Raising $ for permanent organization

By Mark Reaman

A new group comprised of second homeowners and local businesses have formally organized a Political Action Committee (PAC) with the intention of making their voice heard by the various elected government boards in the valley, including the county commission and town councils.

The GV2H (Gunnison Valley Second Homeowners) PAC has been registered with the state and organizer/administrator Jim Moran said the goal is “to help make the Gunnison Valley a place that is governed well for all; not just for some. Non-resident property owners are no less committed to this community than any other group and would like a seat at the table when it comes to policy making.”

In an email response to several questions submitted by the Crested Butte News, Moran indicated the group is in the early stages of coming together and in the process of choosing an eight-member board. It appears that decisions by public health officials since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis last March and reactions from elected officials to concerns voiced by people led to the formation of the new group.

“The recently established PAC has the growing support of hundreds of second homeowners, local residents and business owners,” Moran said. “There are more than 4,385 non-resident property owners who have no voice, yet pay a significant portion of the residential property taxes and sales taxes in Gunnison County. Those same taxpayers, some of whom were here isolated in their homes, received the postcard from the county telling them they were not welcome to use their property or the resources that their taxes help support, under penalty of a $5,000 fine and up to 18 months in prison. Additionally, there are business and commercial property owners paying commercial property taxes and collecting local sales taxes who also have no voice in the jurisdictions where their businesses pay taxes because they don’t (or can’t afford to) live where they work. Those same business taxpayers have undergone untold economic damage at the hands of policies made against their will by unelected public officials. What GV2H PAC hopes to achieve is to be a voice of unity and fairness of governance where all constituents do not have a voice.”

The group has sent out mail invitations to the 4,385 people who own property in the county but do not reside here to contribute to the PAC. Similar invitations are expected to go out to local business owners in the near future. Moran said while the group is less than five weeks old, it expects to top $100,000 in donations by this weekend.

Moran said he does not know what the ultimate cost is to run an effective PAC but the “GV2H PAC would like to raise enough funds over time, to establish a full-fledged organization capable of representation of our interests in all venues on a permanent basis. One of the primary lessons learned during this spring’s rapid series of public orders and amendments is that without a permanent organization established, it is very difficult to keep up with, or have an effective voice in the ever-evolving regulations impacting our constituents. Effective advocacy simply cannot be done issue by issue.

“We would expect our involvement would work no differently than that of any other subset of the tax-paying population,” Moran continued. “As an example, when I spoke with Roland Mason regarding the ICELab industry sub-groups, he suggested that it might be appropriate for second homeowners to be included and have their own subgroup. Unfortunately, that never happened. Our preferred mechanism for involvement is 1) to engage as the issues are being decided, 2) have a voice in those issues that impact us and 3) to participate in the electoral process by independently supporting the election of candidates who take our interests seriously and independently opposing the election of those who don’t.”

When asked if the intent of the PAC was to pay lawyers to keep an eye on elected boards, Moran said that would not be the first step but could be part of the equation. “GV2H PAC expects our collective voice to be given the same attention (no more; no less) as other constituents in the ordinary process,” he said. “When elected officials ignore the peoples’ voice as happened this spring, individual citizens or classes of citizens often seek legal recourse. Legal recourse is potentially a part of the process but a last resort; not a starting point.”

As to the charge that the group has suggested second homeowners stop donating to local non-profits and instead contribute to the advocacy group, Moran said he and the official PAC organization “have never held such a ridiculous position. We want a united community and the non-profit world is one of the BEST examples of the productive collaboration between residents and non-residents,” he wrote. “Anyone who is concerned about charitable donations drying up because of divisiveness created by county officials should support the PAC. The PAC is designed to unify people in this county and hold elected officials accountable when they alienate a particular constituency.”

Moran said members of the new PAC felt they had no choice but to organize, given the circumstances that occurred this spring. “We would love nothing more than to continue to be productive participants in this community, celebrating life with friends, buying homes, starting businesses and donating to the charities that move our collective hearts and carry our collective voices,” he said. “If there is division in this community, the responsibility lies clearly with elected officials who cannot reasonably expect anyone to productively participate while being ordered to leave their homes.

“We would like to see representative government for all constituents,” Moran concluded. “When elected officials consider themselves to be ‘advisors’ [paraphrasing county commissioner Jonathan Houck] to unelected county employees as opposed to representatives of the people, elected officials have it backwards. These officials should be accountable to those who elect them; not to an established bureaucracy.”

The next step for the PAC is to officially seat a board that would be split between four local business owners and four non-resident property owners.

The end of May traditionally brings two of my favorite events in this high mountain village. This year there were three, given the coronavirus cluster that postponed a traditional ski area ending festival to the start of summer. But all three are hyper-local in nature and reflect a bit of the “old” Crested Butte. All three are filled with heart. All three reflect the underlying community values of this changing town.

Memorial Day typically brings the families of old-timers back to Crested Butte. Most have moved on and probably don’t even recognize much of what the place is now, but their general love of the place is always evident. Memorial Day in Crested Butte is not like the Fourth of July. It normally starts with a Memorial Day march of local veterans from the Old Town Hall to the Crested Butte cemetery for a mass and a playing of “Taps,” followed by a potluck in the parish hall and a polka party in a local watering hole. It sounds and feels more blue collar than ritzy resort, and it is. Thank God.

But even that was not to be this year. A small formation of three veterans, one carrying a flag borrowed at the last minute from the Bluebird Real Estate office and two carrying rifles, marched from Second and Elk to the Four-way Stop. A couple more joined them at the bone yard for a rifle salute in honor of those locals who lost their lives in the military.

Because of the public health orders banning large gatherings, more soldiers did not participate and the potluck and polka party were not allowed. But just seeing three men in tight-fitting uniforms march down Elk Avenue in the early morning chill with two marshal’s cars and a fire truck to a smattering of applause choked me up. The few people downtown at 9:30 Monday morning stood and saluted, clapped, placed their hands over their heart or removed their caps in honor of local warriors who lost their lives. It is always small town America at its finest. It is a connection between old-timers and new people. It is deep Crested Butte and while it never draws numbers it exemplifies community. It exemplifies the underlying heart.

The new Flauschink king was by the post office in his royal garb (and a mask) Monday morning to pay his respects to the Memorial Day tradition. And Flauschink is another of the hyper-local events that exemplifies community. Flauschink landed in May this year because of the COVID-19 cluster. Normally Flauschink marks the final days of the ski season but this year it strangely marked the start of summer. The new royals were announced by another of Sherrie Vandervoort’s fun poems that lay down the clues of who is about to be gifted a cape, a funny hat and a plunger for the next 12 months. This year though, the poems were read Friday on KBUT as has-beens and their consorts danced at the Four-Way to the Friday Night Fish Fry that played more polka than zydeco.

Like with Memorial Day, polka plays a big part in a normal Flauschink. The old miners of Crested Butte played their accordions and danced on the wooden bar floors throughout town and in these days the Flauschinkers take great joy in rolling out the barrel (and libations) while shimmying to the chicken dance.

