At Home, summer 2011

special supplement

Locals 19 people who epitomize life in the Boat Page 27

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Triathlon training 101 case study

Rocky Mountain Youth Corps How to cook Sambi style PLUS

CMC: The little college that could

SUMMER 2011

2 | At Home | Summer 2011

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Kent Vertrees yampa valley awareness project

Contents

Mountain of Water: The Yampa River in full flood in front of Steamboat Ski Area.

Departments 10 Quick Hits Stand-up paddleboarding comes to Steamboat; locals Huck Finn the Mississippi; the skinny on the F.M. Light & Sons signs; the provocative sage grouse; and more.

18 Cooking With: Sambi Chef Ceron Scott Chef Ceron Scott’s Sambi Roll is a sushi-style mixture of spicy tuna, tempura fried shrimp and cucumber with eel and avocado on top. Here’s how to roll your own.

20 Staying Fit: Steamboat’s New Triathlon Club A veteran triathlete, Matt Stensland is upping his game thanks to a training program with the Old Town Hot Springs triathlon club led by Amy Charity and Dustin Fulkerson.

58 Road Trip: Mountain Biking the Mickelson Trail Want to escape with the kids for a multi-day mountain bike trip?

Head to the Black Hills of South Dakota to pedal the 109-mile Mickelson Trail, where your food and shelter weighs no more than your credit card.

64 Ross Remembers A snow and runoff year for the ages.

66 Light & Dry A glimpse of the lighter side of life in the Yampa Valley.

68 Final Frames 70 Parting Shot

Features 22 Real Estate: College on the Hill With a dramatic $20 million addition to its Alpine Campus, Colorado Mountain College is entering a new era.

27 Special Locals Supplement An inside look at 19 Routt County locals — nominated by you, our readers — who help make our community what it is.

60 From Gangs to the Great Outdoors Before coming to Steamboat Springs last spring, Andrew Fonseca was a gang member in Dallas. A stint with the Yampa Valley School and Rocky Mountain Youth Corps changed all that, shining a light on the healing powers of our community and Mother Nature.

On the cover: Linda Danter is the founder of Steamboat’s Rally for the Cure breast cancer fundraiser. Find her Locals profile on page 30. (Photo by John F. Russell) Summer 2011 | At Home

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John F. Russell

From the editor

Suzanne Schlicht Chief operating officer Scott Stanford General manager Brent Boyer Editor in chief Eugene Buchanan Magazine editor Nicole Miller News editor Meg Boyer Advertising director Suzanne Becker Creative services manager

Surf’s Up: Editor Eugene Buchanan researches new adjectives to describe this year’s runoff.

A Flood of Locals Entries Well, we asked for it, and we got it. No, not the largest snowfall and runoff season on record, but an equally proportionate deluge of nominations for this issue’s Locals section.

The entries poured in like snowmeltswollen Butcherknife Creek into the Yampa River. Although the number of nominees didn’t quite match the nearly 200 mark for settled inches of snow atop Buffalo Pass this spring, they were enough for us to call a meeting of the coffee-addled minds to cull the list to something that wouldn’t give our paper supplier conniptions.

Doing so wasn’t easy. Most everyone in town deserves to be included, from grocery clerks and ranchers to ski racers and dentists. We all have interesting stories to tell about how we got here and why we’ve stayed — which don’t involve any teeth pulling at all.

But whittle the list down we did, eliminating countless Tom, Dick and Harrys alongside every Julie, Sarah and Martha. And we didn’t play favorites, eliminating people because they poached our powder line at Steamboat Ski Area.

We remained unbiased, ignoring the

greenbacks stuffed in with the nomination forms and judging people on what they bring to town.

While the rest of you suffered through the bleakest spring in memory, sumppumping basements, carpet-cleaning dog prints and shoring up riverside yards, we sifted through reams of recommendations without any sand-bagging at all. We simply looked for locals whose contributions to this place we call home rise above the rest, like our river did this spring. You can find this year’s selection beginning on page 27.

And don’t fret if you or a loved one wasn’t included in the compilation or if your nominee didn’t make the cut. Unlike reality shows, we’ll file the rest for next time. Chances are the runner-ups are as glad as we are to call the Yampa Valley home and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Besides, there’s a bright side to being omitted. You might not have a neat magazine clip to send home to Mom, but you also won’t have visitors pointing you out, saying, “Look, there’s that Local! Let’s ask her where the hot springs are.”

— Eugene Buchanan

Mail your comments, criticisms or ideas to: At Home in Steamboat Springs, Attn: Eugene Buchanan, P.O. Box 774827, Steamboat Springs, CO 80477. You can also email ebuchanan@SteamboatToday.com.

Steve Balgenorth Circulation manager Photographers Joel Reichenberger, Tom Ross, John F. Russell, Matt Stensland Writers Brent Boyer, Eugene Buchanan, Luke Graham, Nicole Inglis, Mike Lawrence, Joel Reichenberger, Tom Ross, Matt Stensland, Jack Weinstein Advertising design and production Rachel Girard, Jessica Lobeck, Adam Redmon, Fran Reinier Advertising sales K. Crimmins, Karen Gilchrist, Deb Proper, Emma Scherer, Kathy Wichelhaus

At Home in Steamboat Springs is published three times a year, in November, March and July by the Steamboat Pilot & Today.

At Home magazines are free.

For advertising information, call Meg Boyer at 970-871-4218.

To get a copy mailed to your home, call Steve Balgenorth at 970-871-4232.

Email letters to the editor to ebuchanan@SteamboatToday.com or call Eugene Buchanan at 970-870-1376 Summer 2011 | At Home

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Joel reichenberger

Quick hits Upcoming events ■ July 16: Seventh annual Eriksen Cycles Tour de Steamboat.

Noncompetitive road cycling event and fundraiser, featuring a 110-mile Gore Gruel, 40-mile Stagecoach ride and Yampa River Core Trail ride. More info at www. rockypeakproductions.com.

■ July 24: Inaugural Steamboat Stinger. Fifty-mile singletrack race includes duo and solo categories.

More info at www.honeystinger. com.

■ Aug. 7: Second annual Ride 4 Yellow. Benefitting global and local cancer initiatives and featuring a 25-mile mountain bike ride along the Continental Divide Trail.

More info at www.ride4yellow. com.

■ Aug. 26 and 27: Inaugural USA Pro Cycling Challenge.

Steamboat stop on a seven-day, 600-mile stage race, drawing 128 of the world’s best racers. More info at www.usaprocycling challenge.com.

■ Sept. 2 to 5: Third annual Steamboat Springs Stage Race.

Four-day event including time trial, circuit race, road race and criterium. More info at www. bikesteamboat.com.

Cycle Town: John Dyas rides in the inaugural Ride 4 Yellow event in 2010 in Steamboat Springs.

Rolling Strong Steamboat Springs is becoming a cycling mecca Marketing pundits can tout the ski area’s slopes all they want. But Ski Town USA might soon have to make room for a new moniker revolving around bicycling.

With more than 575 miles of trails and swaths of smooth, hilly roads, Steamboat is fast evolving into a world-class arena for bicycling.

With even more new trails and events in store, this summer is shaping up to put it on the map for good. “I can’t remember there ever being this much energy around cycling,” says Harry Martin, owner of Steamboat Ski & Bike Kare.

“It seems like everything is aligning for it to really take off.”

Consider the facts: Steamboat Ski and Resort Corp. is investing in downhill mountain bike trails on Mount Werner, the Rotary Club of Steamboat Springs and Routt County Riders are continuing to add trails on the backside of Emerald Mountain and the USA Pro Cycling Challenge comes to town Aug. 26 and 27, bringing with it 128 of the world’s best riders.

10 | At Home | Summer 2011

Add to that an assortment of Town Challenge Mountain Bike Race Series events, Tour de Steamboat, Ride 4 Yellow and stage races and the result is a cycling calendar as packed as gear cogs after a muddy ride.

And it might only get better. The city is applying for an $11 million grant through the Regional Tourism Act that would earmark a slice of Colorado sales tax revenue for even more local cycling initiatives.

There’s a lot at stake with this emphasis on spokes. A survey from Whistler, British Columbia, estimates that cyclists spend $140 per day on vacation. And Steamboat is wellpoised to capitalize on that.

“There’s a lot of momentum right now around cycling in Steamboat,” says Michael Loomis, president of Routt County Riders, which this year published the first Steamboat Springs Bike Guide. “As well there should be — it’s a great place for it.”

— Eugene Buchanan

Steamboat Stinger The USA Pro Cycling Challenge isn’t the only new bicycling event in town. Local energy food company Honey Stinger announced it will host the first Steamboat Stinger on July 24, a 50-mile “singletrack-a-palooza” designed to rival such events as the Firecracker 50, Gunnison Growler and Laramie Enduro.

The event will include three duo and seven solo categories, with competitors racing two 25-mile loops that are “90 percent singletrack.”

“For years, we’ve been talking about a backcountry race that showcases our worldclass riding and community,” says Honey Stinger’s Nate Bird, a favorite in the race.

“This should do that, with a race vibe that’s distinctly Steamboat.”

f.m. Light & sons

Signs of the Times The skinny on F.M. Light & Sons’ roadside landmarks Bored on the drive from Kremmling to Steamboat Springs? Try counting signs. F.M. Light & Sons signs, to be exact.

If you don’t get distracted, you’ll tally 32 of the black and gold billboards before the turnoff to Walden, with six more on this side of the Continental Divide.

In all, there are 99 such signs strewn about the highways of Northwest Colorado — as many as the bottles of beer in a song also used to wile away the hours — and one more at the rodeo grounds for an even 100.

They’re all part of an marketing blitzkrieg dreamed up in 1928 by Clarence Light, son of store founder Frank, who opened the men’s clothier in Steamboat in 1905.

“People definitely know us for them,” says store co-owner Del Lockhart, whose children Sarah, James, Suzanna, Jonathan and

Dawson as well as nephew, Brandon, mark the retailer’s fifth generation of workers. “And they do as good a job for us today as they did in Clarence’s day — both for us and the town. A lot of people stop in just because they saw (the signs) and then stick around.”

Touting everything from Stetsons and Levi overalls to $4.98 cowboy hats, the signs have become synonymous with Steamboat.

“Both F.M. Light and its signs are iconic symbols that have become a fabric of our community,” says Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association’s Michelle Krasilinec.

“People ask about them all the time.”

Originally, there were 300 of them, back in the days when F.M. Light also took its store on the road, visiting ranches in paneled trucks with shelves, hangers and merchandise. Half were removed as

Steamboat

Style

a result of Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification Act, and today 100 remain, each one registered with the state of Colorado. The store pays an annual fee for each one, gives private property owners hosting them an annual gift certificate and repaints them every year.

“We tried a few modern signs, but it just didn’t feel right,” Lockhart says, adding that the store’s logbook has countless entries singing their praise.

While some view them as eyesores — in the 1970s someone nicknamed The Ax Man routinely hacked gashes in them — residents and visitors view them as a warm welcome mat for the Yampa Valley — and better than Red Bull for prying open eyelids on the long drive home.

— Eugene Buchanan

Find it at

since 1995

1707 Lincoln Ave. • 870-8807 West of downtown Monday-Friday, 10-6 • Saturday 10-4

Summer 2011 | At Home

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sheryl uhlmann

Quick hits

Barbara Swissler

Community Campfire: Fiesta attendees roast marshmallows around a fire.

One Neighborhood, Under God: The Fairview Na­­­­tion shows its spirit during the Fourth of July Parade.

neighborhood gathering of the season

Fairview Fiesta Mr. Rogers has nothing on the folks in Fairview.

The neighborhood at the base of Emerald Mountain gets to know its neighbors at its annual Fairview Fiesta, held on the Sunday before school starts every August.

Word spreads about the progressive potluck via makeshift posters, with volunteers coordinating stops, meals and activities to ensure no one doubles up on baked beans. Come the big day, neighbors decorate the mariachi-blaring Fiesta Wagon, load it with a traveling food table, and then parade from home to home by foot, bike, scooter, skateboard, army truck and even an electric cooler on wheels.

“It’s a pretty fun event,” says coringleader Noreen Moore. “The whole reason for it is to get the neighborhood together to get to know one another better.

It’s a great testament to the type of people who live here.”

Festivities include “awards, announce­ ments and dissertations,” as well as food, libations, pony rides, piñatas, children’s games and campfire stories with dessert.

