power movement. But they have their own gallant battles – against genetically modified and super-processed foods, mineral extraction through fracking, and molybdenum mining on Mt. Emmons. They are positive-minded pacifists and tech-friendly activists, showing
how to produce food and energy locally, sustainably and communally. Food is an essential glue binding this community together. Because we live high at the end of the road in such extreme climes, Crested Butte has understood communality since its founding in 1880. From the original mining families, to the hippies that integrated in the sixties and seventies, to the recently assimilated nouveau hippies, all have shared knowledge, culture, music, food and the essential gardening, hunting and foraging lore. The early settlers learned what would grow in the fleeting summers and even harsher climate of winters past, when tunneling through eight feet of snow to the front door was the winter norm and the ground could freeze in July. Eventually they shared this knowledge with the hippies and ski bums who arrived after the ski resort’s opening in 1962. Our newest wave of self-taught, post-millennium farmers is now encouraging other residents to plant backyard food gardens or partake in a communal concept called Mountain Roots, where anyone can share the gardening workload and reap some of the harvest from several plots around town. Holly Conn, Mountain Roots director, said of the Mountain Roots gardeners, “They set out to beat the climate, which is not an insurmountable object.” Optimism was the attitude of the sixties love generation, as it is of this younger tribe. “Every garden we've grown has been an absolute success. We believe that people can grow their own food, offsetting their food costs and health care costs down the road.” Holly reiterates one other credo of both love generations: “Gardens bring people together.” Chris Sullivan, another of Crested Butte’s new idealists, lives in a communal house and plays multiple musical instruments. He helped found the successful Mountain Oven, an organic bakery sharing space in the Montanya rum-distillery kitchen whose mission is “to bake delicious and wholesome goods for our community with creativity and love.” Chris' influence came from his family. His grandfather was a conscientious objector in World War II who said he'd gladly grow food for his country. “My parents lived the hippie back-to-the-land lifestyle,” Chris said. “They embodied essential principals from caring for the earth to zero tolerance for prejudice, and they lived in a cabin in the woods of western Massachusetts. They had goats and a garden and were trying to move more toward a self-sufficient Summer 2013 103
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lifestyle that required minimal financial capital.” Until recently, Chris lived in a downtown Crested Butte house dubbed The Love Bath with others who share his ethics. “The Love Bath has not been a formal cooperative with set structures, although it may be moving more in that direction. These times and this shift in consciousness and a desire to reconnect with earth, they all build on each other because ideas were set into the collective consciousness. So simultaneously we’ve built on what was established by our ancestors, from my parents to the grandparents that we can't even conceptualize.” Katherine Taylor, another Love Bather and musician, grew up in Mississippi, where the sixties had a liberating effect on her eightiescollege-bound parents, allowing them to be more progressive, at least by southern standards. “I don't shave my
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armpits or other parts,” she laughed, referring to the hippie trademark spanning the generations. She also feels, as did the sixties children, that “the key awakening stimulants” have been “music and nature… and probably substances that alter your consciousness. In college, the psychedelic perception of reality was transcendental to me. I grew into a place of not needing or wanting drugs. There's a religious thread in there for me. I grew up in a small-town Southern Baptist church. I had an intense religious experience growing up, and now it's evolved into a spiritual existence.” Katherine can feel the shift in awareness around her. “Consciousness is creating, awakening the alternative. What you see in our eyes is that consciousness rising, and it will continue to reemerge and remember itself. We have faith in that. That's spring returning every year, it's life, it's gonna keep happening regardless of how dirty the environment or the politics get. As opposed to marching in Washington, we grow a garden.” She speaks in the voice of her generation, full of enthusiasm, seeing the world through fresh, wide eyes. In essence, they are stardust, they are golden, and they’ve got themselves back to the garden. Which happens to be in Crested Butte. It’s just nice to know that the culture of love, peace, music and homemade bread is still alive and cookin’. Carry on.
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Summer 2013 105
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Playing like a girl A new chapter of SheJumps brings women together outside – in solidarity and sometimes in tutus. by Danica Baker
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Female bonding at the 2013 SheJumps Inspiration Retreat at Irwin.
