Profile: Kevin Krill

By Dawne Belloise

Kevin Krill has always been an outdoors kind of kid. He was born and raised in the Milwaukee area, the oldest of three with a younger brother and sister, and growing up, his family spent as much time as possible at their cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. “That’s where everything clicked,” he says. “Water skiing, fishing, Nordic skiing, downhill skiing. We were there for holidays, vacations, whenever we could be.” Kevin spent his days hiking, climbing trees and roaming outside until dark. The Northwoods, he says, shaped his sense of place. “It’s beautiful with trails, forests, lakes and wildlife. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Colorado forests, just without the mountains and with way more water, humid heat and bugs.”

In high school, Kevin attended an all-boys Catholic Jesuit school in the shadow of Marquette University. Art quickly became his passion, and skiing became his outlet. He ski-raced for the school, partly because he felt that most high school sports didn’t feel like the right fit for him. “They were state champs,” he laughs. “I wasn’t good enough for that.” His social life split into two worlds, friends from school and a core group of neighborhood kids who went to public school. “That’s where I learned how to party,” he says of public school life. “It was like having two completely different sets of friends.” He graduated high school in 1986.

By then, Kevin already had years of hands-on landscaping experience. Through his father, who worked in real estate, he landed jobs planting trees, mowing lawns, and installing fences for subdivision projects. “I saw these huge developments going in before I ever went to college,” he says. “I was reading plans without realizing that was a thing.” Kevin enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison with the intention of pursuing business, following his father’s hopes for a career in real estate or finance. “That didn’t last long. I discovered landscape architecture and that was it,” Kevin laughs. With more art, and way less business, Kevin says, “The design process was really appealing.” He was especially drawn to the color rendered plans and draftsmanship. “I’d already seen it on the ground so suddenly it all made sense.”

Kevin continued ski racing at UW Madison, traveling across the Midwest for competitions. Then, in the winter of 1989/90, he and a friend joined a Crested Butte Mountain Resort student program that allowed them to work as lift operators in exchange for a small scholarship. Although he had been to Summit County many times, he had never been to CB. “Aside from a CBMR trail map, we knew almost nothing about CB.”

It was snowing when they arrived so he couldn’t see the mountains. They were housed at the cabins at Three Rivers Resort in Almont, but that night they drove back up to CB and ate burgers for dinner at the Grubstake. The following day, on Christmas Eve, they picked up their ski passes and were told to go skiing because there wasn’t enough work yet. “We were hired to work the North Face Lift, but it was a year like now with little snow and the face wasn’t open yet. Riding the Paradise chair for the first time changed everything. Looking at that peak, that did it for me,” Kevin recalls. “We were Midwesterners. We were used to skiing and racing on ice. We didn’t know what we were missing,” he smiles.

“I met most of my best friends to this day that season. There’s a whole handful of us still here.” They skied hard and did après ski at the Rafters and Casey’s. “We had a blast.” Kevin returned to Madison to finish school, graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture. After graduation, he spent winters skiing in Alta, Utah, before being introduced to Woody Sherwood who then owned Rocky Mountain Trees. In the summer of 1993, Kevin came right back to Crested Butte to work landscaping for Rocky Mountain Trees because he says, “It was definitely home and landscaping fit the plan.”

Within a few years, Woody approached Kevin and his business partner, Steve Curtiss, about taking over the company. “We got eyeballed early as successors,” Kevin smiles. By 1999, they were full owners of Rocky Mountain Trees. The work and ownership were demanding. “It was hard work,” he says. “Especially once it was our business.”

Kevin and his brother Brian, who had moved to CB in 1996, lived year-round from 1996 to 2000 in a cabin their family had bought up in Irwin. Kevin worked for the Irwin Lodge at first running snowcats for its transportation department, which was delivering everything to and from the lodge. “Food, people, booze, equipment, whatever needed to go to and from town. After that first year, Kevin was hired as a ski guide for the lodge, which meant even more time on the slopes in delicious deep powder. “It was much better than driving a snowcat all day. I was a complete powder addict and that job fed the addiction,” he grins. He guided for several winters until the lodge closed in 2001 and they decided to sell the cabin that same year.

After selling the Irwin cabin, Kevin and his partner expanded Rocky Mountain Trees into a year-round operation, adding snow removal, setting up holiday lighting for clients and selling wreaths and Christmas trees. It was a smart business move, but Kevin soon realized, “Snow removal and I did not mix. I didn’t move here to have work increase when it was snowing. I moved here to ski.” He had a different vision for his future. In 2008, Steve Curtiss and his wife, Nel, bought him out of the company. “I wanted more of the Crested Butte lifestyle and less of the grind,” Kevin says. What followed was a period of exploration.

Kevin freelanced as a photographer, shooting for CBMR in their events department, and “chasing Bryan Wickenhauser and Brian Smith doing all the ski mountaineering racing and winning across the West.” It was the Cosmic Race Series. As a freelance photographer, Kevin says it was fun but expensive and didn’t pay anything. In 2014, he picked up work with the Big Mountain Enduro backcountry series, initially flying a drone for the mountain bike races. But they needed more help with timing the races than they did with photography, so he was then hired to do race timing and that turned into a paid gig. “Learning software, managing equipment, getting everything into the backcountry and producing results,” Kevin explains. The following year, he was promoted to timing manager. Now Kevin is in that role for a different series, the Revolution Enduro, which he’s done for the past five years across Colorado and New Mexico.

His real job, he feels, began in 2012, as the operations and facilities manager for the Crested Butte Nordic Center. He oversees grooming, signage, vehicles, snowcats, snowmobiles and two buildings. After a two-year stint grooming at CBMR, he returned full-time to the Nordic Center in 2016. “It’s art in the snow,” he smiles. “We go out and paint a beautiful line with clean edges, perfect corduroy and smooth and graceful curves.” With all his work experience, he is perfectly suited for his position with the Nordic Center, from landscaping and equipment to snow and aesthetics. Summer workloads are lighter, allowing him to continue his work with Enduro races.

Kevin met his wife, Marilyn Pengra, through his brother who worked for the Crested Butte Academy. They married in 2001. In 2018, they moved from Crested Butte to Gunnison. “We couldn’t afford to stay in CB, but we love it here,” Kevin says. Marilyn works in the education department at Western Colorado University, and their home sits along Tomichi Creek with views of Hartman Rocks. “I didn’t have to give up Crested Butte,” Kevin adds thankfully. “I’m still there every day. We still have our friends and do potlucks. We’re year-round at Hartman’s where they groom the trails for mountain biking and skiing.”

Kevin feels deeply aligned with the nonprofit world of the Nordic Center and the Gunnison Valley. “CBNC and the valley’s nonprofit world is a good fit for me. It’s low key, always positive and specifically the Nordic Center is affiliated with some of the greatest people both in mind and values, so we’re well funded, well organized and well supported by our people. Our board and committees have very smart people who are diversified in their professions, and they bring that to the table to help us run our nonprofit,” he says. “I never feel like I’m doing it alone. I have good support on decision making and planning for the future. That’s what I love about this place.”