Flauschink has roots in the Crested Butte traditions and it is fun and funny and weird enough to still be going on more than a half century after it started. It too honors old-timers, while mid-timers take part and newcomers who are not afraid can learn some things about the old Crested Butte. Past royals include parents, professionals, politicians and pretty much every cross-section of what this community represents.

And then there is the Crested Butte Community School graduation. That will take place this Saturday, May 30 in a different sort of way—a drive-in and vehicle parade through town sort of way. Normally, the high school graduation draws the community together in a packed gymnasium to watch its children leave the nest and begin their first steps into the next chapter. As a friend said recently over a socially distanced beer, “Once you’ve been to one of these graduations, whether you have a kid there or not, it’s hard to miss another one. It is so full of heart.”

It is indeed.

While certainly growing in numbers, the teachers, administration and staff at the Crested Butte Community School are doing whatever they can to retain the community part of the school. Thank you. And graduation is a big part of that. It is at graduation that the young adults officially connect with their village and the village connects with the next crop of young adults. It offers a time of celebration and a recognition of important milestones. That will still be the case but in a really weird and different sort of way, given coronavirus complications.

Weird and different exemplifies Crested Butte anyway, so the kids probably aren’t all that bummed. The students graduating from this little school at the entrance to town are probably chomping at the bit to get out of here. That is the way life works. And they will…

Then many of them will want to come back to this little village high in the Rocky Mountains as they experience a “real world” full of cubicles and crowds, as opposed to parents in funny Flauschink hats and weathered veterans marching quietly down the main street to pay their respects at the cemetery.

Heart indeed.

—Mark Reaman

With a changing climate, experts expect winters to start later and spring to arrive earlier. This may shorten the length of bear hibernation, while decreasing their food supply in late fall and early spring. These changes have the potential to push bears into town more often in search of anthropogenic food sources.

Western Colorado University (WCU) graduate student Cassie Mendoza is working with Colorado Parks and Wildlife on a project to investigate black bear conflicts in the Gunnison area and potentially develop a management plan for the city of Gunnison to reduce human-bear conflict.

“With the current climate issues that we’ve been having, and since Gunnison experiences such extreme highs and lows of climate, [Colorado Parks and Wildlife] anticipates more bear conflicts in the valley,” Mendoza said. The need for conflict resolution management and public education surrounding bear issues are greater than ever.

Black bears are an indicator species in ecosystems surrounding Gunnison. Wildlife managers can look at the health of bear populations and gauge the health of the entire ecosystem. They also contribute to our local economies, whether it be through hunting or through other wildlife-related tourism. While the policy aspect of this plan is of vital importance, it cannot happen without community buy-in. Mendoza’s community sponsor, district wildlife manager Brandon Diamond, said that the sky is the limit for public education surrounding bear issues; however, those efforts are dependent on available resources and community priorities.

Already, in December 2019, Mendoza hosted a two-day seminar series on Western’s campus with multiple speakers. Community members and students alike attended and learned how to decrease the risk of conflict with wildlife. A cast of voices has already chimed in on black bear conflict management in Gunnison, and Mendoza’s project only looks to expand that reach.

Simple changes in citizen behavior and decision-making have great potential to decrease the likelihood of bear conflicts.

Many people do not realize that bird feeders are a strong attractant for bears in town, often leading to future conflicts. The sugary water available in hummingbird feeders is often sought after by hungry bears. An easy fix for homeowners is to provide natural flower beds or hanging flower baskets to attract hummingbirds. Flowers still provide great bird watching, while not encouraging conflict with bears and other wildlife. Other small changes such as waiting to put out the trash until an hour or two before pick-up instead of the night before can decrease the risk of wildlife conflicts substantially.

City ordinances can provide incentives for these changes, but public education is foundational for long-term community change. Deer are a great local example of how citizen behavior can decrease wildlife conflict: “People think they are helping wildlife by feeding them artificial foods… What they don’t realize is that they are attracting deer predators such as mountain lions, increasing the potential for disease transmission and impacting individual animal health,” Diamond said.

Wildlife is certainly a community amenity and contributes to people’s quality of life, but keeping wildlife wild is something we truly need to mean when we say it.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has a two-strike policy on “problem bears.” The first time a bear comes into significant conflict with humans, it may be trapped and relocated. In the process, a tag is attached to the bear’s ear. If the same bear is to come into conflict with humans again, it has to be put down. Diamond emphasizes that relocation is a last resort option, but the policy is in place primarily to protect human health and safety. An effective bear management plan paired with citizen action will help serve and protect local black bears and citizens. “We want to keep the people in town safe, the community safe and reduce property damage, but also keep the bear population safe because they are such an important species to the ecosystem,” Mendoza said.

With the support of the city and citizens, Mendoza’s project has the potential to seriously reduce the rate of conflict with black bears. The Gunnison community has a documented track record of protecting local wildlife, with continued interest in conservation. A black bear conflict mitigation strategy would certainly add to the legacy of protecting wildlife, community members and our local quality of life.

by George Sibley

Bob Teitler died April 8 of the current plague, a month short of his 80th birthday. This is not an obituary, but a remembrance of him and the time when he lived in Crested Butte, the 1970s—both unusual enough to deserve recall at his passing.

As is the situation for most past and current inhabitants of Crested Butte, Bob Teitler’s life began elsewhere, and after a time he left the Butte, but the Butte and the years here were formative and pivotal for the life that followed elsewhere, and was lived with a larger awareness nurtured by the years here.

Bob was born and raised in Brooklyn (while the Dodgers were still there), and lived there his first 30 years, working in New York City and Philadelphia as a salesman of sophisticated adding machines; he married there and had two sons. A typically promising start on a typical American career—and in 1971, he threw it all over and moved to Crested Butte.

In the spring of that year, he and his wife, Helene, and sons David and Kenny came to the Butte to visit Bob’s friend since grade school, John Levin, part of a consortium of New Yorkers who had bought the Grubstake Restaurant in 1970. By mid-summer, the Teitlers had completely relocated to Crested Butte; Bob left his career and his suits without a backward glance, bought a big red tow truck and began a new life hauling vehicles out of winter snow, spring mud and summer bad judgment.

Bob later reflected that three things had primed him for that kind of life change: the musical Hair, which he saw in New York; a drive up California Highway 1 after a business conference on the West Coast; and marijuana. His Brooklyn family had sent him to straighten out a younger cousin at college they’d suspected of experimenting with marijuana. The cousin confessed, but challenged Bob to try it, which he did—“I’ll try anything once,” might have been his life motto—and it became part of his life thereafter, even after it became legal.

With a nod to his former cultural conditioning—the business of America is business—Bob also bought the Sunshine Garbage Company soon after arriving. Within a year he had replaced the pickup for hauling trash with an actual garbage truck, and was growing the business—but then he sold it. When asked why he had sold a business just becoming successful, he said, “I didn’t want to spend the next 20 years hauling garbage.” And that was the end of a conventional business career; he was here for something else.