“O
f course I’m going to the Lobar tonight! It’s going to be the biggest girls’ party ever in Crested Butte!” said a male friend of mine that spring Saturday night. And he was right. The women of SheJumps were ending our weekend Inspiration Retreat with a fundraiser, complete with prize packages, two spots on an Irwin powder-ski snowcat the next day, and a massive dance party. Guys were invited, but women ruled the night. And, boy, it felt good! SheJumps, a nonprofit organization, increases female participation in outdoor activities by building communities that support and inspire. Chapters around the country bring women together to strengthen their relationships with each other, with their communities and with the great outdoors. We host “Get the Girls Out” events that help women have fun, connect with new and old friends, and share the love, so younger generations can continue to shred, storm mountains and develop great life skills. When I heard about this awesome organization, I had to “jump” on board! SheJumps has become personal to me as a woman who moved to a predominantly male town, one that offers many activities that honestly scare me to
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death. I didn’t come to Crested Butte to be a ski bum. I came because I love mountains, and I stayed because I love the community. By the time I heard about SheJumps, it was my turn to give back to this amazing place, and what better way than to focus on our small group of women (which I’ve since realized isn’t that small after all)? When we get together and motivate each other to reach beyond our comfort zones, we are a force! I have many personal goals for our SheJumps chapter. I want to learn new activities and get better at familiar ones. I want women to find the courage to step up and teach others. I want to break down barriers that we as women put around ourselves and to shed the notion that girls are mean. We came to this amazing valley for many of the same reasons, and the more we support each other, the better our entire community can be. SheJumps offers women a way to encourage each other to reach a little further, no matter how accomplished we are in any particular arena. There’s nothing prettier than a confident woman. Our Gunnison Valley chapter is growing steadily as the word spreads. Last winter I hosted a Get the Girls Out (GTGO) event once a month, which included meeting up, often in costumes or tutus, and skiing together. It was a great way for women to meet new skiing and backcountry partners. But SheJumps isn’t just a skiers’ organization. We’ll host GTGO events and less formal meet-ups in every season. I’d love to hear your ideas! The Inspiration Retreat last winter wasn’t just about a dance party, fundraising and cat skiing. It was about our roles as females in the work place, at home, in the sports industry, etc. We talked about different women’s leadership styles and how those fit into society. I loved hearing women discuss the opportunities we have ahead of us rather than concentrating on what is holding us back. So join us, women of the Gunnison Valley, and don’t be afraid to play like a girl! Visit shejumps.ning.com.
Coming home, again and again Crested Butte through the eyes of a happy split-timer.
by Joanne Reynolds
M
Rebecca Weil
y husband and I live in Crested Butte about two-thirds of the year, which makes us split-timers. The distinction between split-time and full-time residents is murky at best — most people leave for some period of time during the year. Over the decade that we’ve owned our home here, I’ve heard dark mutterings about “second home owners,” though objective data is lacking on the evils generated by split-timers. Subjectively, I think they’re a good thing. Splittimers return to town with fresh energy and generosity, and Crested Butte rewards them just as bounteously. We find it a great blessing to leave when Crested Butte is not at its best in spring and fall, the aptly named “mud season.” When we return we have the privilege of seeing this beautiful valley —and our place in it — with fresh eyes, a wayfarer’s syndrome in
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which the coming home is worth all the effort and anguish of the leaving. From the white and gray of winter to the emerging green of spring, the miraculous power of regeneration vibrates through the ground around us. The reverse is true, too, returning to the first snows of winter which enforce both a retreat indoors and an inescapable summons outdoors to ski and snowshoe. Coming home to Crested Butte South, we step from the intensity of urban and suburban life into the tranquility of rural life. That downshift in gears is essential; I don’t want to just smell the roses, I want to ponder how they grow. Finally, falling back into friendships we left behind when we departed is perhaps the sweetest part of the process of coming home to Crested Butte, again and again.
A SPLIT-TIMER’S TOP TEN REASONS TO LOVE CRESTED BUTTE
10. Outdoor fun: fishing, hunting, boating,
rafting, biking, hiking, four-wheeling, golf, tennis, skiing of all sorts, hockey, snowshoeing… and more. 9. Wildflowers, the astonishing number and variety. 8. Cattle, even when you’re caught in a “traffic jam” (a.k.a. cattle drive) on the highway when you’re late. 7. History; it’s everywhere. 6. Organized chaos; there’s rarely an occasion that doesn’t call for costumes or a parade. 5. Festivals, from music and art to the former Poo Fest, inspired by our beloved but indiscriminate dogs. 4. Races, from the Al Johnson Uphill/Downhill telemark race, to the Grand Traverse cross-country ski race to Aspen, to the chainless bike race down Kebler Pass Road, to the Grin & Bear It run to Green Lake and back, dodging the bears. 3. Food: the variety and sophistication of our restaurants plus fresh produce and locally raised meat from the Farmers Markets. 2. Scenery. Mountains, rivers, creeks, meadows – beauty so intense it makes my heart hurt. 1. People. Hang out at an Alpenglow or Mt. Crested Butte concert and meet the laid back yet passionate, quirky, inclusive people who make Crested Butte so remarkable. 110
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Base camp Crested Butte For this wanderer, there’s still no place like home. By Gregory Pettys
“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.” — H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet Shayn Estes
F
