Chefs battle it out Friday at the Center

The loudest culinary event of the year is this Friday at the CB Center for the Arts! Chefs on the Edge is the gastronomic game show where your best boisterous behavior is the perfect table manner. Competition begins at 6 p.m. with three teams. They’ll clash knives and sauce pans trying to impress Celebrity Judges Michael Busse (Garlic Mike’s), Danielle Riesz-Gutter (Wildflour Sweets) and Kathy King (Guest Sous Chef with Soupçon Bistro). Emcee Michael Marchitelli will keep the audience informed of the cooking acrobatics on stage with audience members participating in culinary trivia and a chance at door prizes.

Ski resort parking lot closure for Outerbike starting Monday

CBMR’s main parking lot at the corner of Treasury and Emmons Road will be closed starting Monday August 14 for the Outerbike demo village set up. It will reopen the morning of Tuesday August 22 after cleanup is complete. Take the Mountain Express bus from town, or try to carpool and make sure to park in the lower free lot on Snowmass Road starting Monday August 14.

Final Public Policy Forum to address climate change with Wirth and Harte

Former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth will be speaking with John Harte on climate change and his research at RMBL at the Crested Butte Public Policy Forum on Wednesday, August 16. This is the final forum of the summer and is guaranteed to be entertaining and informative.

Shofar Fellowship offers weekly messianic honoring of Shabbat

The Shofar Fellowship and Discovery Time each week is on Shabbat (Sabbath/Saturday) at 9 a.m. at 1825 N. Highway 135 in Gunnison (house in Discount Self Storage complex). Whether you are Jewish, Christian, seeker, searcher, non-believer, committed or curious, join the fellowship every Shabbat for praise and worship of Adonai and to learn about the rich Hebraic Covenant Heritage of faith in Yeshua HaMashiach (the Messiah). Shabbat Brunch to break bread while people fellowship together is $3 per person. For more information call 349-1899.

Film Fest presents I Am Not Your Negro at the GAC

In collaboration with the Crested Butte Film Festival, the Gunnison Arts Center presents the film I Am Not Your Negro in the monthly film series, this Saturday, August 19 in the Black Box Theater. Doors open at 6:30 and the movie starts at 7 p.m. I Am Not Your Negro is a challenging and deeply insightful account of what it means to be black and white in America. The PG-13, 95-minute documentary is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. Admission is $10. Full bar and popcorn will be available.

Salsa Rueda & Rum at GAC

Enjoy a night under the Gunnison Art Center Courtyard lights in a fun and easy Dance AND Series event, Salsa Rueda & Rum, on Friday, August 11 from 7 to 9:30 p.m. Enjoy sipping on refreshing rum-inspired cocktails and Latin-style apps, with instructor/caller Linny Ramundo, for  $20 per person. Dancers will learn and execute basic salsa moves in a circular formation while listening to a caller and consistently changing partners. This is a no-pressure way to get exposed to basic salsa rhythms.

Birthdays:

August 10- Chris Gaither, Bruce Alpern

August 11- Amy Williams, Kathleen Ross, Steve Cook, Doug Kroft

August 12- Linda Priest, Mert Theaker, Jewel Millard, Spencer Madison

August 13- Peter Chase, Rick Gaither, Cea Anderson, Faith Gasparrini, Tina Curvin, Bill Husted

August 14- Mary Kunes, Katie & Maddie Thomas, Rosie Ewert, Aidan Gunderson

August 15-Chris Morgan

August 16- Marc Shellhorn, John Councilman, Jay Leonard, Allen Beck, Ian Hatchett

CAMEOS: What do you do to beat the summer crowds?

by Dawne Belloise

Back in the days of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, when the legendary potholes of the dirt streets of Crested Butte swallowed spring mud season with a voracious appetite and summer finally rolled out her greenery, long haired, baby-faced locals in bell-bottomed jeans and plaid flannel shirts (worn by both men and women) sat on dilapidated porches strumming guitars and swigging beer.