Each year has a theme — last year’s

was “Smell Something New in Fairview” — and the gathering also offers a chance to poke fun at town issues and discuss neighborhood ones. Last year’s topics included road paving, the building of a communal disc golf course and hosting a Fairview Speakers Series.

The event also anointed a Fairview Fiesta Queen, gave out a Premier Citizen Award (for “fostering a positive public image of the Fairview community”) and held a contest for Best Fairview Animal Story.

Look closely at the bottom of the flyer and you’ll also see a slew of reasons why motions are circulating to turn Fairview into a “gated community” for its back-door access to a world-class ski facility, having its own beer distributorship, dearth of foreclosures, unique fart aroma by the 13th Street Bridge, and squatters’ rights to their own pharmacological mood determinant, the Lithia Spring.

“Everyone gets pretty involved in the party,” adds Moore. “It gives everyone a chance to showcase their own part of the neighborhood.”

— Eugene Buchanan

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When Results Matter 12 | At Home | Summer 2011

T H E L AW N L A D Y O F S T E A M B O AT

O F S T E A M B O AT

Greater sage grouse males do a little song and dance to woo potential mates. Sound familiar?

In Search of Sage Grouse Bird watchers cherish North Routt mating ritual Having trouble wooing a mate on the Ghost Ranch Saloon dance floor? Take a cue from the greater sage grouse.

Once a huge part of Northwest Colorado’s culture (Hayden used to harvest it “by the wagonload” and Craig hosted annual Sage Hen Days in the early 1900s), the bird’s population has declined in Routt and Moffat counties, but its “Hey there, big boy” mating ritual and the allure for birders eager to glimpse its gyrations remain strong.

Two local environmental organizations — The Wilderness Society and Colorado Environ­ mental Coalition — lead excursions to watch the chestpuffing mating rituals. Recently found eligible for listing under the Endangered Species Act, the greater sage grouse is the largest game bird in North America other than the turkey. And it certainly has game on the dance floor.

“Every spring, folks come from all over the country to watch the male birds do their strangely intriguing mating dance on the traditional mating grounds, or leks,” says Soren Jespersen, Northwest Colorado Wildlands coordinator for The Wilderness Society. “It’s truly an amazing courtship ritual. Not a single person we’ve taken there has come home disappointed.”

Online

■ Watch a video of the dance with this story at Steamboat Today.com.

■ More info at www.tws.org.

The courtship entails male sage grouse inflating air sacs on their chests while dancing on their ancestral breeding grounds.

Hot spots for viewing are on public lands in northern Moffat and Routt counties, but Jespersen adds that if you try to find mating grounds on your own, you’ll need a good tip and plenty of patience. “Seventy percent of Colorado’s remaining population is here, but because of their rarity, the Division of Wildlife doesn’t reveal the exact locations of the leks,” adds Jespersen.

While some grouse ply their trade in North Routt, the best place for viewing is north of Craig, where The Wilderness Society and Colorado Environmental Coalition conduct tours as do grouse-savvy outfitters such as Dean Visintainer, who takes guests to a lek on his private land. Whatever you see, pay attention; emulate its moves and you just may draw a crowd — and possible mate for yourself — at the Free Summer Concert Series.

— Eugene Buchanan

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| 13

John F. Russell

Quick hits

Cowabunga: Todd Givnish surfing it up on the Yampa.

WhasSUP? Stand-up paddleboards becoming local rage Look out on the Yampa River this summer, or on local ponds and lakes, and you might think you’re in California instead of Colorado.

There’s something in the water — and it’s not just canoes, kayaks, rafts and tubes anymore.

Originating in Hawaii as a way to work out when waves turned fickle, stand-up paddleboarding has gone mainstream and mainland. And it’s now showing up full force in Steamboat.

“It definitely fits the mold of the people who live here,” says local SUP aficionado Todd Givnish, who heads up the SUP

14 | At Home | Summer 2011

sales and rental program at Ski Haus. “And Steamboat’s a great place for it. You can surf waves, run downriver, paddle upriver, and even tour local lakes — all during lunch.”

Indeed, practitioners have been seen surfing up to Sunpie’s Bistro and dismounting for a hurricane or paddling upstream from Rotary Park for late-afternoon workouts. Key to the sport’s popularity, which is bringing the beach vibe to the Boat, is a learning curve as shallow as the Yampa in summer. All you do is stand up and paddle — no rolling, escaping a confined cockpit, or

Quick tips Prepare to get wet, especially if you’re on a river. Wear apparel suitable for the water temperatures as well as a helmet, proper footwear and personal flotation device.

Learn how: Check out Charlie MacArthur and Paul Tefft’s new River SUP DVD, detailing everything you need to know to get started. $26.95, www.c4waterman. com Where to go: SUPs are best suited for lakes, ponds and easy, Class I to II rivers like the Yampa

above Fetcher Pond. “I don’t think it’ll ever be big above Class III,” says former Steamboat local Joe Carberry, now editor of SUP magazine. “But on easy rivers, it’s great for everyone from beginners to experts.”

The boards: High-end boards are made from such materials as composite and fiberglass.

Inflatables are more user- and riverfriendly and don’t ding.

Info: Ski Haus, 970-879-0385; Backdoor Sports, 970-879-6249.

Eugene Buchanan

cumbersome gear. The boards are wide and stable enough that you simply hop on and paddle.

“It’s a great sport for around here,” says local surfer transplant Adam Spector, who last year made a first SUP descent by paddling his board from Steamboat to Milner. “There are sections of the river that are perfect for everyone.”

Givnish says it’s also great cross-training and perfect whether you’re looking for fitness, adventure or adrenaline.

“We’re consistently doubling our business with it every year,” says Givnish, who organized the town’s first SUP race at the Yampa River Festival this year.

“We have some customers who bought a board for themselves, and then came in later to buy two more for their family.”

Steamboat’s not alone in its SUP appeal. Other regional events also are hanging their hats on hanging ten. In June, Vail’s Teva Mountain Games hosted SUP events for the second year, including a downriver race luring big wave surfers from Hawaii as well as a SUP cross event. Glenwood Springs, which recently built a Waimea-

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“The sport is huge in all of these mountain towns that have rivers,” says Charlie MacArthur, owner of Aspen Kayak Academy, which recently opened Colorado’s first SUP school. “We’re taking just as many students out now on SUPS as we are in kayaks.”

— Eugene Buchanan

Send us Your Mailbox Photos Nothing says small-town Americana like a mailbox. And here in Steamboat Springs, our back roads are home to true works of art, with locals adorning them with everything from saddles to skis.

Have one that’s all gussied up Steamboat-style? Send it into our Mailbox Photo Contest, and we’ll run the winners in our winter issue, with the top three receiving gift certificates to local dining establishments. Email photos to ebuchanan@SteamboatToday.com.

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Summer 2011 | At Home

| 15

Q&A

Thar Ain't No Home Like a Canoe: Mississippi paddlers, from left, Oscar Fonseca, Karrie Kressler, Zach Wehr, Amanda Stenman, Michael Gutschenritter, Dave Lathrop, Louis Gutschenritter and Brett Poche.

Mississippi Madness Seven Steamboat locals canoe the Big Muddy Huck Finn would love these guys. Last fall, a group of eight twentysomethings — seven of whom lived in Steamboat Springs this past year — paddled four canoes from Minneapolis down the Mississippi River to New Orleans with two goals: Raise money for the Lambui Fund of Haiti and make it back to Steamboat in time for ski season. They succeeded on both counts, raising $10,000 and arriving back for opening day.

Included in the mission were cousins Michael and Louis Gutschenritter, Zach Wehr, Dave Lathrop, Brett Poche, Oscar Fonseca, Karrie Kressler and Amanda Stenman. We caught up with Michael during mud season for his take on the Mississippi milestone.

16 | At Home | Summer 2011

At Home: What prompted you to make the trip?

Gutschenritter: In 2009, I completed a southbound hike on the Appalachian Trail and realized how fun and revealing it was to see the country through a long-distance trip. So I began thinking of other ways to do it. I canoed my whole life growing up in Wisconsin and had the gear, so it seemed natural. And we chose Haiti as a beneficiary since it was on everyone’s minds. Out of 15 people who said they’d do it, eight quit their jobs and dedicated themselves to the trip.

At Home: Were you all friends beforehand — and afterward?

Gutschenritter: Some of us were. No one knew everyone, but everyone knew someone. We’re all gregarious, convivial

people, making it easy to quickly become friends. And seven of us all moved to Steamboat together.

At Home: Did you all get along the whole time?

Gutschenritter: There were times when heads butted. We are all leaders and decision makers, which can cause tension when the decisions don’t match. But we learned that we were all dependent on each other — an aspect that cut the tension and forced resolution. The main thing causing tension was deciding to do a lot of miles in a day to get to a town. But we always had to accept the group’s vote and not complain. We are also all very laid-back and easy going, so conflict never lasted.

At Home: Even in such tight quarters as canoes?

Gutschenritter: If the tight quarters did anything, it made us better friends. The quarters weren’t that tight anyway. We were paired into 17-foot canoes, but we could chat with each other all day or not talk at all.

No one forced conversation. We went through a lot of riddles and jokes.

At Home: How does the Mississippi compare to the Yampa?

Gutschenritter: It’s a funny comparison. The closest thing we had to a mountain was the bluffs by Winona and LaCrosse. While high water on the Yampa can be dangerous, on the Mississippi it doesn’t mean much, other than the fact that it might be harder to find a campsite. And, with high water, it was fun to paddle straight through the dams instead of going through the locks.

At Home: How was the actual paddling?

Gutschenritter: Industrial traffic was heavy. Two lines of buoys define a channel

for barges going up- and downriver. Also, the river goes through several lakes up north, which were hard to cross due to high winds and whitecaps.

Often, we’d have to hug a shore to block wind, adding miles.

At Home: How about the landscape?

Gutschenritter: The river had varying shorelines. At some points, there would be gorgeous fall colors covering bluffs. At others, there would be dilapidated buildings next to cranes swinging their mechanical arms, transferring shrapnel to a barge. Farther south, much of the landscape was boring and similar. That’s when it got difficult to look forward to each morning. The river actually has chemicals getting pumped into it from factories — direct drains of yellow liquid that heats up the water by at least 20 degrees and makes it smell like absolute disappointment. We’re lucky to have the Yampa.

At Home: Any close calls?

Gutschenritter: The worst was the headwinds in the

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middle of the trip. They were relentless. There was no way to track the canoes, with the wind throwing them every direction.

It went on like that for a week straight, taking every ounce of our strength to make 30 miles a day. It was aggravating, defeating and a true test of physical and mental stamina.

Memphis during Halloween also got a little out of hand — but it was the town’s fault for letting eight Huck Finns wander the streets with 32-ounce beers, excited just to be around people.

But no one flipped (though Karrie and I fell in a few times), and no one woke up in a weird place without intending to. Barge captains continually warned us that the waters were higher than they’d ever seen. Some yelled at us, some congratulated us, but most just ignored us, understanding that the river is everyone’s.

At Home: Have a highlight or favorite moment?

Gutschenritter: New Orleans, the city that songs are written for. We all had the goal to make it there, and we were able to stay with some friends

Mac....that’s what we do.

of Karrie’s. We also paddled bracken waters spotting gators and gar and explored the French Quarter, dancing in the streets. We also got on stage at a Haiti Festival of Culture and spoke about our trip, sold shirts and collected donations.

New Orleans is the biggest small community I’ve ever encountered. They are real people who know what it means to be a neighbor. It was hard to leave.

At Home: What did you take home from the expedition?

Gutschenritter: Most of all, we took home a solid group of friends we didn’t have before. We also became more aware of people’s generosity and discovered a relieving appreciation for the natural beauty of our nation’s artery.

We also learned how to jointly make decisions, instead of allowing one person to take full charge; received a hands-on education about our country; and learned about business, fundraising development and the importance of organization to make things happen.

— Eugene Buchanan

Call us today! 970.879.1270

Summer 2011 | At Home

| 17

Ceron Scott, left, the energetic head chef at Sambi Cafe, and fellow chef Tomas Tacu prepare a Sambi Roll at the downtown restaurant.

Sambi on a

Roll Story by Mike Lawrence Photos by John F. Russell

18 | At Home | Summer 2011

Downtown Japanese/Thai restaurant spicing up The Victoria C

eron Scott, the energetic, 24-yearold head chef at Sambi Cafe in downtown Steamboat Springs, says the idea for the Asian restaurant’s Sambi Roll came from a simple culinary desire.

“I wanted to combine spicy with crunchy,” Scott says. “So I thought, what if I put these things together?”