or more than a decade, I’ve called this place home. Though the world tempts me on meandering missions far from here, my spirit chooses to reside in this mountain valley. Years pass steadily by as I go through one passport after the other, learning ever more about the interconnectedness of all cultures while living with exotic peoples in the far reaches of the globe. And after each transformative adventure, I return to Crested Butte, where I collect not only my mail, but also my everunfolding sense of belonging. I’ve acquired a peculiar life. Unable to commit to one dream, I’ve chosen to follow many. Occasionally I heed the call of the rivers and sign up as a raft guide, spending weeks in pristine canyons where Great Unconformities whisper songs long forgotten. At times the lure of Asia enters my dream-space, and, on waking, I surrender and head, as if in a trance, toward the Himalaya. There, lessons from the Buddha rise in misty-morning offerings of burning cedar and lengthy postulations. When Crested Butte’s winter becomes too deep and even my strongest of all cravings – snowboarding the powder – can no longer fully satisfy, the islands of Hawaii call. I make the pilgrimage then to her enchanted shores with child-like joy and sage-like reverence. Before moving here, I didn’t know how the greater world would become an integral part of my life. I was a simple Midwestern son-of-a-preacher man with a vague interest in mountains, who used attending Western State as an excuse to chase that desire. But soon the riddles hidden in the sun-kissed faces of the valley’s merry pranksters were riddles I had to solve, and I found myself carrying the same secret smile. “You won’t find moments in a box. Someone else sets your clocks…” rings the verse of the Phish song blaring from the radio as I write in the comfort of the
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Last Steep, a bar and grill where locals gather to share their tales of adventure. I realized the truth of those lyrics when I moved to the mountains and adopted the Spirit of the Hills. In Crested Butte, everyone seems to understand. Life is found in the journey, not in the destination, and time is an illusion defined however we will. I remember the day I received a call from an ex-lover, a raft guide along the Colorado River. She was short handed for a 28-day rafting trip. If I could get there immediately, the trip was mine. I was working at Izzy’s bagel shop, and I didn’t know how to convince my boss I needed a month off. Craig Maestro, the owner, a stout and lovable man, can be a bit intimidating. Informing him that I was going to bail for a month seemed a good reason for him to snap. But snap he did not. Before I could finish my plea, he interrupted me with that intoxicating smile of his and suggested I cut my shift short and start packing. Craig knows exactly why we live here, made clear by the wall of postcards sent to him from around the world, showing adventures of both body and mind. Thanks to him, I was on the road that night headed toward the Grand Canyon, and would be returning to a steady paycheck to boot. Scenarios like this – and there have been many – remind me why Crested Butte is still home base. The citizens of this sacred valley honor life, first and foremost. In direct ways, like efforts to preserve Mt. Emmons from mining threats, or in more metaphorical ways, like calling off work when it snows more than six inches, Buttians answer when life calls, whether that call comes from the snowflakes piling up outside the window, a neighboring canyon or the other side of the globe. As a writer, overseas experiential educator and powder hound whose life is spontaneous and uncertain, I need a community of open-minded, open-hearted citizens. And I’ve found no place less rigid, more forgiving and more consistently supportive than the Gunnison Valley. This is why I call Crested Butte home.
A Haitian exchange Teaching pottery and learning gratitude.
H
By Donna Rozman
ands together, squeeze, ease up, press down… strong hands, gentle touch… more water. We were teaching pottery-throwing skills to 13 women on four tabletop potters’ wheels in the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Our goal: turn these women, who had no experience with clay, into production potters in three weeks (a process that typically takes ten years). Our students were hungry to learn, knowing this skill could give them an income to provide for their children. Many “orphans” in Haiti have living parents driven by extreme poverty to give them up for adoption. So Shelley and Corrigan Clay started ApParent Project, training and employing parents in jewelry, bead and book making, sewing and now pottery. They use discarded cereal boxes
to make paper beads, local clay for ceramic beads, and recycled paper for journals. The crafts are sold in their Papillon Boutique, to retailers, through jewelry parties and via the Internet. When a friend and I arrived in Port-au-Prince last January, we were awestruck by the intensity of sights and sounds: colorful buildings, flowers, billboards and tap taps (a sort of taxi); a constant congestion of people, motorcycles and cars; wandering goats and chickens; and noisy generators running all day (city electricity turns on only at night). But this was no sightseeing trip. With two other potters, we brainstormed how to streamline the ceramics training, set up a studio and build furnishings, and help the clay processor increase the production of workable clay. Our students were women, ages 18-40, with remarkable stories, like a single mom raising five children, three of her own and two adopted; and a teenage mother with a third grade education who attended school in the afternoon. It was a joy to interact with our eager, energetic apprentices. Watching the women learn to throw, I was moved by the way they looked out for each other. Most of them had no electricity or running water in their homes, yet they took great care with their appearance; lots of sponge baths, I suppose. And many had cell phones (which was odd to me) that they charged at the studio. If they had a mismatched charger, they cut the end off of it and stripped the wires to attach to the current in the phone. The well-used Haitian word for resourcefulness, which sounds like degashay, means finding ways of doing things out of necessity. Most of these cheerful women had lost loved ones in the earthquake, and they had so much less than we do in Crested Butte. But the clay bonded us. In a society dominated by men, their female teachers were role models for them. Coming home from Haiti, I realized I sometimes don’t appreciate what I have: the beauty that surrounds me, food, a home, clean water, a toilet to flush, even computers and TVs. Yet for some reason, I can’t wait to go back to Haiti. Our students had a strength of character I’d like to emulate. When another teacher commented about how much our visit could change the lives of these women, I thought instead about how much it had changed my own. To learn more, visit apparentproject.org or papillonenterprises.com. Summer 2013
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summer
events
JUNE
2013
9, 16, 23, 30 15
Crested Butte Farmers’ Market, Elk Avenue & 2nd
CBMR Adventure Park, zip lines, chairlifts & bike park open
Give to Heal fundraiser - Center for Restorative Practices (CRP)
16 19-22 20-23 19-23 22 24 26-30 26 27 29-30 29-30 30-Aug. 11
Slogar’s Fried Chicken & Waffles Father’s Day Brunch for CRP Taste of Crested Butte (see story p. 30) Crested Butte Writers Conference, Elevation Hotel Gunnison River Festival Crested Butte Film Series at the Center for the Arts (CFTA) Alpenglow free concert: Urban Island Steel, Center for the Arts Crested Butte Bike Week Tour de Forks gourmet dining at Moon Ridge home, for CFTA ArtWalk Evening, Crested Butte studios & galleries Big Mountain Enduro Biking Series, Crested Butte Mtn. Resort Bridges of the Butte 24-hour townie tour, Adaptive Sports Crested Butte Music Festival
JULY
Crested Butte Music Festival continues all month. Painting, clay, crochet, printmaking, wildflower art & other classes at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts.