Authority figures tended to chafe him, whether abstract and national or knocking at the door, and running the tow truck put Bob in frequent contact with the various police presences in the valley. But he came to appreciate Crested Butte’s marshal at that time, Kemp Coit.

From the late ’60s into the early ’70s, Crested Butte went through half a dozen marshals. When new people, mostly young, began trickling into town in the ‘60s with the advent of the ski resort, the old timers who had remained after the closing of coal mines were cautiously glad to see them, continuity for the town. But when the trickle turned to a flood in the early ‘70s, the old timers circled the wagons and petitioned the town council for a marshal to “clean up the town.” The newcomers, on the other hand, favored a “peace officer” over a “man of law,” someone sensitive to the nuances of things locally acceptable if not legally so. These were the town’s “King of Hearts” years: most of us newcomers thought of the Butte as a kind of experimental asylum, even though it was getting hard to distinguish between the growing influx of hippies pretending to be new-wave entrepreneurs and the infiltration of old-wave entrepreneurs pretending to be hippies.

After some wild extremes with marshals, the town actually found a reasonable balance in the person of marshal Kemp Coit, who had no formal police experience but who could be even-handedly tough when needed, and had good instincts about keeping provocative things off the streets. During the tow truck years, Bob petitioned Marshal Coit to take him on as an unpaid volunteer deputy because he thought people were driving too fast in town. He thus became one of Coit’s “rogue deputies”; he credited Bob with teaching him “love’s role in law enforcement,” although what that meant hasn’t been explained.

While there was definitely a cultural tension in the ‘70s between the old timers and the newcomers, on a more one-on-one basis there were some good relationships between the two groups. One of Bob’s more impressive achievements was to gradually work his way to acceptance in the group that assembled daily around the big stove in Tony Mihelich’s Conoco and Hardware (now the Mountain Heritage Museum).

Some of Crested Butte’s other male old-timers met daily in Frank Starika’s and Tony Kapushion’s bars, but the Conoco stove group avoided the bars. They were far harder to infiltrate for a newcomer—you couldn’t buy them a beer—but Bob drew on his Brooklyn background to shed their guff while appreciating their stories, and gradually he was accepted—not as an old timer but as an acceptable newcomer. Bob knew he’d made it when a towing customer tried to stiff him by saying he couldn’t pay unless Bob could accept a credit card, and Tony—who disliked credit cards—offered to run the card to get Bob’s cash.

Bob’s most unconditional love was children, which most children returned as unconditionally. Marie McHale Drake, who grew up with Bob’s sons, remembers Bob looking out for all the town’s “feral children.” This included educational night tours of the Grubstake or Tailings when a band was playing he thought they should hear. It also included Saturday morning softball, a pickup game for anyone eighth grade or younger. Bob was pitcher for both sides. Eventually the kids were allowed to have a team—Bob’s Cats—in the women’s softball league.

In 1973, Thatcher Robinson, a social scientist and “rogue educator,” started an alternative school in his house, and Bob became an enthusiastic patron and participant, enrolling both sons and helping however he could. The curriculum was progressive and experiential; one history lesson was conducted on a hike to the abandoned coal town of Floresta. David and Kenny remember “building things” at Thatcher’s school, including a complicated water-powered clock that was displayed at the third Summer Arts Festival.

Thatcher’s school lasted only one year; then it was back to the public school for the boys. At that time, Crested Butte only had the grade school; since “consolidation” in 1967, Butte students had been riding the bus to Gunnison from seventh grade to graduation. Butte parents in the early ‘70s, citing growth, began the long process of petitioning, appealing and harassing the consolidated RE1-J school district board into returning the middle and high schools—a process not finally successful until the 1995 bond election created the K-12 Crested Butte Community School. Bob participated in that process as long as he lived in town, and they did succeed in getting the seventh and eighth grades back in time for his sons to finish that part of their education in Crested Butte.

As has often been the case, the Teitler’s marriage did not survive the radical transformation, and after he and Helene split, Bob engaged in some creative “alternate living.” As numerous others were doing for affordable housing, he fixed up an old shed, on the banks of Coal Creek behind the Atchley house. “The River Condo,” his sons called it. And for summer living he acquired a tipi, which for a couple years he pitched on an old mining claim in Virginia Basin high above Gothic.

Bob always had horses, even when he and the boys had precarious living circumstances, and they frequently commuted between town and Virginia Basin on the horses, rain or shine. Bob also took the boys on pack trips into the mountains with the horses when they were still under 10. Some of his success with—and enjoyment of—young people may have to do with the fact that he seemed to treat them more like partners, co-conspirators, than as children. This was not everyone’s idea of responsible parenting today, but it is probably every boy’s dream.

He also challenged the boys at times. Kenny told about a moonlit summer night when he was only 8, and he and Bob got a late start back to Virginia Basin on the horses. Bob pointed out to Kenny how the places on aspen trees where branches had broken off looked like eyes under the moonlight. Then he asked Kenny, “What would you do if I got hurt when we were out alone like this?” “I’d go for help,” Kenny said. And Bob said, “Okay, let’s imagine that has happened; you ride on ahead like you were going for help.”

“So there I was,” Kenny said, “an 8-year-old alone on a horse at night in the woods, with all those trees watching me.”

That challenging attitude was another side of Bob—as it was of many of the post-urban and post-Vietnam newcomers then, who were not constantly mellow peace-love-and-joy. Bob’s roots were Brooklyn, where in-your-face was local culture with kids, and Bob could be pretty confrontational and challenging—especially the shaggier he got. That occasionally manifested itself dramatically—as when the town council decided a big old ramshackle Kochevar relic next to the Atchley house on Elk Avenue had to be torn down, along with related outbuildings along Coal Creek, because too many local artists were using them as unauthorized affordable housing. But when a local contractor approached with his backhoe to destroy the old building, he was confronted by Bob and one of the artists, both with rifles. The contractor retreated for the moment. The building eventually came down anyway, but Atchley’s “Foundry” and the River Condo survived and no one got shot. You could take the man out of Brooklyn, but you couldn’t take Brooklyn out of the man.

Another ‘70s Butte activity that rang Bob’s bell was the Hotshots, Crested Butte’s 1970s wildfire crew. I first got to know and appreciate Bob when the Forest Service flew us to Idaho for a big project fire. At that time, the Hotshots represented a significant piece of the town’s summer economy. There were not many summer jobs yet; and for those not attracted to steady work anyway, an intense week of 12-hour shifts paid for a fair amount of fishing, camping and loafing time. The Crested Butte Hotshots developed a great reputation for hard work on the fireline, but a bad reputation for hard play in the bars off the line, and the Forest Service stopped calling the crew in the late ‘70s. By then the summer economy was beginning to coalesce around construction and resort work, with steadier if less stimulating jobs, and the Hotshot era ended.