Scott experimented a bit and eventually created the sushi-style mixture of spicy tuna, tempura fried shrimp and cucumber, with eel and avocado on top, sprinkled with a couple of sauces and sesame seeds. After a Sambi server and a customer sampled the roll, he knew he had found a winner.

“The Sambi Roll is one of our biggest sellers,” Scott says proudly while

demonstrating how to create the dish on a drizzly morning in late May. The Jamaican-born Scott leads a culturally diverse kitchen at Sambi Cafe, which opened in January in The Victoria at Lincoln Avenue and 10th Street. Tomas Tacu, from the Mexican state of Yucatan, is second chef, helping Scott with Japanese sushi preparation, and Mario May handles the Thai-style cooking, including curry and other dishes.

Sambi’s owner is Taiwan native Jason Lee, who has operated the Canton Chinese Restaurant three blocks east on Lincoln for 13 years. Lee, through a business entity called Formosa LLC, bought Sambi’s streetlevel space in The Victoria from Hoj and Crane LLC in July 2010 for $388,500.

Vicki Schlegel, a nearly three-decade employee of Canton, runs both of Lee’s restaurants.

Lee and Scott say the investment in Sambi is paying off and started with a strong winter season.

“We were slammed all winter,” Scott says. “It was wild.

We had tickets all lined up and were moving like crazy.”

Sambi Cafe is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch, Mondays through Fridays, and from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. for dinner, seven days a week.

Scott moved to Steamboat from Michigan about seven months ago, with his experience in sushi and Japanese food stretching back to his work at a Japanese restaurant in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

His skill in crafting the cuisine is evident in the speed and sureness of his hands, which sculpt a Sambi roll fast enough to cause a photographer to ask him to slow down a bit.

“I have very good employees,” Lee says. “If it’s only me, I can’t do anything.”

Lee also expresses his gratitude to The Victoria developers Steve and Denise Peterson for the opportunity to open the new restaurant and remodel the space.

“I’m very thankful,” he says humbly. “They’ve been very kind to me.”

cooking with

The Sambi Roll is one of the most popular items at Sambi Cafe in downtown Steamboat Springs.

13

7

10

9

Step-by-step Sambi Roll instructions from chef Ceron Scott Ingredients: Spicy tuna mix, including tuna, green onions, soy sauce, sashimi oil and Sriracha hot sauce; tempura fried shrimp; rice; thin, dry seaweed sheet, known as nori; cucumber; freshwater eel, available locally at Steamboat Meat & Seafood Co.; avocado; sesame seeds; sweet eel sauce; spicy mayonnaise

Slice a cucumber and eel Cover rice with dry Place plastic wrap over meat into long, thin strips. seaweed sheet. roll to hold eel and 1 5 10 Chef Ceron Scott recommends avocado strips in place while taking the skin off the eel — cutting roll.

Add sliced cucumber, spicy some chefs don’t — to get “a tuna mixture and fried 6 softer, milder texture.” Eel skin shrimp.

Remove plastic wrap can be too chewy, he says. from cut pieces 11 Lift edge of rolling mat Place eel strips on tin foil 7 and draw it over the top of 12 Drizzle sweet eel sauce ingredients to form the shape and warm in an oven or and spicy mayonnaise 2 of the roll. toaster oven on low heat. on top of cut sections and

You’ll need: A bamboo rolling mat to place ingredients on before forming roll

Cover bamboo rolling mat with plastic wrap, to prevent rice from sticking.

Initial preparations: Fry shrimp in pan, cook desired amount of rice, and combine spicy tuna mix ingredients.

Wet hands to avoid sticking and shape rice into thin 4 Cut avocado into strips and rectangle on top of plastic place between eel strips on 9 wrap. top of the roll.

3

8

Remove plastic wrap and place warmed eel strips with sweet eel sauce across top of roll.

sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Serve cut roll with pickled ginger and 13 wasabi, if desired.

Source: Chef Ceron Scott, Sambi Cafe ■

Summer 2011 | At Home

| 19

Triathlon club members, from left, Gail Garey, Julie McFadden, Adrienne Stroock, Shelia Wright, coach Amy Charity and Danny Weiland ride to Spring Creek for a time trial.

No Pain, No Gain

Triathlon club shines amid sport’s growing popularity

A

t a recent Thursday night swim practice at Old Town Hot Springs, it was apparent the first three weeks of triathlon training were beginning to take a toll on those who have stuck with the program.

The day’s workout was one that even experienced swimmers would cringe at. The main set involved swimming 100 yards as many times as you could with 10 seconds of rest in between. You were done when you could no longer maintain the given interval of time.

The workout was designed to push the athletes and leave them exhausted, and the crooked swimming patterns were a sign that goal was being met. Next time, they should be stronger and swim faster.

“Next week is a rest week,” coach Dustin Fulkerson tells the swimmers at the end of the practice.

Fulkerson, a former Division I swimmer at Ball State University in Indiana, is joined

by Amy Charity in coaching the first triathlon club program offered by the Hot Springs.

Charity was on the water polo

team at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and is an avid cyclist and triathlete, having completed her first Ironmandistance event in Switzerland in 2008. In summer 2010, she won her division at the Steamboat Stage Race fourday cycling event and was the first woman to cross the finish line at the Steamboat Springs Triathlon.

The Hot Springs triathlon club is the brainchild of aquatics director Jill Ruppel.

She recognized a growing number of members wanted to get into the sport but many were afraid of the open-water swim.

“She basically said, ‘Why don’t we get a group together, and we’ll get some coaches that are familiar with the sport,’” Charity says.

The increased popularity of participating in triathlons is not unique to Steamboat.

The USA Triathlon organization reports triathlon participation continues to see unprecedented growth, which it tracks by its membership numbers.

Membership grew to more than

Old Town Hot Springs triathlon club coach Amy Charity, right, is an accomplished cyclist and triathlete.

100,000 in 2000, up substantially from the 15,000 to 21,000 who were a part of the organization from 1993 to 1999. In June 2010, USAT’s membership approached 135,000.

The group cites numerous reasons for the growth of the sport, including increased media exposure ever since it debuted at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Training resources also have increased

Story and photos by Matt Stensland 20 | At Home | Summer 2011

on the Internet, and USAT officials think people have become more in-tune with living healthy lifestyles.

“For overall fitness, it’s about as good as it gets,” Charity says.

USAT officials think there is also an ego reward for participants, who after completing their first race can say, “I am a triathlete.”

Cities have seen an increase in the number of sprint races

offered, which makes the sport more accessible to those who may be intimidated or can train only a couple hours each week. Clubs also are growing in popularity because USAT officials say they create a “community concept for men and especially women who enjoy the group training and support atmosphere.”

Steamboat also has experienced the growth of the sport.

On July 24, the city will host an inaugural sprint-distance event at Steamboat Lake in addition to the Olympic-distance triathlon Aug. 28 at Lake Catamount.

The Hot Springs triathlon club has more than 20 members who are training for both Steamboat races. Their experience ranges from eight triathlons to none, Fulkerson says.

“Everyone is bringing something to the table,” he says.

Jesse Brooks, 26, is a Hot Springs lifeguard training for his first race and recently got on a road bike for the first time during the club’s four-mile time trial.

“I’ve wanted to give a triathlon a shot, and figured I might as

well train properly,” Brooks says. “I always have a hard time getting motivated if I work out by myself, so doing it in a group setting obviously helps you push that much harder.”

Shelia Wright has competed in the Steamboat Springs Triathlon four times and is hoping to improve on her running, or as she currently calls it, her wog, a pace consistent with a walk/jog.

“I always wanted to be a little more scheduled and scientific in my approach to training because I’ve done triathlons just by winging it a couple weeks before the event,” Wright says.

This year, she hopes to cross the finish line with a smile on her face and an improved time.

“I’d really like to place in my age category, but the 50- to 55-year-olds, they’re tough in this town,” she says. ■

Staying fit

Jesse Brooks trains for his first triathlon.

For more For more information about the Old Town Hot Springs triathlon club, call 970-879-1828 or visit www.steamboathotsprings.org.

Coach Dustin Fulkerson gives pointers.

Summer 2011 | At Home

| 21

the Hill College on

CMC entering a new era with the biggest development in town

The dramatic $20 million addition to the Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus on the western edge of Steamboat’s Old Town neighborhood is the biggest development news in town this year.

Story by Tom Ross â?˜ Photos by John F. Russell 22

Real estate

23

Real estate

O

A three-dimensional model of the new Colorado Mountain College administrative and classroom building is on display at the school’s library in Bristol Hall.

Open Mon-Fri 10-6 Sat 10-3

nly 30 years ago, the community came perilously close to losing its tiny college that is now about to launch a new era with its first four-year degree programs.

“As soon as people complain to me about the construction noise, I tell them it’s music to my ears,” says former Alpine Campus CEO George Bagwell, who still relishes his role as a professor after decades with the college.

Dark days in the late 1970s saw CMC predecessors fall into financial difficulty. Professors weren’t paid and the sheriff padlocked the doors. One campus operator even came close to selling 60 acres, including today’s expansion area, to a developer planning apartment buildings for the site.

It took visionary community leaders, philanthropy and the willingness of school district voters to tax themselves before the college embarked on its current course of stability and growth.

In her 1987 book about the college, “Miracle on a Mountain,” Lucile Bogue, founder of the precursor to CMC, called the establishment of the college, “A twentieth century miracle that happened in a beautiful green valley high in the Colorado Rockies.”

The Alpine Campus, which graduated more than 100 students in spring, is part of the larger CMC system on Colorado’s Western Slope, which levies its own property tax.

Founded in 1967, CMC now has 11 sites in nine counties, and always has blended accredited courses toward two-year associate degrees with non-credit continuing educa-

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tion courses for residents. System-wide, CMC graduated more than 800 students in May 2011 and saw a record enrollment of 25,182, including non-degree students.

In April came the big news that CMC had been accredited by the Higher Learning Commission to offer a Bachelor of Arts degree in sustainability studies and a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration.

“That was a historic day for Colorado Mountain College,” says CMC President Stan Jensen. “We’ll continue to be a community college, but we’ll be able to offer baccalaureate degrees. We’re a dual-purpose college now.”

Current Alpine Campus CEO Peter Perhac says a desire to strengthen the bond between the college and the community is an important theme in the new 60,000-square-foot building that broke ground in May on a hillside overlooking Howelsen Hill.

“When I first got here, I realized that being on the hill, we were pretty isolated from community members,” Perhac says. “We have an opportunity with this new building to make sure the neighbors are happy and it isn’t a big monster that obstructs the views. Second, we asked, ‘How can we make it easier for community members to get here?’ Yoga and Pilates are among our most popular community courses, and the new building will have a prominent place for them just to the left of the front entrance.”

An entire floor of the new building will be devoted to classrooms and administrative of-

50-year reunion in August As many as 80 alums, retired faculty and old flames are expected to gather in Steamboat Springs from Aug. 19 to 21 from as far away as Japan and Europe to take part in the 50-year reunion of Yampa Valley College and Colorado Alpine College, the precursors of Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat. The reunion is for anyone affiliated with the college from 1962 to 1969. More info at www.coloradomtn.edu. fices. But it also will offer several new public rooms and decks — even a cafe and a secluded garden — to make the campus more appealing to the community.

Showpieces of the new sustainable building will be a geoexchange heating system serving double duty as a teaching facility, and a 250-seat auditorium for public and private functions. A spacious weight lifting room also will be open to members of the public enrolled in classes.

Mark Scully, whose Chicago-based firm Green Courte Partners developed some of downtown Steamboat’s newest mixed residential/commercial buildings, says the community’s new public infrastructure has proven to be a motivating amenity for affluent second-home owners. The existence of the college along with the rebuilt Soda Creek Elementary School, new Bud Werner Memorial Library and recreation at Howelsen Hill, all within walking distance, send strong signals

about the strength of the community.

“The key point for second-home buyers is that Steamboat as a value proposition is about Steamboat as an authentic community.

It’s not just abut the new college building, but its future as a four-year institution,” Scully says. “Before, it was all about ski-in, ski-out.

Now, buyers are really looking at these cultural institutions when they make a decision about where to live six months of the year.”

Saving the college

Fifteen of Colorado’s top 25 ski areas are included within the CMC district, so it’s significant that CMC is able to expand its campus within the city limits, where the cost of land is dear. But that opportunity almost got away in the late 1970s.