This week, many of those aging children return to Crested Butte for an accidental reunion of sorts that evolved from a music jam nine years ago when just a few past and present Buttian players got together for a mini-reunion at Kochevar’s to throw down some old tunes.

The several long-time musician friends were sitting on a bench in front of the bar after the gig, reminiscing about the good old days of wily doings and dusty bars in the somewhat feral era of Crested Butte. Squinting in the late afternoon sun that day were players, some of whom hadn’t seen each other in decades. Ramon Burrell, Les Choy, Dawne Belloise, Jim Michael, Tracey Wickland, Flash (Kevin Walsh) and Steve Snyder had all gathered to jam with visiting one-time local Robert J. Conway.

When the music stopped, the discussion immediately turned toward getting back together again and inviting as many performers as possible from the glory days to crank up the notorious Crested Butte Allstars.

Finally, nine years later, Robert J is coming back to town this week, along with an unexpected windfall of former Buttians, far more than only the musicians.

The famed hippies of Crested Butte’s earlier days, after the mines closed down and the railroad tracks were ripped up in the early 1950s, were the new visionaries who actually set the groundwork for what Crested Butte is today—a close, vibrant community with as many aesthetics as there were potholes. But back then, we were so young and certainly not thinking about adulthood. We were focused on hiking and camping, riding our bikes, dancing and partying, and getting enough money together for next season’s ski pass, or as one former local, Paul Andersen, put it, “Miscreants … back in the days of wood, wool and leather…”

The attitudes and reasons for living in Crested Butte haven’t changed that much through the decades—we’re still an outdoor, freedom-loving population playing in the summer mountains while waiting for winter snows. We’re just older now. Those who left to follow a life elsewhere all confess, Crested Butte never leaves you. Those who will be returning for the so-called Crested Butte 40-Year Reunion will find the town changed in many ways, but the essence remains the same.

Remembering the
music with Robert J

Robert J’s Crested Butte history beckons back to the 1970s and his inspiration to gather the clan was concurrent to an anniversary. “It’s been 40 years since I moved to Crested Butte. I moved to Colorado from Detroit with my band, Happy Trails,” he says, recalling the line-up of Jim Michael, Jebediah (Jeb) Bettis, and Morgan Child. “We jumped in a van, lived on the Front Range on a 5,000-acre ranch for a few months, playing in the mountains. Then we moved to El Jebel in 1976 and ‘77, the Winter of Un. We had gigs all set in Snowmass for the whole winter but we got cancelled since there was no snow. Sunshine (of Crested Butte’s much loved Sunshine’s Bathhouse) was booking us and got us a gig at the Tailings (now the downstairs of Secret Stash). We fell in love with the town when we played here. We thought it was the coolest place ever.” The band unanimously agreed to move to town in the spring of 1977.

He went on, “We had a school bus by then and came over Kebler Pass road, having to do about a 100-point turn going into what was then a narrow wooden bridge. We morphed into another band, Northern Dancer, which was all the same guys in Happy Trails. But we added Michael Plant as our sound man, who also sang some country songs, and David Alexander, another Detroit guy who had moved to Colorado. About a month after living here, we found out that molybdenum had been discovered in Mt. Emmons, the Red Lady, and that’s when I wrote the song, ‘Moly Be Damned’ with Tracey Wickland’s ‘Mountain Song’ on the flip side of a 45-rpm record.”

Later bands would include High Altitude Cooking with Mike Farhlander, Papa J, The Crows, and Stray Dogs Blues Band.

Robert J recalls that his favorite place was above Penelope’s (where Ryce is now), up the stairs by Coal Creek. “It was like the inside of a boat with paisley wallpaper, very Victorian, with neat loft above. I was amazed at this little town because as small as it was, there were two newspapers and a radio station. Most of us had fabulous stories about living here. We were burnt out on city life and came to this little beautiful town and it was filled with all these characters. I just loved it. I can’t pinpoint one thing,” he says of what he loved about the town in those days, but it’s stuck with him for decades.