All of that happened in Bob’s life between 1971 and 1976. In 1976, he started to leave Crested Butte, although he returned often (and the Butte never left him). He bought a remote piece of land in a small valley off the Cochetopa Canyon, in the far southeast corner of the Upper Gunnison Basin, and that summer he moved the tipi and the horses there. He built a cabin, with help from the boys, visiting family members and Cochetopa jack-of-all-arts George Page, and he was moved in by the winter of 1977, apparently retiring to a reclusive life.

But in the mid-’80s, with both boys graduated from Gunnison High and off pursuing lives of their own, Bob transformed again, into a kind of cosmopolitan bohemian—shaggier than ever—and began wintering in Belize, where he fit into the local culture as seamlessly as he’d managed to do in Tony’s Conoco and Hardware; he found a friend who became like a brother and taught him to sail; he bought a boat to live on there, and made sailing forays to Guatemala, where he began buying up handmade sewn and embroidered goods that he brought back and sold at fairs around Colorado.

He met two intriguing women in Guatemala. One was Manuela Macario, a street vendor selling hand-knit hackysacks. He sensed opportunity, bought out her entire stock, and within a few years every major sporting-goods store in the West had a candy jar on the cash-register counter filled with hand-knit hackysacks, and “Manuela Imports” was supporting a whole Guatemala village as well as Bob.

The second intriguing woman he met in Guatemala was Maya Kartha, a young cosmopolitan who had grown up in Bermuda and was there scouting out travel options for a Canadian travel company. Even though she was roughly half his age, she was as fascinated by “Rasputin,” her name for Bob, as he was by her, and when he came back to Colorado for the summer, she came with him. They married in 1998, and a few years later had a daughter, Sophie. They bought a house in Gunnison when it became time for Sophie to go to school, and also to handle the ever-growing volume of business for “Manuela Imports,” and the Cochetopa cabin became the summer home.

Tragedy struck the family in the mid-2000s, when Maya contracted an incurable cancer; in 2007 she died, and Bob—in his late 60s—became a single parent for Sophie. She is now an honor student junior in Gunnison High and a talented dancer. Bob’s one concern was that, given his age, he might not be able to see Sophie through her school years and into her own life, and he took steps to make sure that Sophie would be okay in that eventuality—which now has happened. Possibly his best preparation for this, however, was that “partnering” kind of relationship he’d had with his sons and continued with Sophie, now a young woman mature beyond her years.

And so, to Bob, from Bob’s example, T.S. Eliot’s words: “Not fare well, but fare forward”—a man who would try anything once, and lived a rich and varied life trying as much as possible. A life that turned, like the stars around the Pole Star, around his life-changing years in the unusual place that was Crested Butte in the ‘70s.

By Dawne Belloise

Will Shoemaker pronounces his north-central Indiana hometown in his best Hoosier accent, “La-Fee-ette” and explains that it’s a twin city with West Lafayette, where Purdue University’s campus is. His mom was a special education high school teacher and his father owned a small grocery store chain that he conceptualized when selling roadside fruit as a middle school student. Will was a sports-oriented kid, playing team sports, soccer and wrestling, throughout high school. However, he later became more interested in outdoor sports. “My parents were avid skiers and I had an uncle in Denver so our family vacations were mostly skiing everywhere in Colorado and all over the central Rockies.”

By the time he was in high school, Will was snowboarding full-time. He also became a rock climber and a mountain biker. “We had rock climbing gyms about a 45-minute drive away and on weekends my friends and I would drive to Red River Gorge in Kentucky, five hours away, to climb.”

During spring break 1999, in his senior year of high school, he and a couple of friends drove out to Crested Butte and on their way into Gunnison noticed Western State College (now Western Colorado University) and decided it would be a good thing to be skiing while getting a degree. Will had been to Crested Butte twice previously on family vacations, for both skiing and biking, but it was the drive out with his friends that year that convinced him to eventually move. “That trip was what led me to decide that I was going to live in Colorado one day. I was into rock climbing, skiing and mountain biking so why would you stay in the Midwest?”

He enrolled at Purdue not knowing what path he would take, “but Mom, being an educator, had experience in cultivating that next step. She lined up an interest and aptitude test. It spit out about a dozen possible career choices. I don’t remember a single one except journalist. I had no experience in writing, not even for the high school newspaper or yearbook, but I decided to pursue it. They had a broad field of communications programs but not a journalism program.” However, there was a unique opportunity in the independent student-run daily newspaper that was funded through an endowment and served as the primary newspaper for West Lafayette.

“As a freshman at Purdue, I went to work for the Purdue Exponent. It was actually a paid-per-article job. It was a unique opportunity because there were city, county, sports and editorial desks run by student editors. Each had five or six reporters working for them. It was a large organization and extremely eye-opening for me. It laid the foundation for the career I would pursue.”

But during his sophomore year, Will decided he just didn’t want to live in West Lafayette anymore. “I figured I’d get enough credits and transfer.” His friend, who was already in Gunnison at WSC, was feeding him snow reports, “and I came to the realization that Gunnison was where I needed to be.” So he packed up and headed west in 2002 with a plan to work enough to get in-state residency and then enroll at WSC.

“I ended up working for a little over a year. My first job was as a lift op at Monarch,” he recalls. In his second year, he became a snowboard instructor, working at Monarch for three seasons. In the summers he painted houses, mostly in Crested Butte, while also working at the Wet Grocer in Gunnison. It left him with little time to bike and climb.

When he finally achieved in-state residency, he enrolled at WSC, majoring in English, “because I was still interested in journalism but they only offered it as a minor,” and he graduated in 2006. During his time at WSC, Will served as news editor and managing editor for their newspaper, Top of the World. “I had received a Colorado Press Associate internship and scholarship, which resulted in an internship with the Gunnison Country Times in the summer of 2005.” During fall semester 2005 and spring 2006, he completed two additional internships with the Gunnison newspaper and after his graduation, they offered Will a job.

“I declined. I had always been attracted to the idea of living in Boulder County,” he explains. His girlfriend, now wife, Leora Wallace, wanted to pursue culinary school, so she enrolled in Boulder. “And my plan was that with my experience I thought I was going to roll into any job I wanted.” Will says.

Will interviewed with the Longmont Times-Call as an entry-level reporter. “The interview went great. We had already packed up our stuff to move and they called and said, we’ve given it to somebody else. I thought, what am I going to do now?”

They moved to Longmont anyway, and Will went on the job hunt. “I had experience as a bike mechanic, both in high school and at college so I took a job as bike mechanic, and continued sending my resume to anybody who would look at it in the Boulder-Denver-Metro area. After about three months, I got an interview and job offer from Metro West newspapers, owned by Landmark Communications. I took it.”

He was covering county and city governments and was a general assignment reporter for the north Denver area. “I loved it. It was continuation of the work I had done. What I didn’t like was the commute.” The company was based in Brighton, which was 35 miles from his home in Longmont. “We were spending most of our time in the mountains west of Boulder and really didn’t like the congestion on the Front Range. We reached the realization that we were going to end up in the mountains again.”