John Holder
Rebecca Weil
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JC Leacock
1 2
David Mayfield Parade, Alpenglow free concert, CFTA Black & White Ball, CB Mountain Heritage Museum
Live Painting Series at the Lobar, Art Studio of the CFTA
3 3, 7, 10, 21, 25, 30 4 6-7 6-14 7, 14, 21, 28
Richie Furay concert, Center for the Arts
Farmers’ Market at Elk & Second
8
Art + Land Workshop, by the Art Studio & Wildflower Festival
Alpenglow concert, CFTA: Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band
8-14 10, 17, 24, 31
Live! From Mt. Crested Butte free outdoor concerts
Public Policy Forum (see p. 61-66)
11, 18 11-14 12-13 15 16-28 17 19-20
Crested Butte Film Series at the Center for the Arts
Tour de Forks gourmet dining for CFTA (see p. 123) July 4th parade, street games, music, fireworks Bluegrass in Paradise, CB Music Festival Cattlemen’s Days in Gunnison AWEFest on Elk Avenue, by Artists of the West Elks
Crested Butte Wildflower Festival
Crested Butte Food & Wine Festival (see p. 123) Caddis Cup fly-fishing tournament, Crested Butte Land Trust Alpenglow concert: Corb Lund, CFTA Opera in Paradise, CB Music Festival Family Workshop: Make Clay Maracas, Art Studio/CFTA Summer Theatre for Youth Performances, CB Mtn. Theatre
Epic Rocky Mountain Relay, run from Cañon City to CB
19-21 22 24-28, 30-31 25 27 29
Natl. Cutting Horse Competition, Lacy Ranch Alpenglow concert: Mountain Standard Time, CFTA “Cabaret,” CB Mountain Theatre ArtWalk Evening, Crested Butte studios & galleries Living Journeys Summit Hike & Mtn. Half-Marathon Alpenglow concert: New Speedway Boogie
JC Leacock
AUGUST
CB Music Festival continues all month. Classes at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts: photo walk, cocktails & clay, watercolor.
1 1, 6, 8, 11, 21 26 2 2-4 3 4-5 4-8 4, 11, 18, 25 5 7, 14, 21, 28 9-11 11, 18, 25 12 15 24-25 29 31-Sept. 1
ArtWalk Evening, studios & galleries Tour de Forks gourmet dining (see p. 123) Parade of Homes to benefit CRP Crested Butte Arts Festival (CBAF) Aspens & wildflowers photo walk, Art Studio/CFTA & CBAF Cocktails & clay, Art Studio/CFTA & CBAF Crested Butte Open, golf tourney & gala for Adaptive Sports Mountain Ultra Marathon, CB to Snowmass Crested Butte Farmers’ Market, Elk Avenue & 2nd Alpenglow concert: Far West Live! From Mt. Crested Butte free outdoor concerts Public Policy Forum (see p. 61-66) Gypsy Jazz in Paradise, CB Music Festival AWEFest on Elk Avenue, by Artists of the West Elks Alpenglow concert: Opal Moon & Empty Bottle Blues Band Crested Butte Film Series at the CFTA Crested Butte Mushroom Festival (see p. 123) ArtWalk Evening, studios & galleries People’s Fair (arts, crafts & more) on Elk Avenue Rebecca Weil
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2013
events
Trent Bona
SEPTEMBER 1
People’s Fair continues
West Elk Bicycle Classic (Gunnison, Black Canyon, CB)
1-30 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 5, 8 7 7-8 10 15-21 18 19 26 26-29 27-29 29
OCTOBER
Crested Butte Film Series, CFTA
September Splendor in the Rockies, events valley-wide
6, 13 17 31
Farmers’ Market, Elk Avenue & Second St.
