PROFILE: Nicole Blaser

[ by Dawne Belloise ]

Nicole Blaser has been in outdoor education and land stewardship her whole life and she says of her lifetime dedication, “I’ve done it all. That line of work allows for a flexible lifestyle and it’s been very out of the norm.” She’s been a director in outdoor education companies she’s worked for, and she’s worked with The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) as well as Big City Mountaineers, based out of Golden, Colorado, with programs across the country specifically focusing on intercity youth and free programing offerings.  

Nicole explains that NOLS is an international organization and conducts 30-day unsupported, remote and rugged treks, meaning there are no porters or guides and she did these trips before satellite phones and GPS. They trek remote locations in places like Alaska, New Zealand, Patagonia and instructors can choose their own trails. Nicole ran those remote wilderness outings from 2000 to 2012 while also working for other companies since it was essentially contract work. She worked for Big City Mountaineers doing eight-day canoeing trips in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota in Voyageurs National Park. On each trip, Nicole would take five foster homed teenaged girls and two social workers. “It was hard work,” she says and adds that the job taught her patience. “I’d spend my winters in Crested Butte, that was my down time, my time to be in a bed and have a phone because you’re really out of touch with no communication with the outside world at all,” she says of her trips.

Growing up, Nicole had the quintessential Minnesota family experience of summers at their cabin on a lake with a gaggle of cousins, aunts and uncles. She would spend her days catching frogs and fishing. “There were like, 40 of us. It wasn’t that big, but we’d share the cabin with all those people.” She explains that not all of them would arrive at the same time to share the cottage, but a lot of them would. In high school, Nicole participated in some sports, but dance was her major thing. “Dance has always been a part of my life from a young age.” She’s one of the founders of Move the Butte, which she’s still involved with and still dances every year. She graduated from high school in 1993.

Thinking she wanted to attend medical school, Nicole studied biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, earning a Bachelor of Science in that field along with a secondary BS degree in biological conservation. She graduated in 1998. “College was actually the least exciting and fun time in my life. I was pretty focused. Afterward, I went into a travel lifestyle, my free-spirited lifestyle, when I went out into the world.”

She had found NOLS while in college and was immediately hooked. “I did my first NOLS course as a student and figured out that I wanted to do outdoor education. The courses for NOLS take you through a pretty heavy training.” Back in her day, there weren’t very many women in outdoor education and she tells that Patagonia didn’t even make outdoor clothing for women yet. “I bought men’s long underwear with the little hole up front because that was the only choice,” she laughs. It was the late 1990s and Nicole says, “I was really being encouraged as a woman. I got a lot of funding. I was encouraged in leadership skills and they gave us a lot of training and paid for our travel expenses. I’d book early so I could stay for a month and explore.” 

Nicole had found CB in her 20s as a student, and on her first NOLS trip she had met a guy who was attending Western Colorado University in Gunnison who convinced her to check out CB. “And I never left,” she smiles. She moved in 2002 and credits her mom for encouraging her to buy a home here in 2008. “I lived in Gunnison the first year but very quickly moved to CB.” Her job with NOLS began right after that, fresh out of college. At the time, Nicole wasn’t really living anywhere. During her off time, she would travel and she kept a bedroom for herself and rented the rest out long term to friends while she was off doing NOLS trips and traveling. Returning to her CB home for winters, Nicole washed dishes at the Ginger Cafe and she worked many winters at the Brick Oven. “I also love snowboarding so I worked at Adaptive Sports for many winters. I love Adaptive,” she says, and she’s still on call as a snowboard instructor.

In her 30s, Nicole took more office positions and was out in the field less. “I managed the gear, equipment, food rations, staffing, training and funding. I thought I wanted to find a more stable lifestyle. When you do fieldwork for 12 years, although it’s amazing, you’re missing something, like community, because the lifestyle doesn’t allow for normal things like coffee with friends. I was ready for the shift into less field work and what a more stable lifestyle brings.” She had to leave CB for about eight years. Working her way up culminated into an executive director position at Southwest Conservation Corps in Salida. “We send out crews of young adults to do conservation work, trail work, forest fire mitigation,” she explains that the Southwest Conservation Corps provide land conservation and stewardship on public lands. Nicole was there four years.

There was a period that Nicole decided she was done with nonprofit work. “It was all great and I really loved it but it was low pay, no benefits and it was a tremendous amount of work. I gave a lot of myself. I got to a place in my life where I needed to find more balance,” and she needed less stress. So she moved back to Crested Butte and then Covid hit. Nicole decided to go to law school during that time, earning an LLM, a Master of Law. “I felt fired up during Covid because I wanted to make a large impact and support a larger movement on the planet in helping to make the world a better place for all humans. My vantage point was that our political and legal systems dictate a lot more than we realize. I think they dictate our culture and have influence on our education systems, health care and well-being,” she feels and adds, “It’s my opinion we need really forward-thinking humanitarian type politicians and lawyers.” 

She also earned a master’s equivalent this past May in environmental law and policy, which she’s putting to good use: “I have a director job with Positive Adventures. It’s my old line of work but it’s a for-profit company. Their mission focuses on bringing social and emotional learning and life skills through outdoor education.”

 Nicole also volunteers with the Gunnison Valley Climate Crisis Coalition as a core member. “My degree helps with that effort,” and she hopes to do some consulting work. “I’m qualified to do climate action plans for small businesses and organizations.”

 She owns the Karuna Project, “Karuna” meaning compassion, she explains. “We are using adventure travel to try to create a new way of social impact in the world by bringing different cultures together that really emphasizes that we really have a lot to learn from each other. It steers away from old paradigms. The poor people of the world don’t consider themselves poor because many communities around the world consider themselves to be rich although they may not have material things like fancy mountain bikes or the latest cell phones. I’m not saying there aren’t desperate people around the world who do need help, but in many cases many of these communities and cultures are rich in tradition, community, presence, culture and connection. It’s more about the idea that we have a lot to learn from each other.” Nicole helps her partner, Seth Quigg, with the business end of things while he takes folks on various adventures and treks to places like Nepal, South America and India, mixed with visiting small villages, sitting down with community members, having a wisdom circle, sharing stories and asking questions. “We’ll work on a pre-planned project together of the community’s choice,” she tells. Nicole and Seth met through a NOLS course 15 years ago and their friendship blossomed into much more. 

Travel adventure clients are often people they’ve met. “We get a lot of referrals, and a large number of Gunnison Valley people join our trips. Our trips are unique and special and word of mouth spreads so the numbers here are increasing. We don’t do very many trips, it’s more of a passion project for us and we want to focus on the positive impact.” The two still do a lot of traveling together and what Nicole has observed in her extensive travels is, “A large, unpublicized movement about a way of being on the planet with more community, more support locally, more farming and self-sufficiency and more conscious corporate decision making. I feel like it’s big. I think the more of us who can plug into this the better it’s going to be for everyone. It’s a local movement, it’s not connected. Everybody is doing their passion as a new way to be a human on the planet and doing it in their own passionate way in their own sector in whatever it is they do.”

Even with all her adventures, Nicole still feels Crested Butte is an especially enchanting place, from the very first time she found it. “The memory I have is from the nighttime. I remember seeing these incredible stars and the outlines of the mountains and these beautiful skies. We did a lot of hiking and it felt like a playground. I felt like I had landed in the most beautiful place in the world. I’ve seen a lot of beautiful places that aren’t structured for living. I’ll always come and go, but Crested Butte will always be my home.”