About a year later, they took a trip back to the Gunnison Valley to see friends, and about that same time, they both applied for and received job offers, which enabled them to move back in 2007. “Chris Dickey offered me a job at the Gunnison Country Times as a general assignment reporter and my wife was offered a job at a Crested Butte restaurant.” They were finally spending their summers riding bikes and skiing hard every winter. The couple bought a house in Gunnison and in 2011, Will was promoted to editor.

Will started helping his friend Kyle Jones with marketing and communications in 2016 for his Cold Smoke splitboards. “I really enjoyed the work and around the same time I joined the board of directors of the Crested Butte Snowsports Foundation. Through that responsibility, I served as chair of the marketing and public relations committee. It was jointly between my experience with Cold Smoke and the Snowsports Foundation that I realized I really enjoyed the idea of working with communications and marketing within the outdoor industry.” So when Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s senior communications specialist left this past fall, Will applied and was hired.

After all his journalism experience throughout college and his twenties and thirties, Will felt it was a hard decision to leave that career, “but I’m not a person that does well without occasional change. I was at a point in time with my life that I felt like I needed a change and I saw a field of work that sounded really appealing to me, that I had some experience with, so I knew that I needed to pursue that opportunity.” It was outdoor recreation that drew Will to the Gunnison Valley and initially, he says, “That was part of my decision to move into this other line of work. I saw it as an opportunity to bring my passion and career closer together.”

These days Will’s not into mountain biking as much as he is trail running. “Most of my time in summer months is spent on running trails. Over the past decade, most of the time I spend skiing is in the backcountry. To be able to snowmobile up and over and access the Anthracites, and coming over Ohio Pass in the winter, it’s so quiet. In the fall I spend a lot of time hunting for big game. I started hunting white tail deer when I was growing up in Indiana. When I moved out here, I refocused on elk and particularly archery hunting. I get a tag every year either for deer or elk,” Will says. He also loves to fish. “Gunnison River is one of my favorites, from Almont to Blue Mesa, because there’s such a high concentration of fish.”

What Will loves about living in the Gunnison Valley is what most feel is important. “It’s the tight-knit community, the endless recreational opportunities and the character of the people who live here. I think you’ve got to be pretty gritty to enjoy living in a place like the Gunnison Valley on a year-round basis. I feel that goes all the way back to the miners and ranchers who moved here a hundred or more years ago. It’s reflected in the fact that we were never a gold and silver mining town, we were a coal mining town. It’s reflected in the harshness of the climate—winters are tough and the valley is often the coldest place in the nation. The mountains north of Crested Butte get tons of feet of snow in the winters. And we don’t have those larger population centers that offer a lot of comfort and convenience. We instead have Teocalli Tamale and that sign that may be on their door on a powder day that says they’re closed because the employees went skiing.”

“We really want to get this right”

By Kendra Walker

The North Village partners continue to dive deeper into the opportunities and concerns surrounding the development of the 150-acre North Village parcel in the north end of Mt. Crested Butte, most recently with a second open house for public input held on Monday, March 9.

The town of Mt. Crested Butte, North Village Associates LLC and Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) hosted the public house, which focused on five main categories based on takeaways from the first North Village open house in February.

Breakout table discussions were divided by each topic, which included workforce housing, trails and recreation, local businesses and economic development, community amenities and conservation.

The public was invited to visit each table to ask questions, provide suggestions or general comment for concern. Approximately 60 people were in attendance, including representatives from each of the three hosting partners.

“This is the opportunity to really give us your feedback—the good, the bad, we want to hear it all out,” said Jennifer Barvitski, Gunnison architect and the North Village owner’s local representative. “This will then help our third open house be stronger.” That open house is slated for the first week of April.

Affordable housing continues to lead the conversation, a top priority among all three partners for that parcel. Comments from the public table discussion included concerns around adequate parking and building design. Several people brought up the stark architecture at other affordable housing complexes in Crested Butte and the desire to add more character and different styles of architecture to the buildings’ designs.

Among concerns from the last open house, access surrounding the Snodgrass trailhead was a high concern. “Access to Snodgrass is not threatened,” said Town Council member and North Village subcommittee member Roman Kolodziej. “There’s a permanent easement and everyone will have access to Snodgrass moving forward.” However, the parking area is currently all on private property and will have to be resolved as interest in using Snodgrass increases and other recreation opportunities develop.

Public comment surrounding trails and recreation included the need for a green space, multi-use park area in Mt. Crested Butte, similar to Rainbow Park. Folks also like the idea of trailhead bathrooms, bike washing stations, camping and ADA-compliant trail systems that connect to current trails in the area.

Conservation values also proved important to the public, including agriculture, recreation, view sheds and wildlife. Public feedback included the need for mitigating any type of sound, light and air pollution, especially during construction. The idea of creating solar farms on some of the spaces not zoned for buildings was also brought to light.

Among potential local business opportunities, folks discussed coffee shops, a grocery store, restaurants and co-working office space. There was some concern about what type of businesses would actually be sustainable in that area of town versus the base area.

Establishing a community core rather than a commercial core has been a high priority for council, and Monday’s table conversations included ideas for what those types of community spaces could look like, including a post office, community garden, community center and a bowling alley/youth space. A school site expansion being located on the parcel was also brought up, which gathered mixed reactions from some thinking it was a great idea to others concerned about the traffic implications.

The North Village team noted that a possible water reservoir and its practicality needs to be addressed as soon as possible. There are currently two different overlapping water rights tied with the potential reservoir, with both Vail Resorts and the Mt. Crested Butte Water and Sanitation District. “We want to engage the interest of the two water rights parties and see what their intentions are,” said Kolodziej. “Right now Vail does not have any plan to explore their water rights so we need to continue the conversation with them… It dictates a big part of what the project is going to look like. We still need to figure out some of the nuances of that topic and what the different water rights mean, as well as what is the perceived need for recreation, snow making and drinking water.”

A North Village subcommittee has been meeting weekly to narrow down top priorities, logistics and financial feasibility for the project, taking into account the public open house discussions. Several stakeholder groups have also formed that include housing, recreation, business owners and land managers.

“We’re hoping by the time we’re through with this [open house process] we’ll have a clearer picture of what you would like to see,” said Mt. Crested Butte mayor Janet Farmer, addressing the public. “We have the opportunity to shape the future of Mt. Crested Butte by what we put on this piece of land that’s part of our community… I see it as a legacy for all of us for what we want the future of Mt. Crested Butte to look like. We really want to get this right.”

A follow-up article detailing Monday’s public input in greater depth will appear in an issue later this month.

Energy and excitement come in several forms.

There is what we saw Monday with the distinct excitement of a ski town on a surprise powder day. I love that energy. I don’t like the line that formed at the Silver Queen and still wasn’t moving at 9:30 but I love that energy and the fact the Crested Butte Mountain Resort ski patrol got the goods open relatively quickly, given the storm that caught everyone off guard. There was more than one “best day of the season” comment floating around town that afternoon.