“The whole experience of living in the mountains, at 9,000 feet elevation in paradise, skiing in the winter, trout fishing in the summer, playing music and enjoying life. I have wonderful memories of my life here and I think once you experience that, at that young of an age, it stays in your heart.” Although he left after several years in Crested Butte to move to Wisconsin, he still considers Crested Butte home after all the years away.

Escaping the rest of the world for home

There are many facets explaining the extraordinary endearment and attachment to town that both former and current locals of Crested Butte have. Their sense of place is fortified by strong communal principles. When the hippies and skiers first discovered Crested Butte in the 1960s and ‘70s, the world itself was different and it was a more tumultuous era of societal upheaval. We, as youth, were seeing the world through new eyes and bringing innovative concepts. Here, in the extremes, there were survival elements that transcended differences. People were kind. There was camaraderie, a strong bonding through common ideals. There was also the boasted weirdness and wildness—escalated, honed, and recited in stories down through the years.

Allen Beck didn’t move too far down the road when he left Crested Butte. He’s in Montrose now but he won’t be able to make it to the reunion. “I regret this for several reasons, not the least of which is that I lived there for 20 years and thought I (we) would never leave,” he writes. “Nowhere I had lived before seemed as much a part of me and every time I came back down that last little hill into town, I felt I was coming home once more. I moved there in 1988, just in time to win the Liar’s Contest for newcomers at Kochevar’s for Vinotok and met Marcie [Telander] that week. I was hooked on story-telling from that week and still am, although I don’t have to make up as many new ones as I did for a long time. We moved due to a need to make a decent living but as I said above, never thought of that happening until it did.”

Jim Schmidt, aka Deli, arrived on the Crested Butte scene in 1976, seeking something more than the rat-race in suburban Chicago. “I’d been out of college for six years,” he says of his decision to bolt the Midwest, “so I quit my job, jumped on my motorcycle and took off for three months, riding all over the West, hitting every national park I could find. Some friends had moved to Crested Butte, which I had never heard of. They had bought an empty building, which is now the Talk of the Town.”

Deli says the upstairs had an unadorned apartment, as empty as the downstairs, but the bath was functional with a shower and he had been camping for months. “My first week in Crested Butte, I slept upstairs without even a chair in the room. The town and its people felt a lot like college to me because so many of them were the same age and there was a lot of partying going on. I was looking for a place to move to, and the words of John Denver’ Rocky Mountain High, ‘coming home to a place he’d never been before,’ struck a chord,” and, he says, “It just felt right.”

Deli wasn’t a skier, having gone down the slopes only twice in his life, so that wasn’t a motivation to move here, although, because he was pretty much a jock, he figured he could learn the sport. In the summer of ‘78 Deli headed out to Lake Nicholson with a friend to swim, where bathing suits were not the norm. “Here I was, this naïve Midwestern boy who was not used to naked people and there were about 80 buck-naked people out there. It was eye-opening to say the least,” he laughs. Working at the Crested Butte Sandwich Company in the Emmons Building on the mountain is how Jim got his moniker. “I did a radio commercial for the sandwich shop and in the background Lynda and Bonnie Petito were singing ‘Jim Deli to the Rescue’ and that stuck.” He’s been Jim Deli forever more.

Social media alert

Ever since a Facebook page was put up announcing a Crested Butte 40th Reunion, the response has been overwhelming. There are 1,400 people logged in to the page and at least 500 confirmed Buttians flying, driving or crawling their way back from all corners of the country, back to their memories and former lives in town.

There are photos of ski passes and Western State College IDs, band set lists and menus from restaurants we loved. Recollections of softball teams, bar scenes and holiday gatherings in drafty rustic houses are recounted. There are grinning mustachioed faces bumping down Resurrection on impossibly long skis, and way more free heelers than you see on the mountain these days. Beloved long-gone dogs.

Deli reminisces, “I’ve looked at a lot of those photos and I think, what a bunch of young, happy, healthy people. I remember the good times more than the bad times.” The bad times being how money was extremely tight. “The work wasn’t there. The off seasons were really dead. Summer was like May is now.”