KBUT Radio, Elk Avenue
Farmers’ Market, Elk Avenue & 2nd
Halloween Parade presented by
Tour de Forks gourmet dining (see p. 123) Fall Festival of Beers & Chili Cook-off, Mt. CB (see p. 123) Pearl Pass Mountain Bike Tour, CB to Aspen Clay earring holder workshop, Art Studio/CFTA Vinotok fall harvest festival Colorado Proud School Meal Day Crested Butte Film Series at the Center for the Arts ArtWalk Evening at studios & galleries Crested Butte Film Festival Rocky Mtn. Collegiate Mtn. Bike Races, CBMR Closing day for CB Mtn. Resort Adventure Park and bike park
Also check out programs for adults & children at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Roots & Shoots Summer Field Studies for kids, Crested Butte School of Dance, Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum, Yoga for the Peaceful, Crested Butte Mountain Theatre, Trailhead Children’s Museum classes, Gravity Groms for Kids Who Rip, Crested Butte Dance Collective, Crested Butte Spirit/Mind/Body, & recreation programs through the towns of Crested Butte & Mt. Crested Butte. For the latest info, see Gunnison-CrestedButte.com/events. 116
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dancecrestedbutte.org photo Nathan Bilow
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LODGING Alex Fenlon
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Vacation Rentals 510 Elk Avenue, Crested Butte
Crested Butte’s premium vacation rentals. We work with each client to provide the perfect vacation -- arranging accommodations, activities, tours and more. 1.800.260.1935 alpinegetaways.com AD PAGE 74
CRISTIANA GUESTHAUS Bed & Breakfast Hotel 621 Maroon Avenue PO Box 427, 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
ELK MOUNTAIN LODGE
Bed & Breakfast Lodge PO Box 148 129 Gothic Avenue, Crested Butte
Historic inn located in a residential neighborhood of downtown Crested Butte. Just two blocks off the main street. 19 rooms individually decorated. Some with balconies. 1.800.374.6521 elkmountainlodge.net info@elkmountainlodge.net AD PAGE 104
AD PAGE 120
IRON HORSE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
THE NORDIC INN
OLD TOWN INN
Specializing in highly personalized property management and vacation rentals. Expect more. 1.888.417.4766 ironhorsecb.com
A true slice of nostalgia from the early days of skiing in Colorado and now represents a special part of the history of Mt. Crested Butte. 500 yards form the lifts and the closest lodging to the 401 and Snodgrass trails.
The warmth of a family inn; value, convenience & amenities of a hotel. Home-made afternoon snacks, yummy breakfast. Rooms with two queens or one king bed. On shuttle route, stroll to shops, restaurants & trailheads. 1.888.349.6184 oldtowninn.net info@oldtowninn.net AD PAGE 121
Rental Homes PO Box 168, Crested Butte
AD PAGE 31
Bed & Breakfast Lodge 14 Treasury Road PO Box 127, Mt. Crested Butte
1.800.542.7669 nordicinncb.com info@nordicinncb.com
AD PAGE 120
PEAK PROPERTY
PIONEER GUEST CABINS
Specializing in one to seven bedroom condos & private vacation home rentals in historic downtown Crested Butte, Mt. CB, the Club at Crested Butte (country club) & CB South. 1.888.909.7325 peakcb.com info@peakcb.com
Established in 1939, inside National Forest, only 12 minutes from town. 8 clean and cozy cabins, with Cement Creek running through the property. Fully equipped kitchens, comfy beds, fireplaces and more. Dog friendly, open year round. 970.349.5517 pioneerguestcabins.com pioneerguestcabins@gmail.com AD PAGE 65
Management & Sales Rental Homes 318 Elk Avenue, Crested Butte
AD PAGE 121
WEST WALL LODGE
Luxury, Slopeside Condominiums PO Box 1305, 14 Hunter Hill Road, Mt. Crested Butte
One to four bedroom residences. Each condo offers a fireplace, balcony, fully equipped kitchen, and oversized master bathroom. Underground parking. Fitness center, guest bar/ lounge, four season pool, hot tub and fire pit. 970-349-1280 westwalllodge.com AD PAGE 73
Cabins 2094 Cement Creek, South of CB
Hotel & Family Inn PO Box 990 708 6th Street, Crested Butte
THE RUBY OF CRESTED BUTTE
Luxury Bed & Breakfast PO Box 3801 624 Gothic Avenue, Crested Butte
Luxury B&B with full breakfast, private baths and concierge in historic Crested Butte. Also pampers pets with in-room dog beds, crates, home-made treats and dog-sitting service. 1.800.390.1338 therubyofcrestedbutte.com AD PAGE 14
213 GOTHIC
Rustic Log Home, Crested Butte Beautiful 7 bedroom, 8 bathroom home. An ideal vacation home and great location for the whole family. Sleeps 19. 1.970.209.6376 213third.com keithpayne@yahoo.com
AD PAGE 120
John Holder
Summer 2013
119
Dust if you must by Rose Milligan
Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better To paint a picture or write a letter, Bake a cake or plant a seed, Ponder the difference between want and need? Dust if you must, but there’s not much time, With rivers to swim and mountains to climb, Music to hear and books to read, Friends to cherish and life to lead.
A distinctive, unique Historic Inn Downtown Crested Butte
800.374.6521 elkmountainlodge.com
A Colorado Classic… a Crested Butte Original The Nordic Inn is truly a slice of nostalgia from the early days of skiing in Colorado. You are surrounded on three sides by the Gunnison National Forest and at the heart of one of the finest year-round recreational playgrounds in North America.
Your bed and breakfast base camp for all mountain adventures. 970.349.5542 • 1.800.542.7669
nordicinncb.com 120 Crested Butte Magazine
Dust if you must, but the world’s out there, With the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair, A flutter of snow, a shower of rain. This day will not come around again Dust if you must, but bear in mind, Old age will come and it’s not kind. And when you go – and go you must – You, yourself, will make more dust.