There is the too often dark energy of the fringe followers of political candidates at a political rally or on the local social media feed. The zealots work themselves into a frenzy and go all-in for their leader, whether it is far right or far left. Too many drink the Kool-Aid and pledge to follow their anointed one no matter the consequences. That blind energy from either side of the political aisle can be way too divisive. Not a fan.

There is the earned excitement of getting a good deal done that benefits us all. That was exemplified this week with the conclusion of the Long Lake land swap deal. The three-year effort was officially signed last Thursday and it does several good things for our community. It cleans up some public land issues with various owners of property like the Forest Service and Crested Butte Land Trust throughout the county. It guarantees that the gem of Long Lake will continue to be a place for local residents to go to when they need a breath of lake air in the high mountains. It puts a couple million dollars into a bank account that will be used to help local workers find housing for years to come.

There is the simmering good energy of another deal that is starting to percolate with the North Village proposal in Mt. Crested Butte. While everyone involved is emphasizing that the project is in the very early stages and there is a ton of work to do to end up with a good project, there is optimistic energy in the opportunity. The stakeholders are reaching out now to gather ideas from the broader community to see if those ideas are feasible, both practically and financially. But there is growing momentum toward a good project that could include solutions to local problems like housing for our workers, ball fields for our kids and places for our dogs to run for free. Of course that all could come with some detriments like possible traffic jams and future budget issues for maintaining the new amenities so now is the time to dig deep into the details. While some appear uncomfortable that there isn’t a solid plan to react to, they should perhaps embrace this method of out-of-the-box community planning.

There is the weird sort of energy generated by the Crested Butte Town Council Monday that I still don’t get. At the meeting two weeks ago council members pointedly raised concerns about the management style of the housing authority that handles renters in the deed-restricted units up here. When the actual housing authority manager responsible for that management style was before them Monday to give a report on the organization, the council said nothing on that topic—until she left. Ninety minutes after the executive director departed, some council members again raised concerns and pounded council representatives to the housing authority board to press the housing authority for a lighter touch in management style. How about pressing yourselves to have the balls to say something directly to the person you have an issue with, no matter how awkward it feels, when you have a chance?

There is the soul-filling energy that comes with spring. Longer days, warm sun on the face, people willing to relax and chill a bit to reconnect after the cold winds of winter. And how can you not love hearing the birds chirping. Leaving behind hibernation mode is a great seasonal change at 9,000 feet—but remember it can change again at any time.

There is the panic energy being seen around the world over the coronavirus. Scientists are still sorting out exactly what this thing could do but it has already infected people’s minds as they cancel trips and sell their stocks. One of the most popular articles shared in the valley last weekend was a story in The Guardian about Gunnison County’s extreme measures taken to avoid the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918. Forced quarantines and basically a barrier that protected those already here actually worked to keep the deadly flu out of this county.

That probably can’t happen easily anymore and this coronavirus panic thing seems a tad overblown for where it is at the moment anyway. While I wouldn’t book a cruise to Wuhan right now it seems awareness energy is more appropriate as the virus remains a mystery. Panic could start a chain reaction that impacts your quality of life without having anything to do with the actual virus. As the idea of this virus infects your brain, could it really result in everyone staying inside their homes and refusing to go anywhere where other people are? Will we become a society that only interacts through our computers and phones (more than we do now) so as to eliminate the risk of getting sneezed on? Will we all stop meeting people face-to-face because of the possible danger and instead communicate solely through FaceTime while wearing weird masks? Sounds great! There is nothing good about that energy.

While there is prudence in having the intelligent energy to stay aware and take common sense measures to not catch this thing—wash your hands and don’t touch your face—perhaps the best use of energy is to keep getting out there and doing things that make you happy and healthy.

Don’t stop engaging with others in this small mountain town. Energize yourself by doing the hard work and engaging in productive partnerships that benefit this unique community. Don’t get swallowed up in the whirlwind that one man has all the answers to all the problems in the world and can make everything right if you just do what he says and damn everyone else. Maybe best of all: ski powder—even if you have to stand in line next to someone who might have the coronavirus. From what I’ve read, unless you are really old and pretty sick already (and you probably wouldn’t then be skiing) the risk seems relatively minimal at the moment.

Take off the mask and talk to your friends and neighbors. Sit on a sunny bench. Stand in line at the post office or the bank and catch up with your acquaintances. Basically stay excited that you are part of a unique, weird, loving community that tries. Yeah, we don’t all agree on everything all the time but that actually results in good community energy since we all have to live together at the end of the road. Relish partnerships and have the courage to speak your truth with one another. Find the positive excitement instead of the dark energy. Embrace the opportunity of being connected to a small town community where you can make a difference—in a real paradise. Not everyone has that chance and that is pretty exciting.

—Mark Reaman

There’s a distinctively pungent aroma that permeates the senses when you’re walking through Rob Carney’s jungle of cannabis. It smells green. Tightly formed buds are in various stages of maturity, loaded on tall tree-like plants in his grow operation, Riverland Remedies. He sells his product under the brand name of Riverland Flower Company since those buds are essentially flowers. His horticulture skills have gotten a glowing reputation, Rob says, mostly due to his grower, Miles Bruce. So much so that his cannabis is now featured in local dispensaries. 

Rob’s interest in growing stemmed from when his marijuana won both categories in the local Blazer’s Ball contest, a thumbs-up from the judges and the People’s Choice. He was then invited to the Adam Dunn Invitational, a well-known national competition in Denver for the cannabis industry and he took third that year. The following year, 2015, Rob’s weed placed first in a competition of 42 growers and at that point, Rob surmised, “I knew I was doing something right. I was going up against some of the best growers in the country.” He figured if he could beat some of the best in the country then it was time to go into business.

Rob was born in Bolivia, South America, because his father worked in the oil industry and the family moved around quite a bit—from California to Jackson, Mississippi in what Rob explains was “during the south’s turbulent times, when synagogues right down the street from us were burned down.” In 1968, the family moved to Oklahoma City. The Vietnam war was still raging; his oldest brother, Jan, was a helicopter pilot. “Those times were spent watching the war on TV,” he says. His brothers were much older than he was by a couple of decades but he was close to his special needs sister, Faith, who was only a year and a half older. “Mom was brilliant, a traditional housewife, but basically the caregiver for Faith. I had my neighborhood friends but my sister and I were inseparable until I went to college.”

The family moved to Denver in 1972 and as a kid, Rob became entrenched in the skateboard scene. “I skated every single day from the time I was 10 until I got a car. Instead of having roller skates on your board, the resurgence had urethane wheels so you wouldn’t stop on every rock and pebble in the road. We skated anything and everything, emulating the Dogtown and Zboys. That was our skating style, it was very aggressive. We went to skate parks and also skated the Chatfield dam water release pipe, a huge concrete pipe where you could push your board above vertical. I was always a big kid so it was hard for me but I was actually pretty good at it.” 