The original Yampa Valley College was the vision of an irrepressible dreamer named Lucile Bogue, who taught literature at the preparatory Lowell Whiteman School in Strawberry Park in the early 1960s. Bogue was a poet but also a woman who knew how to twist arms, recalls former Whiteman colleague and longtime CMC professor George Tolles.

“She was never embarrassed or intimidated,” Tolles says. “She could go to Washington and ask for money and many influential and wealthy people sent their children to the college.”

Bogue launched Yampa Valley College in 1962 with little funding and a vision for a four-year liberal arts college with an emphasis in international studies. She succeeded in

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| 25

Real estate attracting students from as far away as Japan and Africa. But the dream of going global never quite took hold.

In the early days, the school’s facilities were unorthodox. Tolles remembers that he gave up a post with the U.S. State Department in Cali, Colombia, to teach at the college for an annual stipend of $3,500.

For that remuneration, he taught German, history, Spanish, economics and political science in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Oak Street.

Climbing the hill

The college moved to the hill in 1966 with the opening of three buildings, Willett, Bogue and Monson halls. It was then the institution’s name changed to Colorado Alpine College.

Bogue, uncomfortable with a new dean and the direction of the school, moved on to teach in Berkeley, Calif., and Japan and to become a prolific author.

Colorado Alpine College folded in 1969, and United States International University, based in San Diego, purchased the campus.

However, USIU shut down its Steamboat operation in 1975, and the campus struggled along by renting dorms to ski vacationers.

Within three years, the college faced its moment of fate.

Tolles wrote in “Miracle on a Mountain” that at one point, it got so bad that the sheriff

came to campus on behalf of the bank that held a $1.5 million note on the campus and put padlocks on the doors.

The campus soon reopened nominally as an outreach center for Colorado NorthwestCMC savior Bill Hill ern Community College, based in Rangely.

Fortunately, the late Bill Hill left his post running the Steamboat Chamber to lead the effort to save the college.

“The reincarnation of Alpine Campus began on a beautiful September in 1978,” Hill explains in Bogue’s book. “It had a precarious start. Dr. Erie Johnson, vice president of CNCC, rushed into my office. In a rather desperate tone, he told me that USIU was negotiating to sell the Alpine Campus to commercial developers for an apartment complex.”

Hill thought the campus was destined to play a more important role in the community.

He assembled a task force of concerned community leaders that included ski area pioneer John Fetcher, Ev Bristol, banker Del Scott, downtown retailer Dorothy Wither and Jim Golden, of Yampa Valley Electric Association.

Two more bankers, Rex Pielstick and Ed Hill, also played critical roles as did Tim Borden, a young attorney for Bob Adams’ coal mining company, Energy Fuels.

The task force formed the Yampa Valley

Foundation and determined that it probably could serve the debt on the campus but was stumped when confronted with a bank demand that the community come up with $60,000 in six weeks.

With Borden serving as matchmaker, a breakfast at Adams’ home resulted in Adams writing the check.

But the key to the school’s long-term financial stability was the willingness of the voters to impose a new property tax on themselves to join the CMC system, which is organized not by county but by school district boundaries. Voters in the Steamboat Springs School District voted by a 2-1 margin in 1981 to invest in higher education.

Bagwell was recruited from another CMC campus to transform the curriculum from one that included heavy equipment repair and horseshoeing to one that included courses to support Steamboat’s resort economy, including resort management, computerized accounting and, at the suggestion of ski racer Billy Kidd, an associates degree in ski business.

Bagwell says it was Bill Hill’s unwavering determination, and later the business acumen of Ed Hill, that ushered the college into a new era.

“Bill Hill was the spark plug in the effort to save the college,” Bagwell says.

And like the jumpers soaring off the 90-meter jump across the valley, it was the leap of faith taken by the community 30 years ago that now is allowing the Colorado Mountain College Alpine Campus to enter a new era. ■

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Locals A celebration of our favorite personalities | 2011

From unicyclers and youth pastors to fire marshals and Nordic phenoms, At Home in Steamboat Springs brings you an inside look at locals — all nominated by our readers — who help make our community what it is.

Find Von Wilson’s profile on page 37.

Photo: John F. Russell

27

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Locals | 29

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R allying

for

a

cause

Linda Danter When Linda Danter was a young girl, she hated the color pink. As a tomboy and sports fanatic, she made her mother cover up the pink in her room by painting her walls blue.

Now, as the founder of Steamboat’s Rally for the Cure breast cancer fundraiser, she finds herself with drawers full of pink paraphernalia.

“It’s a ton of work,” says the retired physical education teacher. “I think I’m nuts. It possesses me.”

It’s because of all the women and their families who have been touched by breast cancer that she dedicates herself to organizing the annual golf tournament.

In its first year, the rally raised $1,136.

Now in its 13th year, the event sells out at 212 participants and raises more than $30,000.

30 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

Two-thirds of those funds stay in the area through the Yampa Valley Breast Cancer Awareness Project and the rest goes to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Not a dime gets spent on administrative costs: She and her husband pay for the postage for thank you notes.

Danter, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native, moved to Steamboat Springs in 1976 with her husband, Rich. The pair always had dreamed of living in Steamboat, but their jobs as teachers in the Boulder Valley School District meant commuting three and a half hours to work for 23 years.

Still, they were never tempted to move to the Front Range.

“I love where we live, I’m just so proud of it,” she says with more than a hint of New York accent. “I love to show it off.”

If there was ever a poster girl for the

Steamboat lifestyle, Danter would be her. In winter, she skis every day. And in summer, it’s all golf. She works at the Steamboat Golf Club, as an ambassador for Steamboat Ski Area and as the volunteer coordinator for Storm Peak Laboratory, where she helped launch more than 100 weather balloons this past winter as a part of a cloud study.

“She has this unbelievable energy,” says longtime friend Mary Effinger. “She gets behind something and doesn’t stop until it’s taken care of.”

Any good day for Danter is a “three-sport day,” which might include a hike with her Labrador retriever, Sunny Delight, a round of golf and even bowling.

“I love where I live,” she says. “And I hate to travel. I love to be here, no matter what season it is.”

B ig

wheels

keep

on

turning

Scott Schlapkohl Scott Schlapkohl has been spinning his wheels in Steamboat Springs for 27 years now — literally, not figuratively.

Even Denny Swanson, his boss at Ace at the Curve, wants him to take a long lunch so he can bike ride or skate ski.

“I’m much more effective at work when I can fit in a ride,” Schlapkohl says.

The longtime manager of our local hardware store credits Swanson and Swanson’s late brother, Wayne, with teaching him to treat his employees like a family — like everyone’s a spoke on the same wheel. “I’ve got a great bunch of people,” Schlapkohl says about his staff.

“It really makes a difference.”

Schlapkohl grew up riding a 24-inch Huffy with coaster brakes all over the little town of Redwood Falls, Minn. He rode that bike to the swimming pool, the baseball diamond and the gravel pit. “You’re blessed when you can grow up in a small town,” he says.

Maryann Wall, one of Schlapkohl’s cycling buddies, says Steamboat is fortunate that he has remained here all these years.

“He’s an incredible asset for our community,” Wall says.

“He volunteers for everything, donating both money and time.”

With its national fundraisers for the Children’s Miracle Network, ACE has provided a way for Schlapkohl to pursue his passion for pedaling while making a difference in people’s lives. In 2006, he garnered pledges and participated in a group cycling event that took him more than 500 miles from Jackson, Wyo., to Missoula, Mont. He got back in the saddle the next summer to ride from Everett, Wash., to Missoula.

Already this year, Schlapkohl estimates he has covered 1,600 miles on his bike, thanks in part to a late winter trip to California. And, of course, those nooner rides he fits in every chance he gets.

Photo: matt stensland Story: tom Ross

Summer 2011 |

Locals | 31

I nstrumental in building a band program

Jim Knapp

Photo: matt stensland Story: Jack Weinstein

32 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

When Jim Knapp took over the Steamboat Springs School District band program four years ago, he had 10 students in high school band. This year, he has 65.

“He’s just been instrumental in getting the band program in the schools up and running and now thriving,” says parent Pam Pierce, whose son was one of those 10 students and whose daughter is one of the 65. “It’s a number of things; he’s a great musician and has a real passion for music that he passes on to everybody he comes into contact with.”

Knapp, a Columbus, Ohio, native, oversees a sixth- through 12th-grade band program that now has 285 students participating, up from 165 the year before he arrived. His program includes bands for sixth, seventh and eighth grades, middle school and high school jazz bands and a high school drum line. He hopes to add percussion and brass ensembles next year.

He adds that his 10-year goal of having 8 percent of the high school’s students enrolled in band already has been realized.

He has about 10 percent of the school’s students this year — Knapp says the national average for schools of similar sizes is 6 to 7 percent — and with higher numbers at Steamboat Springs Middle School, that trend is likely to continue.

Knapp, who celebrates his 20th season as a teacher next year, says he came to Steamboat because he knew the band program had potential in a place he says “couldn’t be a more musically rich environment.” He adds that the band program collaborates with local organizations such as the Steamboat Symphony Orchestra and Strings Music Festival and countless local musicians.

Knapp wants the success of the program to continue and says he’s trying to establish tradition. “We’re a 4A school,” he says. “I want us to have one of the strongest mountain music programs in the state.”

Photo: matt stensland Story: Jack Weinstein

F amily

and

fire

Jay Muhme The two most important things to Jay Muhme are family and fire.

The walls of the Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue fire marshal’s office are covered with photos of his family — wife, two children and four grandchildren — at home or outdoors on fishing and hunting outings.

Or coaching wrestling (Muhme was a high school state champion in 1971 and runnerup in 1972). And there are photos of fires, all of which he helped fight.

“I like photos,” he says. “This pretty much sums up my life: family, kids, hunting, fishing and fire.”

Muhme, 57, is a lifetime local; he is a 1972 graduate of Steamboat Springs High School.

He’s been involved with the Steamboat fire department almost as long, volunteering

with his dad, a firefighter, since he was 16.

Routt County Office of Emergency Management Director Bob Struble, a lifelong friend who worked with Muhme for about 30 years with the fire department, says Muhme’s family is “number one.”

Struble says fire might be a close second.

“His dedication to the fire service is unbelievable,” he says. “It’s an important part of his life, right there with family.”

After graduating from high school, Muhme worked in construction but continued volunteering with the department. His first salaried job with Steamboat came in 1985 when he was named fire marshal, responsible for administration and enforcement of the fire code and investigations.

“It’s just always been a part of my life,” he says. “You just joined the fire department. It was all volunteer back then.

When you got old enough, you joined. In my family, that’s just what you did, I guess.”

Fire technician Renee Patterson-Gaerlan, who has known Muhme since she was 10 years old when her dad was a volunteer firefighter, calls him “old-school Steamboat through and through.”

Muhme jokes that he’s never left Steamboat for more than 14 days at a time.

And he doesn’t have any plans to change that because everything he needs is right here.

“I never expected to have what I have and be as satisfied as I am,” he says. “I didn’t know a person could be.”

Summer 2011 |

Locals | 33

A front - row seat to the miracle of childbirth

Mary Bowman

Photo: John F. Russell Story: Brent boyer

34 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

Not many of us can say we’re part of 120 miracles every year.

Dr. Mary Bowman can.

The Steamboat Springs obstetrician and gynecologist provides a calming presence and expert care to more than 100 Yampa Valley women each year as they welcome their newborns into the world. And she’s been doing it since 1997, which means there’s a whole lot of area children — and now teens — whose first moments of life outside the womb were spent in Bowman’s hands.

Obstetrics is just half of her 60-hour-a-week job as one of three doctors at Yampa Valley OB/GYN. The workload associated with the thousands of patients at their practice is significant, but Bowman wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s what I’m supposed to be doing,” she says. “Not everyone finds that, so I’m really lucky.”

Dr. Leslie Ahlmeyer started the practice shortly after she and Bowman did their residencies together in Denver. The pair clicked, and Steamboat Springs was a perfect spot to settle for Mary and her husband, Jay. As the practice has grown — it now includes Dr. Megan Palmer — so too has Bowman’s appreciation of what she does. She says she likes to help women feel empowered to take good care of themselves, and she enjoys caring for patients long term.

When not at the office, or delivering babies in the Family Birth Place at Yampa Valley Medical Center, Bowman is at home with Jay and their 14-year-old son, Nate. They fit Steamboat’s mountain lifestyle to a T — winters are spent on the ski slopes, and summers are spent running and mountain biking on trails from here to Utah.

