Fredo’s plaque missing from Peak

“It’s like someone stole the headstone from a grave”

Ski patrollers at Crested Butte Mountain are mystified about why someone would remove a plaque from the Peak memorializing former ski patroller Steve Monfredo. The plaque allegedly went missing sometime last fall, and the ski patrol is holding out hope it fell off and is buried somewhere under the snow. But reports from participants of the Living Journeys Summit Hike in August said the plaque was missing even back then. In addition, a couple more impromptu memorials to Crested Butte locals are missing from the Peak as well.

Monfredo died from a cerebral edema in the spring/early summer of 1986 while climbing Peak Communism, the highest peak in the Soviet Union. He was a Crested Butte patroller at the time, and only 34 years old.
“He was really a free spirit, way into mountaineering,” said former patroller Greg Payne. “He had climbed Denali with three other guys from Crested Butte—Gerry Reese, Jim Black (former cat driver at the ski area) and Dave Penney, who ran the ski program at Irwin Lodge in the late ’80s.”
Payne gave credit to former patroller Scott Gerber, a good friend of Monfredo, for taking the initiative to have the plaque made. A group of patrollers and friends installed the plaque on a rock on the Peak in the fall of 1987.
“We selected the rock, and then had to use a hammer and hand drills because there were bolts on the back of the plaque,” Payne said. “Scott and I came back just a few days later and brought up mortar fixings and bedded it all down. The mortar had deteriorated some over the years. I don’t know if it could have been getting loose, and caused someone to say ‘uh huh,’ and then removed it.”
Assistant Patrol Director Bill Dowell wrote a letter to the paper last week about the missing plaque, and has a hard time comprehending why someone would take it.
“It’s like someone stole the headstone from a grave,” Dowell said. “I don’t understand. The people that knew him and loved him, I don’t think any of those people would take it. Up on the Peak, it is the perfect setting.”
Dowell said several people have approached him about the missing plaque. For a lot of people, it’s part of the ritual of going up to the Peak, to “say hey to Fredo when you’re there,” Dowell said.
If anyone has any information, contact the Crested Butte Ski Patrol dispatch. Dowell said the plaque can be returned, no questions asked.