Perfect Vacation Rental
* 7 Bedrooms, 8 Baths, Sleeps 22 * Complete Gourmet Kitchen * Steps to Free Shuttle to Crested Butte Mountain Lifts * Stunning Views, 1 Block to Center of Town of CB * Sunroom, Steam Room, Library, Internet & Wireless * Location is perfect for walking to Shops, Restaurants, and the Historic Center of Town
970-349-0445 www.213third.com E-mail: rita@213third.com
Summer 2013
121
9380 PRIME • 251-3030
Elevation Hotel, Mt. Crested Butte
DINING
Slopeside, featuring 2 dining venues: 9380 (casual) and Prime (fine dining). 9380 is your breakfast, lunch and apres-ski spot, with firepit and outdoor bar. Prime opens at night for contemporary dining.
Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner
DJANGO’S • 349-7574
Courtyard of Mountaineer Square, Mt. Crested Butte Enjoy award-winning cuisine in a relaxed modern setting. Our small plates have captured national attention and combine Spanish and southern European flavors with the freshest seasonal ingredients. Patio dining begins at 5 p.m. Dinner served 5-10 p.m. Reservations recommended. Dinner
Ad on the back cover
Ad pg. 126
BACCHANALE • 349-5257 209 Elk Avenue, Downtown thebacchanale.com
A modest Italian restaurant from the team that launched django’s. Our fresh and light menu will re-introduce you to simple flavors, colorful salads, artisan flatbreads and handmade specialties. Join us daily at 7am for coffee and breakfast, and come back for dinner nightly from 5-10pm. Reservations accepted and can be made online. Breakfast / Dinner
Ad on the back cover
DONITA’S CANTINA • 349-6674
EASTSIDE BISTRO • 349-9699
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!
Fine dining with spectacular views. Rotating menu created with local and sustainable ingredients ranging from Rocky Mountain Elk, Wild Boar, Arctic Char, and Colorado Striped Bass to locally raised Beef Steaks, Duck Breast, Colorado Lamb and Pork Chops. Well rounded wine list and specialty martinis. Brunch on Saturday & Sunday.
4th & Elk, Downtown
Dinner
Ad pg. 124
435 6th Street, Downtown
Brunch / Dinner
Ad pg. 127
LAST STEEP • 349-7007
LIL’S • 349-5457
MAXWELLS • 349-1221
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.
Fine Dining. CB’s newest steakhouse. HDTVs for watching the games. Hand-cut steaks, seafood, pastas, lamb, pork, burgers, salads, appetizers, kids’ menu. Extensive wines & beers.
208 Elk Avenue, Downtown
Lunch / Dinner
Ad pg. 126
MCGILL’S • 349-5240
228 Elk Avenue, Downtown Old-Fashioned soda fountain. Malts, shakes, sundaes, banana splits, libations, homecooked breakfasts and lunches prepared to order. Historic locale, casual atmosphere.
Breakfast / Lunch
Ad pg. 126
SOUPCON . 349-5448
Off Elk Avenue on Second, Downtown
Romantic, petite bistro featuring traditional French technique using local ingredients married with the finest cuisine from around the world. Open seven nights a week. Two seatings nightly. Reservations recommended.
Dinner 122 Crested Butte Magazine
Ad pg. 127
321 Elk Avenue, Downtown
Dinner
Ad pg. 127
PITA’S IN PARADISE • 349-0897
Lunch / Dinner
Ad pg. 124
RYCE • 349-9888
120 Elk Avenue, Downtown
3rd and Elk, Downtown
Gyros, kabobs, sliders, fresh made hummus and baba gannoush, pita nachos and homemade soups. Greek and tahini salads, spanokopita and curly fries. Outdoor dining. Happy hour specials. Serving everyday.
Lunch / Dinner
226 Elk Avenue, Downtown
Ad pg. 124
Bringing you the best culinary treats from Thailand, China, Japan and Vietnam. Spacious riverside dining room and an atmosphere that is perfectly casual. Ryceasianbistro.com for hours and menu.
Lunch / Dinner
Ad pg. 125
WEST END PUBLIC HOUSE • 349-5662
WOODEN NICKEL • 349-6350
“Elevated,” comfort food. The ONLY housesmoked BBQ in CB! Fresh oysters, small plates, steaks, seafood, salads, sandwiches, burgers, kids menu, and more. Eclectic wines, craft beers, and specialty cocktails. HDTVs, 8ft. digital screen upstairs to watch the game or play X-Box Kinect!
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.
2nd and Elk Avenue, Downtown
Lunch / Dinner / Sunday Brunch
Ad pg. 127
222 Elk Avenue, Downtown
Dinner
Ad pg. 82
WHAT’S SIMMERING FOR
SU M ME R
A CULINARY CALENDAR OF EATING, DRINKING AND BEING MERRY.