Summer is now busier than winters, because back then there was nothing going on in the summer, and Deli feels, “People didn’t realize how beautiful it was here.” He also notes that the climate has changed profoundly. “When I got here there were only two seasons, winter and the Fourth of July, and it snowed a few times on the Fourth but in May and September you could count on snow being on the ground. I remember playing softball with ski gloves on as we were wrapping up the season at the end of August. It was cold.”

Endless opportunity

Crested Butte was a community that enabled its residents to do anything, whether it was to act in a play, become a deejay or write for the newspaper. Deli says, “It gave you the opportunity to teach yourself. Nobody ever said, you can’t do that and the people were just so welcoming that they accepted you for whatever you wanted to do.”

In a close-knit community that was oftentimes isolated and insulated from the outside world, you depend on each other. Deli says he’ll be wearing a special nametag to the reunion that will read, “Hello my name is Jim Deli Schmidt. I can’t remember your name or if I slept with you or not.”

Of the Baby Boomer generation that came of age in those Crested Butte days, many have stayed, some have gone and returned and some are gone forever. Deli plans on never leaving. He bought a gravesite for $50 in the town’s cemetery that holds seven full-size coffins or tons of your best friends’ ashes. Since he never married or had a family he’s offering those extra spaces to his friends and urges, “Sign up now, I’ll be quiet,” he promises of grave-mate eternity in paradise.

There’s a trio of women who arrived in town in 1978 who are well known and loved as the Flying Petito Sisters. Lynda Petito arrived first and ecstatically urged her sister Bonnie to get herself out here. “Bonnie, you’ve got to check this place out. It’s like we won the revolution,” she told her sister. It pretty much summed up Crested Butte in one sentence. Bonnie and their youngest sister, Cindy, followed within six months.

“The town felt much smaller. It was quiet and dusty and if anything was happening, everyone seemed to know about it,” Bonnie said fondly of her home of almost 40 years now. “We all seemed to be on the same page, with the same life references and similar educations and experiences. It’s hard to imagine now because summers are so busy, but the first few years I lived here, summers were pretty dead. If there were cars parked on Elk Avenue then you’d scratch your head and try to remember what was going on. It’s the people and my family that so far have kept me here. I wish we could find another spot, in a warm climate, where we could all relocate for our golden years. I would miss this place but if I were surrounded by my Crested Butte friends it would be okay.”

We may have gotten older, but we’ve never lost the joy of having lived in such a magical place, and like Peter Pan, those who once experienced living here never lose their love of Crested Butte or the inner child that it nurtures.

Robert J, the Crested Butte Allstars, and Darkstar will play the Eldo, Friday, July 28 from 4 to around 8 p.m.

Watchdogging for four decades

by Dawne Belloise

Forty years ago, a small group of concerned locals met at the home of Dick Wingerson. There, Don Bachman, Ceil Murray, Wes Light, Susan Cottingham, Roy Smith and Chuck Malick got together to plot how to stop AMAX, a mining company, from destroying Mt. Emmons, known and loved locally as the Red Lady, and consequently, also save the then-sleepy town of Crested Butte from a massive molybdenum mine.

From that early gathering, the High Country Citizen’s Alliance (HCCA; now the High Country Conservation Advocates) was born.

Since then, HCCA has successfully led the community in keeping our Red Lady mine-free and is now working with the local partners such as the town of Crested Butte, Gunnison County, the current owner of the mine properties, and state and federal agencies to take advantage of an opportunity to secure permanent protection for Mt. Emmons.

To celebrate 40 years of HCCA’s accomplishments, the organization is planning a celebratory evening on the lawn of the historic Depot on the east end of Elk Avenue, July 30, from 5 to 9 p.m. with a Crested Butte tradition, a potluck dinner, as well as live music by Bill Dowell, a slideshow, an environment-inspired art silent auction, free beer and wine, and a much-anticipated keynote presentation by W Mitchell, the former mayor of Crested Butte who led the initial fight against the mine (see W Mitchell’s profile in this issue).