Rob tells about the other places his clan skated. “The Health Bowl was an abandoned Olympic-size indoor pool. At night, all the druggies went there and threw their beer bottles, needles and garbage into the pool. Every morning we’d go sweep it out, pick up all the garbage and make it skateable.” They’d drive down residential alleys looking for backyard pools in empty houses to skate. “A lot of times you’d get there and there would be people skating already. Most of the time nobody lived there—sometimes the neighbors called the cops.”

When he graduated from Wheatridge High School in 1980, Rob had no idea what he wanted to do. “I came from a traditional family, so you go to college but I wanted nothing to do with college,” he recalls. However, his parents insisted, especially since his brother, who had died in a car accident the previous year, specified that his life insurance policy was to be used to pay for Rob’s tuition. 

Even so, school wasn’t a priority for him, and his grades weren’t high so he explored Colorado colleges that had more lenient acceptance parameters—Adams State, Fort Lewis and Western State College (WSC, now Western Colorado University). “I chose WSC because it was closer to home. I didn’t know about Crested Butte and the ski resort when I came to Gunnison. I didn’t even know they had a thing called a ski pass so I only have 39 passes from the mountain,” he says of his 40-year residency in the valley. “I started skiing more and more. As a skier, I was okay. I started hearing more about the ski bum lifestyle. I was spending more time in Crested Butte and had more friends up here than in Gunnison.” Rob laughs that he did the five-year program to get his degree in business and history in 1985, and then moved up to Crested Butte the following year. “All I wanted to do was ski and get better at it, and go see shows.”

In 1983, Rob got his first taste of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. “The whole way down we listened to the Grateful Dead and I had never listened to the Dead,” he says, and he was wowed. “The festival blew my mind, Bill Monroe and Sam Bush’s Newgrass Revival—I was hooked. The Bluegrass Fest became my life, along with seeing the Dead all around the country. I had no idea people traveled to see bands. My first Dead show was New Year’s Eve 1984-85 and I thought, Wow, what a community. I went to as many shows as I could possibly see.”

Rob was working at McDell’s, which is now Clark’s Market. He fell in love with mountain biking that summer. “I was determined to get into shape. I was heavy but I got good at riding.” Later, he worked at The Marketplace and learned to be a short order cook, then went on to Angelo’s in 1990, where he worked for a decade, starting as a diver and working his way up to general manager. 

“All I really did was skiing, bike riding and going to Dead shows and Telluride Bluegrass. In 1990 I followed the Dead across Europe. I had a great time,” he says of the two-month sojourn that led into his interest in the production side of music for 11 years for Planet Bluegrass. He was also the archivist for Four Corners, recording all their bluegrass festivals. “I’m still doing it but not as much,” he notes. Rob was stage manager for Leftover Salmon from 2009 to 2013. 

Rob became interested in growing professionally when cannabis was legalized in Colorado. “I was working up at Paradise Warming House as assistant front end manager when I got a job as a budtender at the Crested Butte Wellness Center, now Backcountry Cannabis. I had an opportunity to move to Longmont in 2014 to work for a start-up company growing CBD hemp but it didn’t really work out,” so after a year he moved back to Crested Butte to work at various grow facilities, which he did for four years. 

Riverland Remedies began selling its first crop in 2018, but in 2019 Rob’s sister died the day before his birthday and his beloved dog, Chispas, died a month later. Rob was devastated at the loss of his most beloved family and times became difficult, but he continued to press forward. “I made one of the best decisions I ever made, in December of 2019, by hiring Miles Bruce as a grower. I had realized that I didn’t have the physical strength to do the work anymore and first hired John Hiekkila as trimmer, then Miles helped me turn this place around.” 

Rob then hired a brokerage company to start selling his product. “Distribution is tough. We couldn’t figure out how to sell our pot. I had hired a consultant to help get my business going. Once we started using the brokerage company, we started selling product.” Rob feels his company has come together through hard work. He works seven days a week. Last Sunday he had his first day off in two and a half years.

“Just through sweat we started pulling ahead, and we did better and better. Skiing, mountain biking, along with music, were my passions forever but as my body started aging, arthritis set in and after two back surgeries for stenosis of the spine I just figured that when I got into my fifties it might be a good time to start a business. Growing was something I could do, but not the physical, so now I have Miles,” he says of the symbiotic owner-grower relationship. 

They call it weed, but it takes a highly evolved technology and process with exorbitant overhead to make these hybrid “weeds” grow into a sellable and desirable product. “People have just been loving our product and it’s one of the most popular strains at Soma,” Rob says.

After 40 years, Rob is still enthralled with his community. “In a way, it’s like a family but it’s not, because this family is always coming and going. We know everybody and that’s a good and bad thing because everyone knows your business,” he laughs. “The friendships I’ve developed here have been going on for 40 years in this gorgeous place.”

It’s a ski racing festival

By Dawne Belloise

When Dan Prater died unexpectedly in October 1979, his close friend and attorney, Paul Puckett, created the first-ever Dan Prater Memorial Cup five months later in March 1980.

Relocated from Kansas, Prater fell in love with Crested Butte and devoted much of his time and financial support to help the local junior ski racers compete on the regional racing circuit. This year marks its 40th year of racing events, with 250 junior alpine ski racers expected to compete. The festivities are set to begin Friday, February 21 and run through Sunday, February 23. The Prater Cup is a U14 Junior Championship Qualifier event for athletes aged 11 through 13.

Stephanie Prater is instrumental in carrying on her father’s tradition and the Memorial Cup, and notes that the races will take place mostly on the front side of Crested Butte Mountain Resort, on International, and this year will include two disciplines—Super G and Slalom. On Friday, February 21, from 3 to 4:30 p.m., the Nations Flag Opening Ceremony gets under way, from Warming House Hill to the base area, with all of the nations’ flags being carried and their anthems played. “We call it the Cookie Crackup welcome ceremony… It’s a tradition that the late Bill Sweitzer started,” Prater says about another long-time local supporter. “Bill Sweitzer was the chief of race for the Prater for years before his passing.”

The young athletes are assigned to their “nation” team. Prater explains that there are 16 nation teams, but they’ve had to continually add nations because the number of athletes competing keeps growing. The teams are balanced in talent, Prater spells out.

“We choose the best ski racer, the fastest and the slowest so that each team has an equal opportunity to be the top nation team,” she says of the racer distribution. “Throughout the week, you’ll see the athletes showing country support by making t-shirts, capes, painting their faces, all of which earns them Prater Points to fill up their passports… The team that earns the most points is awarded the top team and we award the top four teams with prizes.”

All racers participate for all three days as part of their race circuit. “The kids take this race very seriously, because if they don’t do well here, their season could be almost over,” Prater explains. The kids come from all over New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado to compete. There are five local racers this year: Devin Lindenmeyr, Ebbet Weinberg, Kenny Bullock, Alex Weinberg and Connor Brown. The Prater Cup is the last race event before the Junior Olympics in Steamboat Springs and the young athletes find out on Sunday, February 23 if they’ve qualified when their cumulative points are added up for the entire year’s circuit.