Bowman, who spent her childhood between Colorado Springs and Santa Cruz, Calif., loves Steamboat because it’s a community that values its open space, its schools and its public institutions.

“People care about this place so much,” she says. “I don’t see us ever living anywhere else.”

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Locals | 35

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Locals

| Summer 2011

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B anjo - pickin ’ , B ack - crackin ’ , U nicycle - ridin ’ R enaissance M an

Von Wilson If Von Wilson won the lottery, he says he’d spend his time messing around with work horses. “That’s what I’d do,” says Wilson, who part-timed at Marabou Ranch this winter leading sleigh rides. “I’d drive ’em any chance I get.”

Thankfully, the local Renaissance man has plenty of other skills to fall back on, from coffee connoisseur and chiropractor to bluegrass banjo picker and closet rodeo rider.

Wilson, 47, used to raise work horses growing up in Craig in a third-generation ranching family. He put the pastime on hold for a spell when he moved to Steamboat in 1990 and co-founded coffee hot spot Mocha Molly’s with his wife, Molly.

The two have three grown children: Matt, 28; Carly, 26; and Wyatt, 19.

After selling the coffee shop in 1996, he went to chiropractor school in Oregon, graduating in 2000, and returned

to Steamboat to found Back Smith Chiropractic. The name is a play on one of his other hobbies, blacksmithing, which he pursues “whenever there’s work,” be it making railings, stove hoods, chandeliers or even toilet paper holders.

He’s also a “full-time diesel-conversion tinkerer,” as evidenced by his recently converted 1997 Ford Powerstroke truck seen driving across town, which he fills up at local restaurants. But not just any eatery.

“I’m a very big connoisseur of grease,” he says.

Wilson also counts unicycling among his unorthodox pursuits. He can make the wobbly ride up Buffalo Pass and down the Spring Creek Trail in two and a half hours from his house on Seventh Street. This winter, he also could be found riding up a snow-packed Blackmer Drive to the quarry and back.

“There are about four of us old farts

that do it in town,” says Wilson, crediting 12-year-old Mac Skov as his mentor. “It’s the best core-strengthening exercise there is.”

Locals get their core-strengthening exercise by swing dancing to his banjo playing. Arguably one of the best in the state, he’s played in about every bluegrass outfit in town, including local bands Quarter Moon, Ragweed and Old Town Pickers, as well as Northwest favorite Jackstraw during his chiro-schooling days.

But it’s back cracking instead of banjo playing that pays the bills, and he wouldn’t practice his trade anywhere else for the world. “My clientele here is absolutely the best you could hope for,” he says.

“Everyone is outdoorsy, in shape and truly in touch with their bodies. Thinking about practicing somewhere else would be difficult.”

So is imagining Steamboat without him.

Summer 2011 |

Locals | 37

Photo: John F. Russell Story: Luke graham

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38 |

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| Summer 2011

J umping

through

all

the

hoops

Devin Borvansky It started when Devin Borvansky was 18 and grew into something that sometimes surprises even him.

But those who know Borvansky aren’t shocked about what he’s been able to accomplish as a volunteer coach who helps run a youth basketball program for fifththrough eighth-graders.

The program has grown by the same leaps and bounds his players display on the court. And it continues to churn out quality players who take life lessons home from the game, just as Borvansky did.

“I love basketball, and this is the purest form of it,” says Borvansky, a 2004 Steamboat Springs High School graduate.

“The kids still have that passion. I was 18 and didn’t know what I was doing. I found a few tournaments and began taking these 13-year-old kids to them.”

It almost didn’t happen.

Edith Davis 37 Years in Service

David Lyons 22 Years in Service

Stacey Rogers 20 Years in Service

Borvansky was stuck in a classroom at the University of Northern Colorado after graduating from Steamboat Springs High School.

“I was taking business classes,” Borvansky says, “and hating it.”

But what those classes did for Borvansky proved to be good for Steamboat Springs.

He started looking around and found a Fire Science Degree offered at Aims Community College in Greeley.

“Firefighting seemed like a great fit — the teamwork, brotherhood and camaraderie,” he says. “I’ve been playing sports my whole life, and it fit.”

While his work with Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue demands a full-time effort, he still finds time to help coach. It’s not uncommon to see him get off a shift at 7 a.m. and make an 8 a.m. tournament.

“He’s part of my family,” says Michael

Gordon Shelley 19 Years in Service

Larry Cook

Jeff Schankin 18 Years in Service

John Knoche 17 Years in Service

Leon Harrington 17 Years in Service

Steve Dunklin 15 Years in Service

Scott Cook

Nikki Webber 11 Years in Service

Dwain Harder 10 Years in Service

Cindy Keene 8 Years in Service

Alex Wolf 7 Years in Service

Joe Bird 7 Years in Service

THE

Arce, Borvansky’s lieutenant whose son Wyatt plays on one of Borvansky’s teams.

“I always tell Wyatt, ‘If you need something and can’t talk to me about it, you can talk to Devin.’”

Helping others is in Borvansky’s blood. He grew up in the Steamboat basketball program and says that more than anything, that experience taught him a lot about life. Without hoops, he says he wasn’t sure he would have made it through high school.

And the coaching on top of the firefighting workload?

Borvansky wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I love it,” he says. “It’s a good mental release. Sometimes with the fire services, you see the worst of people. When you get with the kids and play basketball, you see the purity of humans.”

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Summer 2011 |

Locals | 39

F rom

B ulgaria

with

love

Michael Stoyanov & Aneliya Plocheva Photo: matt stensland Story: Luke Graham

40 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

Michael Stoyanov and Aneliya Plocheva admit they’ve had some luck.

Both born in communist Yambol, Bulgaria, both well educated at a university in Sofia, Bulgaria, and both set on making a life for themselves, the two moved to Steamboat Springs in 2003.

It was part out of necessity and part right out of “The Great Gatsby.”

“Our family and friends say we got lucky,” Plocheva says. “But my personal belief is our luck comes with hard work.”

The two met in Yambol, started dating and decided to come to the United States to start their own business.

At the time, Bulgaria was full of corruption and murders, with shootings and bomb explosions being the norm. Stoyanov, with a master’s degree in communications, could only find a job selling hot dogs during the graveyard shift at a gas station.

One day, Plocheva was sitting at a coffee shop when bullets filled the place.

“They started shooting everywhere,” she says.

“There was no justice.”

With friends in Steamboat, which reminded them of a resort back home, they arrived in Routt County with $1,000 between them. They worked any job they could, all in hopes of starting a business, a new life and a family.

In 2004, they bought Dreamboat Cafe at Old Town Hot Springs. That first year, they couldn’t afford to hire an employee, so Stoyanov worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day.

“We just had to make it,” he says.

A year later, they started A&M Services, a property management company. By 2009, the two were working with more than 100 properties in Steamboat. That same year, they had a child, Alexandra. Then they sold the Dreamboat Cafe and focused on expanding A&M Services.

By 2010, they added a vacation rental part to the business, creating www.retreatia.com and www.steamboatescapes.com.

“We’ve been really thankful to all our clients,” Plocheva says. “It took guts to hire us. We’re foreigners. But that’s why we love Steamboat.

They really gave us a chance.”

The two recently purchased a home and have been thinking of ways to expand their business, all while chasing Alexandra around.

It’s been a long and winding eight years, but the two aren’t done chasing the American dream.

“We’ve done very well and are happy where we’re at,” Stoyanov says. “But this is just the beginning for us. We’re well educated and young.”

Photo: matt stensland Story: Eugene Buchanan

F rom

the

T etons

to

the

Y ampa

V alley

Harry Martin For Harry Martin, co-owner of Steamboat Ski & Bike Kare, it’s the people who make Steamboat Springs such a great place to live.

“They’re incredible,” he says. “The whole community is just amazingly friendly and down to earth. It’s a great place to live.”

That sentiment is largely why Martin, who moved here from New Jersey from 1986 to 1988 to attend Colorado Mountain College’s Alpine Campus, returned for good in 1995. He’d spent seven years in hardguyville Jackson, Wyo., as co-owner of Hoback Sports, and yet something was missing. That something was community.

So in 1995 — with wife, Kim, now the director of Young Tracks, in tow — he packed his bags for Steamboat and began

raising a family and business. “We had just had our first baby, and our in-laws were living here, so it seemed a natural move,” he says.

Both have blossomed. Sixteen-year-old Foster now is joined by 9-year-old Willy in the Martin household, and Steamboat Ski & Bike Kare has grown as a family, as well. The store opened on 11th Street in 1995 and moved to its current location on Lincoln Avenue in 2004, two years after Mike Parra became co-owner. But it’s Martin’s persona that keeps customers and the 20 employees coming back.

“He’s my favorite local,” says store manager Derek Hodson. “He creates a sense of pride in being a part of his organization. Everyone who interacts

with him has a positive experience. Our community is better because he’s a part of it.”

One of the best ways to see that is through his support of local charities.

He provides discounts for members of Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club teams, donates to almost every fundraising group that walks through his door and sponsors local races, events, trail-building programs and rides for children.

It’s the latter, of course — the kids in the community — that truly makes him smile.

“There’s just so much for them to do here,” says Martin, 46, who you’re likely to see in his 26-foot camper toting his own kids camping up in Hog Park. “It’s a great place for kids to grow up.”

Summer 2011 |

Locals | 41

Photo: John F. Russell Story: Mike Lawrence

S erving

those

who

serve

Rob Powers The first thing that Rob Powers wants you to know is that he does what he does — including volunteering as many as 60 hours a week and traveling four or five months each year — for one reason: gratitude.

“We’re doing this for our servicemen and women,” Powers says on a rainy May afternoon in his small, but vividly decorated, Steamboat Springs office. “We want to make absolutely certain that they know America cares.”

Thanks to the efforts of Powers and other volunteer leaders of American300 Warrior Tours, countless American soldiers around the globe know exactly that.

Powers organizes and leads several trips a year to U.S. military bases, in combat zones and peaceful areas, to improve the resiliency and morale of troops. He brings along Olympians — “It all started with Steamboat athletes,” he says — rodeo stars, country musicians, professional athletes and others.

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| Summer 2011

There’s a thorough vetting process for trip participants, Powers says, to ensure that those who come along know the trip is entirely about the troops, rather than participants’ own celebrity or fame.

“We go to hardship, remote combat areas,” Powers says.

The trips provide opportunities for wellknown people to make lasting connections with servicemen and servicewomen and to express their thanks in simple messages that can have profound impacts.

One of the many photos in Powers’ office simply shows, for example, a close-up image of two hands connecting in a firm grip. The photo was taken in a remote, combat-ridden location in the Middle East.

“We shook hands with guys who hadn’t shook hands with somebody in six months,” Powers says about that tour.

Steamboat Ski and Resort Corp. spokesman Mike Lane has traveled on

Warrior Tours with Powers and attests to the influence of the National Guard veteran at home and overseas. “He’s a truly wonderful representative of the community,” Lane says.

Powers, a father of five who makes his living announcing military and professional sporting events, such as marathons, moved to Steamboat Springs in 1990. He’s lived in the Hahn’s Peak area since 2002.

“I really savor my time up in Hahn’s Peak when I come home from a tour,” he says, citing the peaceful, quiet surroundings in North Routt County. “It’s such a contrast from having mortars drop around you at night.”

Learn more Visit www.thewarriortours.com, www.armedforces.lucashoge.com or the American300 Warrior Tours Facebook page.

I t ’ s

A ll

A bout

the

K ids

Heather Martyn School might be out for summer, as so eloquently put by Alice Cooper, but the Boys & Girls Club of Steamboat Springs is very much in.

Steamboat toddlers and teens (as well as their parents) can thank longtime local Heather Martyn for that.

Martyn, 37, founded the Boys & Girls Club of Steamboat in June 2009 at the George P. Sauer Human Services Center on Seventh Street to provide healthy, out-of-school alternatives to youths in town.

“I wanted to do something for the kids here,” says Martyn, who previously held various property management and real estate jobs. “A friend told me about a group that wanted the club started here, so we conducted a survey and needs assessment. After a year of legwork, we were able to open.”

Although it hasn’t been easy, Martyn’s never-give-up nature helped.

So, likely, did her connections in town.

Martyn moved here after graduating from high school in Sheridan, Wyo., in 1992 at age 18 “to be a ski bum.”

Hooked for life, she then moved back permanently after graduating from Colorado State University in 1996.