Then-mayor W Mitchell got involved and almost the entire community got on board with the movement, although not all of the locals felt mining was evil since there were still old-timer families who remembered the mining days here and some thought that a return to the industry would be beneficial to town’s economy. But this newly proposed mine would be different from the coal extraction, which was essential to Crested Butte’s founding and development from the 1880s. The new mine would be a large industrial one, impacting many of the pristine valleys like the Slate River, Ohio Creek, and over Kebler Road, demanding huge electrical and wastewater needs.

Through HCCA’s efforts, along with numerous and varying situations as well as community resistance and legal battles, five different mining companies that tried to move forward were thwarted from doing so.

HCCA has assisted and helped create many environmental accomplishments through the years that have been beneficial to the valley’s quality of life and outstanding beauty:

—joining with local ranchers to avoid clear cutting of aspen trees on Kebler;

—stopping trans-mountain water diversion;

—working on nationally recognized range reform with local ranchers;

—creating local wilderness areas like the Oh Be Joyful addition and Fossil Ridge;

—pushing the designation of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison as a national park;

—getting the national roadless rule adopted;

—helping the county write coal bed methane regulations;

—working with CBMR to get a 44-acre conservation easement in Mt. Crested Butte; and

—getting the vote on a ballot issue, which passed by a nine to one margin, to allow the town to spend $2 million from the real estate transfer tax to buy the mining and mill site claims from the current owners, Mt. Emmons Mining Company/Freeport-McMoran, who are working with everyone to find a permanent solution so there will be no mining or threat of it on the Red Lady ever.

In 2014, HCCA changed its name to High Country Conservation Advocates to better reflect its mission, which is, essentially, protecting public lands and water.

From the start, HCCA decided to be more than just a single-issue organization. When timber sales and trans-mountain water diversion reared their heads, HCCA dealt with those issues as well as helping keep public lands from being privatized, and protecting the health and natural beauty of the land, rivers, and wildlife in and around Gunnison County, now and for future generations.

There’ll be free beer (and wine) at the birthday party anniversary, thanks to the former Crested Butte Brewery, which developed the original Red Lady Ale and shared that recipe with the Irwin Brewing Company, which is brewing it to honor 40 years of HCCA keeping Red Lady mine-free. The Red Lady Ale is an American amber/red ale. An Irwin Brewing Company pilsner, red and white wine, and non-alcoholic beverages will also be served, all free, but as usual, tips will be greatly appreciated for the volunteers.

by Dawne Belloise

Editor’s Note: W Mitchell will be the featured keynote speaker at High Country Conservation Advocates’ Dinner at the Depot: 40th Anniversary Celebration on Sunday, July 30, from 5 to 9 p.m.

“I’m just an ordinary man living in an extraordinary situation.” — W Mitchell

In the James Cameron film Avatar, the protagonist who saves a planet from the evils of a greedy off-world mining company is a paraplegic warrior, a former Marine who leads the native population to a rebellious victory and succeeds in ousting the mining company from their paradisiacal world. The beloved and once former mayor of Crested Butte, W Mitchell, was the real life Avatar hero for Crested Butte in the 1970s when the AMAX mining company sought to extract the mother lode of molybdenum from Mt. Emmons, aka Red Lady mountain, the western sentinel of town.

Mitchell began his life outside of Philadelphia and joined the Marines when he was 17, attending the University of Hawaii at night while he served. When he was discharged from the service, he stayed in Hawaii, working as a bartender and a deejay. Both, he says, came in quite handy later when he moved to Crested Butte. For a while, he moved back to his hometown of Philly, working as a substitute teacher. “The only skill I possessed for that job was that I was alive. I loved it,” he laughs.