CRESTED BUTTE MUSHROOM FESTIVAL August 24 - 25
Mushroom fan and womanabout-town Dawne Belloise resurrected the mushroom festival this summer after a brief hiatus, adding her own imprimatur. Look for lectures, wild mushroom forays, cooking demos, meals and an evening soiree for novice to veteran fungiphiles, including speaker/ forager Larry Evans and elegant chef Jason Vernon of Soupcon. Festival events will cover all types of mushrooms and touch on wild herbs and other natural edibles. crestedbuttemushroomfest.com.
CRESTED BUTTE ARTS FESTIVAL CULINARY EVENTS August 2 - 4
Free cooking demonstrations at the Viking Culinary Tent will feature local and visiting chefs showing their techniques, sharing recipes and offering freshly prepared samples. The Naked Grape and Oskar Blues Brewery will host free wine and beer tastings as well. On Aug. 1, Ginger Café chef Spencer Hestwood will share his cooking approach along with signature cocktails, wine and beer to sip. crestedbutteartsfestival.com.
TOUR DE FORKS
June 26 - September 8 This signature fund-raising series for the Center for the Arts includes 15 epicurean events with top chefs in spectacular homes and outdoor settings. For example, hobnob with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Richie Furay; hike through the North Pole Basin while picking the brain of a scientist; savor brunch overlooking the Slate River Valley. crestedbuttearts.org. June 26 July 3 July 7 July 10 July 21 July 25 July 30 August 1 August 6 August 8 August 11 August 21 August 26 September 5
Winemaker Dinner with Soupcon Elegance “It’s a Good Feeling to Know Richie Furay” Elegant Echelons and Bountiful Brunch Adventure to the North Pole The Outer Limits… of Town Sunset on Red Lady The Kingdom of the Two Sicilys Riverside Feast at the Wilder on the Taylor Top of the World Funky Town: The Part at the End of the Road Quintessential Historic Cabins Tour d’Art Dawn to Dusk Golf Challenge The Grand Finale
CRESTED BUTTE FOOD & WINE FESTIVAL July 11 - 14
Now hosted by the Center for the Arts, this festival will wow wine and food experts and novices with wine seminars, elevated dining events and food pairings. The Grand Tasting will cover 500 select wines. Seminars, with visint and local sommeliers and chefs, are spread through local restaurants. Provided through a partnership with Larimer Associates. crestedbuttewine.com. HIGHLIGHTS: July 11 Anything but Chardonnay : Unique Whites at Lil’s; Pinot Noir from around the World, at 9380; Anyone Can Make an Artisan Cocktail, at Montanya’s VIP Kickoff, at 9380 Prime Film screening of “Sideways” July 12 Colorado Food and Wine, at West End Public House Italy: It’s More than Chianti, at the Bacchanale Old World vs. New World, at the Princess Wine Bar Garden Celebrity Chef Tour at a private home July 13 Wine 101, at Center for the Arts Grand Tasting Celebrity Chef Tour, at Maxwell’s Steakhouse July 14 Bursting with Bubbles Brunch, at East Side Bistro Summer 2013 123
Bar and Grill Vegetarian Dishes • Gyros • Shrimp, Chicken & Tofu Pitas Hummus, Pita Nachos, Salads & More!
OUTDOOR PATIO
Join us for Crested Butte’s Finest Made-From-Scratch Mexican Food. Visit
SOUP BAR
DONITASCANTINA.COM
Featuring 5 homemade soups
for specials, hours, reservations, menus, gift certificates and the
BAR MENU
POPULAR CANTINACAM!
Wings, Burgers, Potato Skins & Queso
4th & Elk, Downtown Crested Butte
Drink Specials • Rootbeer on Tap
970.349.6674
Daily Happy Hour: $1 PBRs, $2 Wells, $2 Beam Shots, $3 Drafts, $4 Wines
OPEN MIC NIGHT MONDAY AT 8:00 PM
970-349-0897 • TAKE-OUT AVAILABLE 3RD & ELK AVENUE • DOWNTOWN CRESTED BUTTE Open 7 days a week for lunch & dinner
seafood
pasta
salads
wines from around the world
beer on tap
trent bona photo
hand cut steaks
226 elk avenue crested butte 970.349.1221
124 Crested Butte Magazine
FALL FESTIVAL OF BEERS & CHILI COOK-OFF September 7
At the base of the ski mountain in Mt. Crested Butte, you can heat up by sampling great chili prepared by area cook-off contestants, cool down with beers poured by a couple dozen microbreweries, and shake it out to live music all afternoon. Awards will go to Crested Butte’s favorite pale ale, amber/brown ale, dark ale/porter/ stout, dark and light lagers, wheat beer, specialty/strong/Belgian beers, and fruit/ vegetable/spice beer. Chilis range from reds and greens to vegetarian, with a separate category for professional chefs. This festive gathering attracts up to 1,000 beer enthusiasts, dancers and chili fiends. At a new event on Friday, Sept. 6, brewers will showcase sour or highalcohol-content beers. cbchamber.com or facebook.com/chiliandbeer.
