Profile: Craig Geipel

By Dawne Belloise

Craig Geipel’s dad was a rocket scientist, helping to build the moon rover for NASA, but Craig jokes that the science gene must have missed him, although his resume is still pretty impressive. Businessman, marketer, ski film producer, TV show host and other experiences have led him to Crested Butte where he now owns a Jeep rental company called Alpenglow Rentals.

Craig was born and raised in Essex Junction, Vermont, to an engineer dad and elementary school teacher mom. As a red-headed kid, Craig began skiing at Bolton Valley Ski Resort at the age of 11. Once he got his driver’s license at 16, he convinced his school to allow him out of classes to do extreme skiing that was offered only to the racing team. “I didn’t want to join the team, race or do sports where I had to wear spandex,” he grins, “I just wanted to do extreme.” It was the ski film Blizzard of Oz that hooked him. His school agreed, so Craig left classes every other day at noon to go skiing.

 The first extreme competitions were in Alaska and Crested Butte in 1996, the year Craig graduated from high school. “I was still learning to ski on a pro level when I moved to Gunnison in 1997 to attend Western State College (WSC). I went to school Tuesdays and Thursdays so I could ski the other five days a week.” He took summer classes at Western University of Washington in Bellingham in 1998. “They had the most snow in the world that year and we skied until August 8,” he recalls.

Back at WSC for the fall and winter, Craig took video editing classes and when school got out in May, he went to British Columbia, living in an RV in the parking lot of Whistler and Revelstoke. “We were following the snow and filming. We got to ski free to film, working with their ski models and their friends. That gave me the footage to make my first ski film, First Attempt,” he says.

Craig graduated from WSC with a degree in Recreation and Business in 2001 and afterward, he and his buddy Dave Preston made a ski, snowboard and snowmobile film that featured Crested Butte. “We traveled all over the east and Canada, spending the summer at my friend’s farm in New Hampshire where I did all the film editing.”

They had set up a film premiere in Burlington, Vermont, for September 11, 2001, so rescheduled for a date three weeks later. They also did a late autumn showing in CB. “Back then the films were just ski porn and non-stop action. We made a movie format that told a story. We went to CB first, Utah second and then Lake Tahoe, Wyoming, Mt. Baker, Washington and Whistler,” he says of the 50-minute film they titled Live, Ski or Die.

A third movie was in the plan and Canada had mostly paid for the duo to film in Newfoundland for a week. “We brought four athletes with us, filming two jibbers (park skiers) and two big mountain skiers at the resort and the town of Corner Brook, in addition to the cat skiing.” It was an awakening for the filmmakers who had spent $76,000 making the second film but only realizing $10,000 from the sales. The filming was far from complete on the third film, and figuring the cost of the time for editing, advertising and tours, they decided to cancel the project. “That’s when we wrapped up the ski film thing and I no longer looked at it as a career option. I started making TV commercials and working with local artists to make music videos in Burlington.” 

Craig moved to Denver in 2004 and was hired to do business to business sales, working with different clients to help with credit card processing. “I was highly successful at it and was the second best in the nation, so they wanted me to run the Seattle office.” However, Craig turned down that lucrative job offer when he discovered the company he was working for fraudulently overcharged businesses. 

Craig left to create his own marketing company called Dynamic Consulting and worked for a client called Playcoed. “I ran after-work fun events for adults like kickball, softball, volleyball. We had 15,000 participants,” who would sign up to play various sports games and events that the company would organize and rent the facilities. “We actually started a new technology in Denver that no one else was doing at the time, we were social media pioneers, one of the first companies to utilize MySpace.” 

Craig got to hobnob with music stars and social elites since they were also marketing for the best clubs in town. “We’d promote the event and bring hundreds of people.” Then their company started booking the talent themselves instead of going through a third party, working together with Reality Bookings to line up old-school hip hop talent, playmates and acts like Snoop Dog. “My second date with my wife Sheila was hanging with Snoop Dog, and now here I am, the most boring guy in town,” he laughs.

But the glitteratti life can take its toll and Craig was getting burnt out, “It was really hard to have an event until 2 a.m. and then be a professional ad salesman with Fortune 500 clients.” Moving on in 2008, Craig teamed up with Global Transportation Company, which ran charter buses and RTD. “I was using Google ads to increase business and I took that business from 17 vehicles to 120. I made this guy millions of dollars during the low economy of the crash and he refused to even pay for my health care, so then I was out.”  

By 2010, Craig was hosting his own public TV show called That’s My Opinion, a Denver current events program that discussed politics and had representatives speak. He also featured local musicians, “We’d have different bands, rappers and artists participate.”

 After a brief stint in Moab, Craig moved to Telluride to sell ads, but the territory wasn’t conducive to making a living, so he took a job as a taxi driver in 2012, moving into management before coming up with the idea to start a Jeep rental business. Craig began to research locations and discovered no one was renting Jeeps in CB anymore, so he moved here in March of 2014. “I provide the equipment, maps, insurance and local knowledge to provide my customers with a self-guided experience.” There are forbidden areas for his clients, like Devil’s Punchbowl and other extreme drives. “We show them where to go and where not to go.” Working three jobs to manifest his dream, he now has a fleet of seven Jeep Wranglers, “all modified and lifted, with large oversized off-road tires.”

His goal has been to create balance in his life. “I work seven days a week in the summer and only about three days a week in the winter,” because, he feels, “You gotta make time to ski.” These days, he skis just for fun, “No films, and I don’t model. I ski backcountry, on the mountain and snowmobile.” Craig shares that when he moved back to CB in 2014, “I was suffering from PTSD. I had lost my dad, my best friend and my dog in a short time span. I moved back after all these things happened and I felt very closed off. It was really hard to make friends even though I’m a very social person. My pain was holding me back to accept friendship.” But he feels he learned from that. “It’s ok to not be ok. Be your best every day. It’s ok to give yourself time. You’re not going to heal overnight. It takes time. In humanity, we’re all quick to judge others, but you never know what that person’s dealing with. I live my life, giving people the benefit of the doubt.” 

Fast-forward 19 years, “I’m blessed to have my beautiful wife Sheila. I can be more open with people. Part of the reason I moved to CB is that it’s a small town, a real community.”