Mitchell became involved in Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, going to rallies, and even spending a little time with the New York senator before Bobby’s assassination. In June of 1968, having been to San Francisco briefly during the previous year’s “Summer of Love,” he found himself in Height Ashbury alongside the famed Diggers. “I was eating their free lunch. They had a truck that went around and that also parked at the entrance of Golden Gate Park and they served anyone a free lunch,” he recalls. “The lunch was whatever they had and were serving that day. The Diggers believed everything should be free. They had a famous store where you could go get a free pair of jeans or anything that anyone had left.” Although Mitchell never considered himself a hippie, he was pretty progressive.

His first job was as a taxi driver, with a little bartending in between. But he remembers, “The coolest job I had was driving a cable car. It was the coolest job in the whole world. It was fun, and it’s the only, and the last street cable car company in the world. You had to physically work hard to operate the cable. The cable runs under the ground, continuously running, like a ski rope tow, and there’s a device in the car that has a grip that extends down from the car with a two-inch slot. The grip is operated by a gripman, and I became a gripman. There were only 60 people on the planet with that job,” he says.

“You pulled back on the lever and each time you pulled it back, you squeezed the cable. You’re pulling a car with 125 passengers on it, a tremendous amount of weight. You get skinny, but you get biceps,” he says of the perks of that hard labor, and says he lost so much weight in the first month that his uniform had to be refitted and altered. He also loved that the job was more or less outdoors, and he grins about the coolness factor. “There were lots of pretty girls who love guys who are in charge, and guys who are in uniform, whether it’s Sgt. Pepper or guys in cable uniforms,” he says.

In the summer of 1970, Mitchell and a Marine buddy took a motorcycle trip to travel across America and in Tuba City, Arizona, the two stopped to visit his friend’s cousin, who told them about this magical place called Aspen. “We spent the summer camping in Aspen. We blew off the rest of the trip because Colorado was so magnificent.”

After several weeks, the duo was getting ready to head out to continue their Easy Rider adventure when, driving over Independence Pass, Mitchell ran out of gas. “My buddy went on to get gas to bring back. This was the most beautiful day in Colorado, which every day that I’ve ever spent in Colorado is the most beautiful day in the history of Colorado.”

It was a couple of hours before his friend arrived back because, not knowing where the nearest gas station was, his buddy also ran out of gas. “All we did was look at each other. I don’t think we said five words. Finally we got on the bikes and thought how stupid could we be that we would want to leave this magnificent place, and to think that we could find any place more beautiful. And that was the end of our journey. We spent the rest of our summer in the Aspen area.”

Mitchell’s girlfriend at the time joined him from San Francisco and they bought ski passes for that winter season.

Returning to San Francisco in the spring of 1971 to his gripman job on the cable cars, Mitchell started taking flying lessons. “That June I had gotten far enough in my flight training that I soloed for the first time. That afternoon, on a brand new one-day old motorcycle, as I was approaching an intersection, a laundry truck ran a stop sign and we collided.” His bike went down, the gas cap popped open, and the heat of the engine ignited the gasoline, severely burning Mitchell.

“A guy with a fire extinguisher ran out of a car dealership and put out the flames but I was burned over 65 percent of my body, including my face and hands.” He spent four months in the hospital, and had most of his fingers amputated. His helmet saved his life and kept his head from being burned. He was only 27. “I was young and healthy and had good care. I went home but I had to be taken care of a lot. Because of the extensive burns on my hands, I couldn’t touch anything.” He recalls the pain and inability to do simple things like reach into his pocket. He had to be dressed and bathed and fed.

“Think about a three-month old baby’s needs. I needed all of that. I couldn’t use my hands. Period. They were so sensitive. Over time, in about two years, I was able to drive and I started my flight training again,” says the undefeatable Mitchell.

Mitchell and his girlfriend drove back to Colorado in the summer of ‘72 to visit friends in Aspen, exploring the Western Slope in their camper. One of the places they hit was Crested Butte, camping in Gothic, where Mitchell recalls, “The mosquitoes were horrendous, so we left the campground, went into town and stayed in bunk beds at the Forest Queen. We ate at the Bistro, the same building the Grubstake was in. People were kind of snotty and that kind of offed me a little for Crested Butte,” he remembers. “I was used to Aspen, which was a little more sophisticated and upscale and here in Crested Butte people seemed a little snottier because they were ‘locals’ and I was an out-of-towner.”