Her family ties to town run even deeper. Her grandfather, Joe Deurloo, ran a dairy where Steamboat Campground sits west of town on U.S. Highway 40 and later owned a car dealership and garage where Old West Steakhouse resides. Her father, Robert, lived here through high school.

Now Martyn — who lives with husband, Renn, and children Andrew, 14, Ryan, 12, and Lander, 8 months, on a ranch in the south valley at the base of Rabbit Ears Pass — is happy to give back to a community where she has so much heritage.

The club provides activities for youths ages 6 to 18, including sports, arts, crafts and educational programming, all for just $1 an hour or $10 per day (with the $25 membership fee). While Martyn still is soliciting funding for improvements, she’s pleased to report that the club has served nearly 900 kids since its inception.

“We had a few struggles at first, but we’ve put some great collaborations together with people in the community,” she says. “I’m thrilled with how it’s been received. Steamboat is a great community, and the people here are wonderful.”

Photo: Matt Stensland Story: Eugene Buchanan

Summer 2011 |

Locals | 43

O f

cycling

and

stage

races

Corey Piscopo Story and Photo: Matt stensland

44 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

Corey Piscopo says his passion for cycling probably began as a kid who liked to fill up on ice cream.

Unlike most children, he felt he had to get a workout in and then reward himself with a treat. So he regularly rode his bike to the nearest Dairy Queen five miles from his home in Sanbornton, N.H. The other positives of cycling developed as he matured and went on mountain biking adventures in high school and raced in college.

“It just sort of grew from there,” Piscopo says. “It’s social; it’s exercise; it’s competition. It gets you into the outdoors.”

The 30-year-old moved to Steamboat Springs with Kristen Stemp in fall 2007. They now are engaged.

“We really were looking for the kind of lifestyle that Steamboat offers,” he says.

Piscopo landed a job in sales at Moots and quickly started to address some of the things that Steamboat lacked when it came to cycling.

“There are a lot of really talented racers and riders in Steamboat, and there wasn’t really a broad organization that focused on bike racing,” Piscopo says.

In 2009, Piscopo organized the four-day Steamboat Stage Race, the only race of its kind in Colorado.

The event attracted 305 riders, and as many as 400 competitors are expected to race this Sept. 2 to 5.

“I think the Steamboat Stage Race really put Steamboat on the map for being a big cycling community,” says Steamboat Ski & Bike Kare manager Derek Hodson, who is also a Routt County Riders board member.

Piscopo also created Steamboat Velo, a local cycling team that supports more than 20 members.

“It’s kind of been low key to start out,” Piscopo says. “That may just be my style.”

A cyclocross event hosted last summer only added to Piscopo’s reputation as being a major player in Steamboat’s growing cycling culture.

“It’s just like every ounce of his soul is about biking,” Hodson says.

“I don’t know if the guy sleeps.”

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Summer 2011 |

Locals | 45

E ccentricity

in

S teamboat

Irene Nelson

Photo: John F. Russell Story: Eugene Buchanan

46 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

If Irene Nelson, owner of Irene Nelson Interiors, had her way, she’d add her own special touch to town. The new bus shelters would better mesh with their downtown surroundings, and the city would bury power lines in local alleyways.

Nelson, 75, can’t help but offer suggestions for spicing up Steamboat. An eye for how things look is in her blood.

She does it for a living for people’s homes, and it’s her nature to do the same for the community she loves.

“I’ve been in town a long time,” she says. “In that time, I’ve seen a lot of styles and fashions come and go. Fashions usually have about a seven-year lifespan.

First, it was the artsy bungalow style, then Western, and then everyone wanted French chateaus. It’s fine to have all these styles, but you want something that’s timeless, especially in a street-scape. Styles should blend, or at least have some relationship with some other building style in the streetscape.”

If she has a quirkiness for getting designs right, be it for downtown or a dining room, it goes hand in hand with her own unorthodox arrival in Steamboat in 1970.

Hearing about Steamboat’s family friendliness while vacationing in Breckenridge, she traded her Opal GT for a yellow Sunshine Biscuit bakery truck and loaded up her four kids and two dogs for the move west from Chicago. When the truck broke down outside of Cheyenne, she stuck out her thumb, with brood in tow.

A lone acquaintance from Steamboat then drove to cart them over Rabbit Ears Pass to their new home.

Nelson’s design affinity got tested quickly as she soon found herself the owner of two quirky, fixer-uppers downtown. Her freshly transplanted kids, meanwhile, slept in the yard during the construction. “They were both wrecks, and I didn’t know a soul in town,” she says. “I’d feed dinner to anyone who helped me with the house.”

Adds daughter Cindy, who owns White Hart Gallery: “We moved from a country club environment in Chicago to sleeping in tents in Steamboat.”

Nelson then opened her interior design business and has been sharing her opinions while sprucing up people’s homes ever since. And even at 75, with five grandchildren, a business and home and garden to tend to in Fairview, she’s showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, feel free to offer her a hand if you find her loading furniture into her yellow moving van behind her office on Oak Street.

“Steamboat’s a great town,” she says.

“I live in a real neighborhood in a real community. There aren’t many places like it.”

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Summer 2011 |

Locals | 47

R eaching

out

to

today ’ s

youths

Jon Gagnon

Photo: John F. Russell Story: Joel Reichenberger

48 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

Jon Gagnon dedicated an entire day to a “Glee” marathon. He browses iTunes, searching for the latest trends in music and keeps a close eye on Facebook, Twitter and any other developing fad.

At 31, some might think those trappings of teenagehood would have passed him by, but Gagnon has dedicated himself to connecting to youths and doing so in ways they’ll understand.

Gagnon is a youth services pastor in Steamboat Springs, and while he prides himself in being up on pop culture, he’s equally focused on ensuring his connection to youths doesn’t bottom out at Lady Gaga.

Gagnon doesn’t have to look far to find ways to inspire those he works with.

He’s disarmingly forward about his own story and the life journey he took that landed a California boy in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.

“I went the way of the beast,” the San Diego native says about his middle school days. “I started using drugs when I was 12. I was basically a dopey dropout, and I went to rehab when I was 18 for overdosing.

I found God and gave my life to helping students get it and not jack it up.”

Gagnon says in his nearly two years in Steamboat — he took his position at Steamboat Christian Center in August 2009 — he’s found lots of things to love about Steamboat Springs and the Yampa Valley.

He and his wife, Tausha, and their two boys, Noah, 7, and Gavin, 4, have learned to love the outdoors.

They skateboard, hike and camp, and Gagnon has been carefully introducing his sons to the Bashor Bowl terrain park at Steamboat Ski Area.

It’s not a good run through the Maverick Superpipe that’s proved to be the best part of Steamboat for Gagnon, however. Instead, he insists it’s the job.

“To see them get it, for them to have a North Star or a vision for their life, when they get that, that’s great for me,” he says. “When they realize, ‘I could have much more than farting around town, drinking and getting high,’ when that light bulb goes off, that’s what keeps me going.”

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Locals | 49

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traveler

ready

for

ne x t

trip

Michael Savory Photo: John F. Russell Story: Mike Lawrence

50 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

Michael Savory knows a thing or two about packing up and leaving town.

Savory, a recent Steamboat Springs High School graduate, stellar student, multi-sport athlete and a leader of the Sailors’ Class of 2011, was born in California. He then moved with his family to Saudi Arabia; Texas; Alberta, Canada; England, outside London; back to Saudi Arabia — just before Sept. 11, 2001 — then to Madrid, Spain; and, finally, to Steamboat Springs, in time for seventh grade.

His father is in the oil business and worked on projects that would take about two years each, at locations around the world.

Savory’s travels didn’t stop after he arrived in Steamboat. He participated in an eighth-grade exchange program to Sweden and has joined mission trips to Africa and the Dominican Republic, with the United Methodist Church of Steamboat Springs.

He’s joining another mission trip this summer to Jamaica.

Even with all those stamps on his passport, the Yampa Valley is closest to his heart.

“Steamboat is definitely the place I call home,” he says.

But after about seven years here — his longest stint in one location — Savory, 18, is preparing for another big change of scenery.

He’ll begin his freshman year at Rice University in Houston in the fall to study chemical engineering. His parents, Kathy and Don, met at Rice and eventually married in its chapel. The couple celebrated their 35th anniversary in May. Savory says his latest departure is bittersweet.

“I’ve really enjoyed high school,” he says.

“It gave me a lot of opportunity and was a lot of fun.”

Savory participated in several extracurricular academic and leadership programs while playing four seasons of football and two seasons each of baseball and lacrosse.

Bob Hiester, his lacrosse coach and calculus teacher, says Savory brought similar attributes to both disciplines.

“The thing that has impressed me is how hard he works, both at mathematics and lacrosse,” Hiester says. “His persistence and hard work are as good as anybody I’ve had.”

High school Principal Kevin Taulman also has plenty of praise for Savory. “He’s a great role model,” Taulman says. “He’s the kind of high school student you want your kids to look up to and try to emulate.”

Savory says he’ll miss the local community.

“I really feel at home here,” he says. “Houston is the fourth-biggest city in the nation. I feel like I’ll get lost, like a little fish in a big ocean.”

No matter how big the ocean, odds are that this well-traveled Sailor will find his way.

Story and Photo: tom Ross

O ff to conquer N ew E ngland

Michaela Frias Michaela Frias looks forward to taking on the dual challenges of pursuing an Ivy League education and the equally competitive world of college ski racing when she packs her ski bags late this summer and travels to Hanover, N.H., to study and ski at Dartmouth College.

She hopes to major in international studies while hitting New England’s Winter Carnival Circuit as a cross-country skier for the Big Green. “I’m really excited about going to college,” she says.

“Everyone I met on the team was so nice.”

Brian Tate, Frias’ coach at the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club, says she is an intense ski racer but many people don’t pick up on it at first because of her quirky sense of humor and easy laugh. “She’s very, very competitive, and she’s surprisingly intellectual,” Tate says. “She has a lot of thoughts on world issues. And she has a unique sense of humor. She’ll throw you some curveballs.”

Frias loved Advanced Placement English and sociology during her senior year at Steamboat Springs High School.

But her advanced placement also pertains to Nordic racing. She attracted national attention in March 2010 when she captured a gold medal at the Junior Olympics in Presque Isle, Maine.

Things didn’t go as smoothly for much of the 2010-11 season as she battled fatigue and a mysterious malaise that held her back. Finally, it was determined she had been over-training and after dialing her workouts back in late winter, she stormed onto a Junior Olympic podium again in March in Minneapolis. She claimed second-place in the mass start 10-kilometer classic race, competing against peers from across the country.

Now she’ll do the same at Dartmouth, and it’s easy to predict how — hiding her competitive fire beneath her smile — she’ll make a name for herself in New England.

Summer 2011 |

Locals | 51

D oggone

good

times

Marianne Sasak

Photo: John F. Russell Story: Nicole Inglis

52 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

Marianne Sasak’s soft but firm voice floats on a warm spring breeze across her pasture west of Steamboat Springs.

“Katie, left.”

“Annie, come-bye.”

“That’ll do, Dot.” With quiet flicks of her hand and a watchful gaze, Sasak works her three border collie dogs around the flock of sheep as if she’s solving a puzzle. The dogs crouch and slink around the field, and the skittish sheep baa and balk, shuffling into the perfect spot.

After 10 years of training sheepdogs, Sasak says the dogs have taught her a few lessons, too.

“They have to learn to take the pressure off things,” she says. “Then the sheep relax.

It’s the same with people. You have to know pressure and release.”

Growing up in Southern California, Sasak always wanted to be a cowboy. Now, she’s the driving force behind the Steamboat Stock Dog Challenge, a Labor Day weekend event she started on her ranch eight years ago, which then moved to the Stanko Ranch as it expanded.

Ranch owner Jim Stanko, who has known Sasak for 20 years, says the event showcases Steamboat’s ranching heritage.

“She brought something new to Steam­ boat that reflects back to our agricultural image,” he says. “And agriculture is part of why people come here.”

The event attracts dog handlers and their animals from across the country and acts as a precursor to the Meeker Classic dog trials a few weeks later.

Sasak says she also is careful to incorporate education into the event: Announcers explain every movement on the field, and it serves as an outreach tool for local youths to learn about local ranching heritage and agriculture.

The Stock Dog Challenge isn’t the only outlet for Sasak’s ambition or business degree from the University of Southern California. In winter, she travels to stock shows with her clothing company, Steamboat Ranchwear.

Stanko’s wife, Jo, says Sasak’s insatiable drive turns whatever she does into a success.

“She’s very committed and lively,” she says. “We’re lucky to have her in the community to carry things forward with such energy.”