Prater also feels that the race is a foundation. “The basis of all these other ski disciplines starts with a ski racing background. You can’t look at any kid who has gone on to be a successful pro ski athlete, or pro skier, who didn’t have a race background. You start as a ski racer—it’s the foundation under your feet, and you evolve into all those other disciplines like Big Mountain, Slopestyle, Park and Pipe.”

The Prater Cup is more than just a race. Prater says, “Most kids go to a race weekend and it’s quick and they go home. The Prater Cup is more like a ski racing festival. It’s the greatest race that kids go to the entire year and it’s their favorite.”

With 750 people rolling into town for the event—athletes, parents, siblings, coaches and friends—Prater hears all the feedback, from the opportunities the race brings to how enjoyable and friendly Crested Butte is.

Because it’s the big 40th anniversary year, the event is hosting many alumni. “A special gathering to honor all of the efforts of long-time volunteers and past coaches will be held this weekend,” Prater says, “and athletes will be awarded many wonderful prizes from Helly Hansen. Every kid gets a fabulous goody bag, a Prater Cup t-shirt, and an event bag sponsored by Moore Orthopedics.

“Romp skis, Christy’s Sports and Head skis kindly donated skis to the Prater,” she adds, “Romp is doing a custom logo Prater Cup ski, with two pairs to the faster skiers in the Prater Cup.” Additionally, there’ll be lots of banners throughout town and the ski area to celebrate the event and the athletes. Prater says, “It’s not about how fast you go—it’s about showing team sportsmanship. They make friendships that last a lifetime.”

Opening ceremonies for the 40th Prater Memorial Cup begin Friday, February 21 at 4 p.m., when the Nations Flag Opening Ceremony gets under way, from Warming House Hill to the base area. On Saturday, February 22 and Sunday, February 23, all-day events begin at 8 a.m. on International. You can watch from anywhere along the rope line of the race course, or at the base of the Westwall Lift. Also visit Prater Cup on Facebook and pratercup.com for schedules and information.

Photos of last weekend’s lift lines in Vail were all over the internet and tagged mostly as “insane.” Lines that seemed to stretch for miles and had people waiting for more than two hours to get on the lift while paying north of $200 (rack rate) for a day ski pass works out to a pretty expensive ski day per run. Articles online state that three feet of snow drew the swarms to Vail, but three feet of snow on that not-so-steep terrain, especially during a day that got warmer and warmer, made for some apparently less than spectacular powder runs.

We’ve all come over the bench at East River and stopped when seeing a line snake up the hill. But the longest line ever seen back there is probably a quarter of what was pictured in Vail last week. Let’s hope that’s where it stays.

While some of the local businesses owners might profess they would love to see lines that long at the Crested Butte Mountain Resort lifts in the hope that those lines will translate into lines at their iPad credit card reader, skiing is ultimately about experience. Skiing is certainly a social experience, but standing in a two-hour line with thousands of strangers isn’t what most people classify as a wonderful social experience. The independence or solitude that many people feel when hitting a slope sure wouldn’t have been prevalent last week in Vail.

That’s part of the beauty of this not-easy-to-get-to ski resort called Crested Butte. The intermediate runs are really intermediate. But the steeps are fantastic and can handle three feet of powder. Or, we should say, the slopes and the expertise of the Crested Butte Professional Ski Patrol can handle that much powder. This year in particular the patrol seems to have done an outstanding job getting the steeps open. There wasn’t a ton of snow when the T-bars started turning but that’s okay—I for one just love being back there for the feel. One of the highlights from last week was the wind and storm blasting through the trees in the Glades while skiers were protected in pockets of mountain bliss.

Our Extreme Limits terrain is full of soul (and rocks, by the way). But having those runs open when the big storm finally came in meant they could be open quickly for the goods—and they were open all weekend and into this week with Monday apparently being a 90s sleeper powder day in Third Bowl. So thanks to the Crested Butte ski patrollers for opening the gate to our real skiing experience. It was great.

As for the Vail lift lines: If any experience is that poor, the chances of that person coming back to stand in line at a lift for hours isn’t really that great. Wanting more, more, more people works against the soul of skiing and ultimately against the reality of better business. Balance is imperative. It’s insane to want that cluster here.

Speaking of insane and lack of balance, it’s Presidents’ Weekend and—oh, I won’t go deep into Donald but given the holiday it is appropriate to mention him. To me, he seems off his rocker much of the time. On pure policy I disagree with his bashing of old allies and friends and his denial of climate issues. I prefer protection of public lands instead of monetizing every square inch of dirt. Heck, our ski area is on public land and monetized so it’s not the principle I disagree with, it’s the balance. He doesn’t seem to appreciate balance. But I think he’ll probably win another term unless the situation really changes.

While the economy continues to hum, he of course takes all the credit. And his deregulation agenda might be a contributor. In the big picture, however, regulations that help keep things like the air clean and water drinkable seem pretty reasonable. I like that pristine public lands stay pristine and not simply a place to put another mine. Blasting an Apache burial ground in Arizona to put up a wall shows no respect. That’s just me and that’s my take on his policies and not his personality, which is my main issue with the guy. His narcissistic obsession, his constant mendacity, his mean-spirited middle school insults are not what make America great.

But at the next level, Donald has always been Donald. It is those who applaud his character flaws who will look back on their life and perhaps wonder why they went insane during this time. Apparently out of fear of losing their job, they have helped normalize behavior most of us wouldn’t allow in a three-year old—bullying, lying, vindictiveness, simple meanness. Donald’s acolytes have normalized a politician using the public power to try to punish political opponents and anyone else he feels has not been loyal enough. They have normalized the practice of a sketchy businessman dipping into public tax dollars to increase his business while in office—whether it is overcharging for Secret Service rooms at his properties in New Jersey and Florida or rerouting military jets to refuel near his struggling Scottish golf course to get a few more bucks at his property from the military. They have normalized name-calling and malice in the public square. It feels they are gleefully out of balance.

It will be hard for someone to beat Donald when the economy is humming and the Dems can’t seem to figure out how to shoot straight. That too is insane.

But America is more than its economy. It is the idea of opportunity, character, a land of law instead of kings; leadership and inclusiveness. It is the shining city on the hill that draws courageous and smart people from all over the world. I just hope all citizens take those things into account this November and then they vote.

Anyway, it is the middle of winter in Crested Butte. It looks like winter with snow banks in town and almost everything open on the mountain. It is a good time in the season. Mid-February is when the sun feels real and the optimism of spring can be felt. The sun stays up longer, the birds begin to chirp louder and the temperatures start to rise. Presidents’ Weekend will bring some lift lines to the resort but I’ll guess our biggest lift lines will be 10 or 15 minutes. That indicates business, soul and balance here in the north valley.

Things are still sane here at 9,000 feet.

—Mark Reaman