MOUNTAIN ROOTS ACTIVITIES MOUNTAIN ROOTS FOOD PROJECT HOSTS FOOD-RELATED EVENTS ALL SUMMER: • drop-in gardening at one of its eight organic gardens in the valley (each has its weekly workday) in return for a share of the harvest, plus mini-workshops and gatherings; • Roots & Shoots Summer Field Studies for children ages 5-12, with hands-on learning about gardens, berry patches, farms, forests, wetlands and kitchens; • monthly workshops on gardening, beekeeping, composting, food preparation and preservation; • backyard harvests where local gardeners “grow a row” for families in need; • Colorado Proud School Meal Day all-local lunch at our schools; and • Taste of the Harvest Local Foods Meal the last week in September. mountainrootsfoodproject.org
TASTE OF CRESTED BUTTE June 19-22
Deals on food, lodging and recreation; private chef dinners; a cocktail championship and bartending challenge; and a mystery progressive dinner. See story on page 30. tasteofcb.com
FARMERS MARKET
Sundays through October Browse the booths at the west end of Elk Avenue for fresh organic produce, meat and dairy, baked goods and crafted foods, plus ready-to-eat treats. Musicians, artists and lots of socializers turn this into a weekly celebration of good food and community. cbfarmersmarket.org
WILDFLOWER FESTIVAL FOODIE CLASSES July 9-13
The diverse schedule includes several workshops related to food, like terrific tapas/perfect picnics and summer soups and salads. crestedbuttewildflowerfestival.com Summer 2013 125
Photo: Tom Stillo
SPIRITS & FOOD WITH ALTITUDE
SLOPESIDE ELEVATION HOTEL & SPA
970.349.7007
208 Elk Avenue, Crested Butte
www.TheLastSteep.com
The Last Steep Bar & Grill
126 Crested Butte Magazine
Your slopeside breakfast, lunch, and dinner destination. The sundeck is the perfect place for lunch or an après drink. 970 2513030
ridecb.com/9380
Join us at
Crested Butte’s First GastroPub • Elevated Comfort Food • • house smoked bbq • • Colorado & Global Craft Beers • • Full Bar & Specialty Cocktails • • Eclectic Wine List •
creekside & patio dining
Killing ‘em Softly
Private Dining Rooms large parties Weddings
201 Elk Avenue 970.349.5662
www.westendpublichouse.com
Two Seatings Nightly. Reservations Required. 970.349.5448
SoupconBistro.net 970.349.5448 CB, CO 81224
• Eclectic American Cuisine with Global Influences • Dinner Starting at 5:00pm Intimate Dining • Private Parties • Patio Sunday Brunch Starting at 9:30 am 435 Sixth Street • (970) 349-9699
Visit eastsidebistro.com for our most current menu and seasonal hours.
SUSHI BAR HAPPY HOUR 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. PATIO HAPPY HOUR 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. (starting June DINNER NIGHTLY 5:30 p.m. Reservations Recommended 321 Elk Avenue | 970.349.5457 |
21 - August)
LILSSUSHIBARANDGRILL.COM
Trent Bona Photography
fine cuisine • spectacular views
Summer 2013 127
Photo finish
Xavier Fane
128 Crested Butte Magazine
The Same Great Agents Now backed by the power of
KAREN ALLEN
JANA BARRETT
JOEL VOSBURG
JESSE EBNER
CHARLIE FARNAN
TOM FILCHNER
DAWN HOWE
LISA LENANDER
LINDA PITT
BRIEONNA ALJETS OFFICE MANAGER
Cell: 970-209-2668
Cell: 970-275-2082
Cell: 970-209-9510
Cell: 970-596-4023
DALYNN TRUJILLO Cell: 970.596.3397
Cell: 970.209.1581
Cell: 970-209-1603
HEATHER WOODWARD
Cell: 970.596.1394
Cell: 970-901-2922
Cel: 970-901-1047
Cell: 970-209-0609
Phone: 970-349-6691
PAT MONTGOMERY Cell: 970.901.9948
We’ve joined the franchise that J.D. Power and Associates rated #1 for customer satisfaction the last 2 years in a row! Most advanced technology in the industry ~ In-depth broker training ~ International referral network
Keller Williams is the LARGEST REAL ESTATE COMPANY IN THE U.S. by agent count. Offering small town service and programs usually only available in large metropolitan markets. Keller Williams Realty Colorado Heritage Still located in the Heart of Downtown Crested Butte ~ 211 Elk Avenue 970.349.6691
cbproperty.com
‘‘
BacchanaleDjangosCBMag13_000 4/24/13 9:47 AM Page 1
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Chef Kate Ladoulis is giving travelers a major reason to visit Crested Butte, Colorado—and it has nothing to do with the ski slopes. Her artful Mediterranean-inspired small plates, supplemented by her husband Chris’s clever wine pairings, have all the locals and visitors talking.
– James Beard Foundation
The same team that brought django’s to national acclaim in 2008 has reinvented the Bacchanale. Italian food so good you’ll want to visit everyday.
FRESH. LIGHT. ALL NEW.
YOUR EVERYDAY PLACE
django’s Dinner Nightly 5-10 p.m. | Breakfast & Espresso 7 a.m.
970.349.5257
www.TheBacchanale.com
“an
www.djangos.us
209 Elk Avenue, Crested Butte
exceptional spot for... unforgettable small plates.”
django’s restaurant
970.349.7574
mountaineer square, mt. cb