For Sasak, the drive for working her dogs is just cultivating the passion already present in them.

“They just live for it,” she says. “It’s so rewarding to take a dog that doesn’t have a job and give it one.”

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Locals | 53

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Locals

| Summer 2011

Investing in the youth of our community is a partnership that benefits everyone.

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Photo: John F. Russell Story: Brent boyer

H ooked

on

an

unlikely

career

Tim Widmer Tim Widmer could be the poster boy for Colorado Mountain College success stories.

The kid from Estes Park had the brains and the grades to go to any four-year school in the state. Instead, he chose CMC’s Alpine Campus, perched above downtown Steamboat Springs.

“I wanted to be a ski bum and still have the excuse of going to school,” Widmer admits.

Even his high school counselor tried to talk his parents out of letting him go to CMC. But the smaller classes of CMC and the small-town nature of Steamboat were simply too alluring.

He graduated with his associate degree and transferred to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in ecotourism. His dream of

opening an ecotourist lodge in Costa Rica was short-lived, so he returned to Steamboat and began working as a boot fitter and salesman at SureFoot. During the summer, he capitalized on his love of flyfishing by guiding for the former Steamboat Fishing Co. By 2004, Widmer had taken over as manager at SureFoot. He couldn’t have imagined the career move that would take place four years later when he was hired as assistant professor of the ski and snowboard business program at CMC. “I never viewed myself as becoming a professor,” Widmer says. “I love it mostly because I love the students. I know where they’re coming from.”

Widmer works with Michael Martin, director of the ski and snowboard business program, which is the Alpine Campus’

second-largest degree program, serving 125 to 150 students.

“The students we have are great,” Widmer says. “They’re open, willing to learn and excited about going to school.”

An accomplished fly-fishing guide with Steamboat Flyfisher, Widmer’s job still allows him to hit the river often. He teaches fly-fishing courses at CMC and has sold some of his fly patterns to Solitude Fly Co. in California.

But that water time has become a little more restricted. Widmer and his wife, Megan, are in the full throes of parenthood with their 1-year-old daughter, Maria. They can’t imagine raising her in a better place than Steamboat.

“As far as we’re concerned, Steamboat is forever,” Widmer says. “We just love it here.”

Summer 2011 |

Locals | 55

L ending

a

helping

hand

Joyce Hoekstra

Story and Photo: Joel reichenberger

56 |

Locals

| Summer 2011

Joyce Hoekstra came over Rabbit Ears Pass in February 1978 into what was a long, snowy winter. She didn’t give a moment’s thought as to whether she’d still be in Steamboat Springs 33 years later — not that day or any other, she says.

With the snowmobiling and hiking, the horse riding and car racing, where was the time to worry about something like that?

“That was almost half my life ago,” she says.

Hoekstra, 65, loves to get outside and can drop an antelope with one shot. She’s plenty adapt indoors, as well, remembering all the details of the day she bowled a perfect 300. She also can rule the pool table, a skill she picked up in 20 years as one of the owners of Golden Cue Billiards, the only pool hall in Steamboat. It closed several years ago.

In her time in town, Hoekstra has put down deep roots in the community, enjoying its outdoor activities but also embracing its people.

These days, Hoekstra staffs the customer service desk at City Market. She’s only been there five years, but in one way or another, she has spent all 33 of her years in Steamboat helping people.

Much of that has come behind a counter at various jobs across town and in her time at the Golden Cue. But plenty also comes away from work, with Hoekstra always quick to lend a hand to friends in need, often doing grocery shopping or helping with other errands.

“Whenever I’ve commented on what a good person she is, she just says, ‘Well, what are friends for?’” says friend Carolyn Rule.

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Road trip

Mountain Biking the

Mickelson Trail Mickelson trail association

Converted South Dakota rail line perfect for riders of all walks

Trestle Time: One of 100 converted railroad bridges you’ll cross on the 109-mile bike trail.

Story by Eugene Buchanan 58 | At Home | Summer 2011

I

f Rocky Raccoon was a mountain biker, you can bet a satchel of Black Hills gold he would have ridden the George S. Mickelson Trail snaking through the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Running 109 miles from Deadwood to Edgemont, the trail follows the historic Deadwood to Burlington Northern rail line, which lasted from 1868 to 1983. The state’s first rails-to-trails project is now designed for bicyclists, whose piston power comes from legs instead of locomotives.

Named for former South Dakota Gov. George S. Mickelson, the trail sees more than 65,000 bicyclists per year, some tackling portions and others the entire traverse. The longest climb is the 1,600-foot, 14-mile pedal out of Deadwood, but it’s rolling from then on, taking you over 100 converted railroad bridges and trestles through some of the best scenery in South Dakota. And all you need to bring is a credit card. No panniers, tents, sleeping bags, stoves or food. Just a little piece of plastic for hotels, meals and cold beer at the end of the day.

Which, of course, also makes it the perfect multi-day pedaling destination for parents and their kids.

Our adventure starts in Mystic, an abandoned mining/sawmill town hidden between forest-covered ridges in the Black Hills. A sign near the trailhead reads “Hill City: 14.6 miles,” our first destination before continuing on to Custer.

All we pack is our day gear and clothes to change into at the hotel. Of course, with kids along, our gear list grows accordingly.

This includes a trail-a-bike for Casey, bike for Brooke, and Burley for one or both should they get tired. We also carry spare tubes for all the oddly shaped wheels.

Mistake No. 1: not realizing until we arrive that the Burley doesn’t fit onto my wife’s disc-braked bike. So it has to go on mine, behind Casey’s trail-a-bike, which also only fits on my bike. The result: a triple-rigged, snake-like Dr. Seuss-mobile evoking looks from other riders that say, “Are you really pulling that on this trail?”

Aside from the roller coaster behind me, another discouraging sign is the roller coaster-like trail ahead of us. Although the trail only reaches a maximum 4 percent grade, every person coming our way marvels at the downhill they just rode. I try to distract my kids from hearing the

Mickelson trail association

If you go

The trail has a maximum 4 percent grade — just a few points lower than the interest rate on the credit card you’ll use for your meals and accommodations. news, but that’s where we’re heading — up a 4 percent grade for the next seven miles to Red Fern. We’re also starting at a heat-peaking 1:30 p.m. on June 24; the day before in Deadwood, the thermometer crested 94 degrees.

A 4 percent grade isn’t overly burly, but it is with a Burley. The heat gets the kids whining quickly, and they soon grovel into the Burley behind the trail-a-bike. This means awkwardly tying Brooke’s bike to the top, where it hangs like an ill-fitting awning.

All this weight is towed by dad. Behind me coasts Casey, Brooke, Brooke’s bike, a trail-a-bike, Burley and duffels full of day gear. Making matters worse is the pulling apparatus. With all the weight in the Burley, the now-weightless trail-a-bike between us lifts with each pedal pump. I’m the Little Engine That Could, sweat brimming my brows with every crank.

Respite comes in several old railroad tunnels, which trap cool air inside the mountain. Following the creek, Brooke now thankfully back on her own bike, we arrive at a series of restored railroad trestles. If they were strong enough for trains, I figure they’re strong enough for the train of wheels behind me.

We clickity-clack across and regain the chipped limestone trail, as smooth as the card dealers in Deadwood. A veritable history lesson unfolds around each bend.

We earn a few speckled flakes at “Wade’s Gold Panning” for a fifty-cent fee and pass abandoned railroad buildings and ghost towns, each empty cabin prompting Casey to ask, “Who lived there?”

The trail’s last turn takes us into Hill City just in time to see an 1880s steam train pull up from the town of Keystone.

Steam billowing from the engine matches poltergeist-type clouds circling ominously overhead, so we hightail it to the Comfort Inn, parking our bikes right off the trail in the hotel’s basement. Bikes from other trailriders are perched in similar stalls.

Seven seconds later, the kids cannonball into the swimming pool to wash away the day’s grime. Then it’s straight onto buffalo burgers at Buffalo Bob’s (not to be confused with his more famous brother, Bill), topped off with ice cream cones. Back in the hotel, the kids fall asleep before their heads hit their pillows.

The night’s rain makes the next day’s trail tacky for our 17-mile ride to Custer.

“It smells good out here,” says Brooke as she helps me wheel the bikes out of the basement.

“My butt’s sore,” chimes in Casey as she climbs on her trail-a-bike and scrunches her face up for the inevitable helmet fastening.

“The seat’s giving me a wedgy.”

After waiting for the handlebar’s turtle to squeak, a telltale indicator that she’s ready, we roll off on Leg 2, the train whistle blowing as we pedal out of town.

We make it a whole half mile before our first swim stop under a bridge in a small creek. A mile later, the kids bellyflop into a beaver pond. We find the deepest swimming hole of the trip below a culvert where someone has used a muddy finger to paint a picture of a hunter and a bison.

“I don’t think those are from real Indians,” says Brooke, sparking a conversation about American Indians and animals that lasts the next few miles.

The kids sing and yell as we ride over wooden bridges so they can hear their vocal chords vibrate on the planks. Like

Gear: Bring bike repair equipment, rain gear and a credit card.

Skills: The trail follows the old railroad line, so you’ll rarely put it in granny; the maximum climb is a 4 percent grade.

Cost: Users ages 12 and older are required to purchase a daily trail pass for $2, available at self-registration sites en route.

Details: The 109-mile trail can be ridden in one long day in either direction, or make it a multi-day outing by staying in such towns as Hill City, Custer and Pringle. The trail has water fountains, milepost markers, interpretive signs and shelters with picnic tables and bathrooms.

For accommodations and car shuttles, try the Deadwood Chamber (800-999-1876); Custer Chamber (800-992-9818); Hill City Chamber (800-888-1798); or Edgemont Chamber (605662-5900).

Season: April to October Don’t miss: Swing by the Crazy Horse Memorial outside Custer for a closer look after your ride; and you might as well hit Mount Rushmore while you’re in the neighborhood.

Fun fact: Visit Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok was shot while holding his Deadman’s Hand of aces and eights on Aug. 2, 1876.

Map: Take Interstate 25 north and turn right on U.S. Highway 85. In Lusk, stay north on U.S. 85 through the Black Hills into Deadwood.

More info at www.mickelsontrail.com or 605-584-3896. dominoes, rows of identical ponderosas line each side of the trail. We take a Skittles break six miles in, and in another three, we crest a pass, marking the end of the uphill.

In the distance, the Crazy Horse Memorial, carved into a giant granite outcropping, seems to beckon us onward.

We pass a twosome pedaling recumbent bicycles, a Boy Scout troop from Colorado and several couples coming the opposite direction. A couple on a Harley waves at us from the road, prompting Casey to give them a thumbs-up.

The kids also learn about setting and achieving goals. They keep their eyes out for mile markers, asking how long it took to get to each one (six to 20 minutes, depending on potty breaks), and play such games as dodging pine cones and counting trees. On the trail-a-bike behind me, Casey happily sings such favorites as “The Ants Go Marching One by One” and “Miss Mary Mac.” We cool off at a water pump at mile marker 49, sticking our heads under the faucet, before following a lodgepole fence into Custer. We arrive to a church celebration with a bonanza of free Bouncy Castles, arts and crafts projects and snow cones. While the kids busy themselves back in civilization, we grab the car, break down the bikes and begin packing for the trip home. Once on the road, I cue up “Rocky Raccoon.” ■ Summer 2011 | At Home

| 59

Fromto Gangs the Great Outdoors Rocky Mountain Youth Corps member shines in Steamboat tepping aboard Greyhound bus No. 41 from Steamboat Springs to Fresno, Calif., just a week shy of his 19th birthday, Andrew Fonseca has a lot to think about. Six months earlier, he was a gang member running drugs in Dallas. Now, with a high school diploma and Student of the Year accolades from the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps in hand, he’s heading back to where the wrong fork in the road all started and, hopefully, a new future.

Fonseca could well be a case study in the nurturing power of small towns and Mother Nature. For it was his stint in Steamboat last summer — including a trip down the Yampa River, trail crew work with the Youth Corps and the attention of his counselors at Yampa Valley School — that opened his eyes to a world beyond gang warfare.

Raised in Fresno, his upbringing was typical of an inner-city youth: gangs, violence and poor grades. His brother, Javier, was in jail. All five of his uncles had been in gangs, none finishing high school. One cajoled him to get their gang’s Bulldog tattoo, but Fonseca refused.

So his parents moved him to Dallas, where his situation spiraled. Involved in another gang, he tried to quit but got jumped and blind sided by a crowbar. He woke up in the same hospital where his mother worked, which is the only thing that saved his life.

Released three weeks later, his parents got him out of Dodge, sending him to live with an ex-brother-in-law in Milner.

And that’s how I find him on my raft on a trip down the Yampa River for Youth Corps.

Forget that he has never been camping before, let alone on a river trip. Or that the river is flowing a whopping 17,000 cubic feet per second, enough to make even his gang leaders cringe. With just three months left of high school, he was transplanted away from friends and family to a podunk mountain town whose ethnicity is as white as its snowcovered peaks. Throw in an up-close meeting with Mother Nature and his synapses are firing faster than any semi-automatic on the streets.

Although he had heard about the program at school, he didn’t know until the day before that his first assignment would involve a fourday river trip to restore a surveyor’s cabin.

And he didn’t know jack about camping. On an outing with his school beforehand, his counselors set up his tent, prompting him to ask, “Wow, that’s pretty cool. What’s that for?”

rocky mountain youth corps

S

Hail to the Trail: Rocky Mountain Youth Corps members construct a walkway in the wilderness.

He didn’t realize it was for sleeping.

Next came his indoctrination to camp food.

“This is the best hamburger I’ve ever had,” he gushed around his first camp fire, no clue that everything tastes better while camping.

Now come lessons from the river. One of nine Youth Corps students on the trip, all tasked with restoring an old surveyor’s cabin just downstream of the put-in, he’s quieter than most, absorbing his surroundings like a sponge. But after we pull over to the cabin site and unload our gear — a melting pot of shovels, pick-axes, buckets and fencing material — he dives into his work tenaciously, shoveling dirt off the cabin’s floor, carrying buckets of it outside and spearheading the repair of its broken-down fence.

He does it all surrounded by towering spires replacing high-rises and the roar of the river substituting for the noise of the streets.

The only gangs are those formed to haul dry bags ashore.

Cabin work complete, the rest of the trip is a float out to the boat ramp at Echo Park, site of David Brower’s victory over the Echo Park dam in 1956. “Man, that would have been bad,” he says upon hearing about the near miss. “You mean all of this would have been buried underwater?”

His shell opens each successive night Story by Eugene Buchanan

60 | At Home | Summer 2011

under the stars as he listens to tales of the area’s outlaws, geology and Fremont culture.

“I’ve never really looked at the stars before,” he confides. “Sometimes, I’d look for the moon but not the stars. And there’s no way we ever saw the Milky Way.” The trip ends all too quickly for everyone, especially Fonseca and company who now are heading to tougher-duty trail work in the desert. But the seeds are sown. By summer’s end, Fonseca wins Youth Corps’ Student of Year award and dinner with former Gov. Bill Ritter — all to someone caught up in gangs just six months earlier.

“Being outdoors like that completely rocked his world,” says school counselor Chuck Rosemond, who helped him become the first person in his family to earn his high school diploma. “It totally opened his eyes to a lot of things we all take for granted.”

Before leaving, he uses his hard-earned Youth Corps money to take his teachers out to lunch, something no student has ever done before. Then the reality of who he is hits home. He donates the outdoor gear he bought with his $300 stipend back to the youth program. “I’m going back to the city, so I don’t need it anymore,” he says. “I like it and all, but I don’t need it back where I’m going.”

Corey Kopischke Photography

Gangs Begone: Rocky Mountain Youth Corps Student of the Year Andrew Fonseca after winning dinner with former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter.

Summer 2011 | At Home

| 61

Youth Corps going strong

Summer 2011 projects

Head into the hills this summer and you’ll likely find a crew of kids with shovels and Pulaskis alongside you. No, it’s not a re-creation of Roosevelt’s New Deal, but a Steamboat-based program that has championed work on trees, trails and hilltops since 1993.

Established to “link community, education and environment through service,” Rocky Mountain Youth Corps is a nonprofit conservation program that employs as many as 100 16- to 25-yearolds each summer. One of 143 such corps in the country putting in 21 million hours of service annually, it’s brought 568 participants into its fold, thanks to $1.3 million in AmeriCorp Education Awards.

“It’s an awesome program,” says Executive Director Gretchen Van De Carr, a recent recipient of the Livingston Fellowship for her nonprofit leadership. “It’s great to carry on the Civilian Conservation Corps’ legacy of empowering youths to live healthy, productive and positive lives. Plus, it exposes many of these youths to the outdoors for the first time.”

The program is poised to enhance its offerings even more. In fall, it purchased a 3.86-acre parcel of land near the base of Emerald Mountain off Twentymile Road, including a 2,000-squarefoot office and 700-square-foot bunkhouse.

“It’s perfect for us,” says Van De Carr, adding that future plans include developing a Routt County Youth Services Center that will house additional youth-serving organizations.

Bridger-Teton National Forest, Pinedale, Wyo.: Crews mule train into Bridger-Teton National Forest outside Jackson Hole, Wyo., for four weeks to rebuild sections of the Continental Divide Trail and live in a base camp surrounded by an electric bear fence powered by a car battery.

Mount Yale, Leadville: Crews head to 14,196foot Mount Yale for seven weeks to improve and reroute the trail to the summit, hiking the same fourteener for weeks on end.

Pine beetle mitigation, Colorado state forests/ parks: Chain saw-clad crews spend 18 weeks removing beetle-killed trees from Colorado state parks to reopen areas to the public.

Pike-San Isabel National Forest, Buena Vista: Crews head to Mineral Basin high above Cottonwood Lake to revisit a section of the 3,100-mile-long Continental Divide Trail the Youth Corps built four years ago.

Projects near Steamboat: This summer, expect to see Youth Corps crews working on trails on Emerald Mountain as well as at Steamboat Lake, Colorado State Forest State Park and in Medicine-Bow and Routt National Forests. The group also is submitting applications to work on the Rehder Ranch by Catamount and is teaming up with the Yampa Valley Autism Association to build a greenhouse on its property for the association and Community Cultivation through its Service Learning Institute.

I meet him for lunch at Johnny B. Good’s Diner before he boards the bus. His plan is to go live with his 96-year-old grandmother in Fresno and enroll in the local community college.

Out of his river gear, he’s now back into his usual ware, the tongues folded down on his black canvas high-tops, a cross dangling from his neck beneath a black T-shirt and a bump across his nose belying his rough past.

We chat about the summer and his future as he picks at his burger and fries, saving most in a doggie box for the bus ride ahead.

“Man, what a crazy summer,” he finally says. “That was a life-changing experience.

It’s something you can’t really speak about unless you do it for yourself.

“None of my friends or family believe I’m going to do what I’m going to do,” he adds.

“But if I can make something great come out of this, then I can change things. I’m trying to change my ways.”

Dabbing a fry into a pile of ketchup, he continues with one final thought. “I hated digging catholes, but I learned to respect the outdoors a whole lot more,” he says. “I never knew it was like that out there.”

Hopefully the river, and time spent with the Youth Corps and our community, has helped put his rough past behind him.

Grabbing the rest of his burger, he gets up, and I shuttle him to the bus station. Then he climbs aboard, looking ahead to life around the next bend. ■

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62 | At Home | Summer 2011

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Summer 2011 | At Home

| 63

Ross remembers

Paying the Price for Too Much Snow

64 | At Home | Summer 2011

Bucci Ponds clear across the valley to River Road, negotiating the new Steamboat Everglades.

The water was clearing most fences, adding the term threewire spring to three-wire winter.

So, is it true that there’s no such thing as too much snow in Ski Town USA? It depends on whom you ask. Despite Steamboat’s buoyant attitude, the threat that the rising rivers could damage property and endanger lives still hung over us June 8, when typically runoff has begun to subside. And never have local backs been more sore than from hefting sandbags this spring.

As I write this, the stoic citizens of the Yampa Valley are emerging from what may have been the nastiest and newsiest mud season in three decades.

By the power vested in me, I hereby pronounce that all of you who survived May 2011 are Steamboat locals for all time.

Out of necessity, people in this valley are well-versed in turning snow into fun. We ski on it sometimes from October into May, and in between, we recycle it into paddling sports and fly-fishing.

But excessive snow also can get in the way of mountain biking and hiking. It’s anyone’s guess when we might be able to drive to the summit of Buffalo Pass this year and hike north on the Continental Divide Trail. If you go anytime before say, July 20, take a pair of snow gaiters to zip over your hiking boots.

How deep was the snow on Buff Pass on Memorial Day weekend?

The snow wizards at the Natural Resources Conservation Service were reporting that the snow on top of the pass was 194 inches deep on May 28.

That’s 16 feet (check my math).

That’s deeper than an NBA big man standing on top of another.

Picture Dirk Nowitzki standing on LeBron James’ shoulders — the snow still would have been over their heads.

U.S. forest service

How crazy was spring runoff 2011 in the Boat? A neighbor of mine swears he saw a trout jumping in the flooded parking lot of Steamboat Hotel on the evening of June 4. It was a rare asphalt trout (salmonidae bitumina for you expert anglers).

The Longtime local Yampa writer Tom Ross has River had called Steamboat flooded home since 1979. across virtually all of the meadows on the west side of U.S. Highway 40 and, presumably, the fish were spreading out. The rest of us were hanging out, watching the rivers flow.

On June 4, the snow was still 5 feet deep on the West Summit of Rabbit Ears Pass and the feds told us that remarkable snowpack still contained 3 feet of water. The snowmelt already was descending on the valley.

On the evening of June 6, Little Toots Park along the banks of Soda Creek was the place to be. The creek had jumped a concrete retaining wall and came pouring through the park where giddy people of all ages were frolicking in the frigid water that had been snow just hours before.

“We’re going to come back tomorrow night and kayak through the park,” local Jill Lambek said.

Not far from Little Toots that night, Chris Arnis was among the crew of kayakers seeking thrills in Charlie’s Hole on the Yampa.

“You have to be out here tonight,” he said. “I figure this only happens once every 20 years. If I wait until next time, I’ll be 68!”

That’s the spirit, Chris!

Elsewhere, stand-up paddleboarders paddled from

U.S. forest service

Tom Ross might remember alright, but he can’t recall a spring like this one

You do the Math: The Tower measuring site at 10,500 feet on Buffalo Pass in summer, top, and with 194 inches of snow May 24.

If you’ve ever toyed with the notion of attempting to ski in the Colorado Rockies in every month of a calendar year (and who hasn’t?), your time has come. I know I’m going for it.

A June cross-country skiing outing on Rabbit Ears Pass was a given. And a July ski outing on Buff Pass shouldn’t be a problem, provided the road is open.

August could be the crux month, when one might have to go to 11,000 feet to find a permanent snowfield in order to fake a few Telemark turns on

a pair of wide touring skis or even some skate skis.

With a little luck, we’ll be able to return to Rabbit Ears Pass and Bruce’s Trail for a token ski in late September. But I’m not leaving it to chance.

Sometime in early September, I’ll strap the skis onto my backpack and head for a huge avalanche run-out I can count on at the foot of Red Dirt Pass, deep in Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area.

Come October, heck, it will be winter again.

— Tom Ross

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Steamboat Family & Aesthetic Dentistry.

Advanced Cosmetic & Family Dentistry

Gary Fresques, DDS, PC

879-3565

www.SteamboatSmiles.com

Summer 2011 | At Home

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John F. Russell

Final frames

Coping with Coping: Mac Carmony plays in the bowl at Bear River Skatepark on the city’s west side.

The Rollingstone Respite House

–offering respite and end of life care in a home like setting

For more information contact Director of Hospice and Palliative Care Shannon Winegarner, RN

www.nwcovna.org • 970-871-7626

68 | At Home | Summer 2011

John F. Russell

C-Hole Splashdown: Visitor Jim Durant, of Oklahoma City, gets wet and wild on a commercial raft trip down the Yampa River.

Summer 2011 | At Home

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Light Moves: The carnival in May brought spinning lights and thrilling rides to help kick off summer.

70 | At Home | Summer 2011

John F. Russell

Parting shot

SteamboatBestBuys.com Your BEST access to ALL of Steamboat’s Foreclosures, Short Sales & Hot Deals

NEW LOOK!

OUR WEBSITE: · Daily Foreclosure Updates · Direct Notifications to You as Soon as They hit the Market · Virtual Tours

Lisa Olson

&Beth Bishop

cell 970.846.0713 | cell 970.846.7523 lisa@lisaolson.com beth@prusteamboat.com

Summer 2011 | At Home

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72 | At Home | Summer 2011