The following spring, he settled his insurance case for his motorcycle accident and used the money to buy a plane. One of the first places he and his girlfriend flew to was back to Aspen to find his friend, Suzie Fisher. However, upon arriving, he learned she had moved to that snobby town of Crested Butte. “We landed at Tony Verzuh International Airport,” he jokes. “It was just a field, mowed a little bit, sort of where the sewage plant is now. When it rained, the east end was under water and in winter it was covered with snow but plowed. The strip is now all houses in the Verzuh plat.”

He found their friend Suzie and a few days later, Mitchell bought his house on Maroon Avenue, across from the fire station. “It was $35k, an old two-story coal miner’s house. I later found out that I was the greatest fool who ever arrived in Crested Butte, because anyone who spent that much on a Crested Butte house was a fool,” he says.

Mitchell learned this from the old timers at Tony’s Conoco and hardware store (now the Museum). “I went to get the key to the house at Tony’s and there were all these older guys around the pot- belly stove. No one had spent $35,000 on a house in the history in Crested Butte. The house had sold previously for $3,500, and before that for $350, but at that time the town was gone and there weren’t 300 people here for the winter, the mines had closed.”

But this was the summer of ‘73 and Mitchell felt Crested Butte was just perfect and stunning. “Back then there were only about 500 residents, really small, and that was perfect. One of the things that I loved about town was, the first person I met asked what happened to me,” and he explained his burns and accident to them.

“And in 15 minutes everyone in town knew, so I didn’t need to keep explaining what happened to everyone I met.” He feels that although some might call that gossip, “It’s usually because people care and Crested Butte was a town where everyone took care of each other,” he discovered.

Tony Verzuh was a prime example of how people in this town took care of each other, despite their differences. Mitchell had tragically crashed his plane in Gunnison in November 1975, which paralyzed him, confining him to a wheelchair for life.

“Moving my car was a hassle, so I made a side yard and Tony Verzuh, my neighbor at the corner of Third and Maroon, would plow that and would not take any money for doing it. A lot of the old timers got upset with me when I ran for mayor against the mine in 1977. Tony stopped talking to me too. It snowed one day, and I went outside and my side yard had been plowed. He wouldn’t talk to me anymore but he continued to plow my yard and that’s what Crested Butte is to me. That’s what community does, that’s what neighbors do. Even if they don’t like you that much, if you need help, they’re there.”

After Mitchell’s motorcycle accident and burn and his paralyzing plane crash, his house caught on fire—the entire second floor was completely destroyed and uninhabitable—and once again the community came to his aid. “The town showed up to save my house when it was burning. They saved all my furniture.”

After being coerced, practically guilted into filling a vacant Town Council seat for a few months until the election, Mitchell saw an article in the local paper about some exploratory drilling that was going on up on the face of Red Lady.

“When you think of AMAX, you think of Leadville, Mt. Bartlett, the mountain that’s no longer there because they mined it. They took the mountain out of the mountain and the town is buried under all those tailings. We made Amax take us on a mine tour, Gillette, Leadville, about six towns where mining was a big industry.” Mitchell notes that in every one of those towns there were serious problems—domestic abuse, drug addition and alcoholism, and mental health issues.

“The social impacts are greater than the environmental impacts in many instances. They were going to spend $2 billion to build the mine here. It would have been the biggest industrial project in the history of Colorado. In the construction phase, you have a gigantic turnover of people. You need all kind of workers, steel, concrete, bulldozers, ten times as many to build the mine as you need to run the mine. You have to find a place for all the construction-phase workers and schools for their kids, and then most of them are going to go away. And there’s no commitment to the community,” Mitchell says.

“And we all saw that it would be a social and environmental nightmare for Crested Butte, and there’s never been a mining project that hasn’t had a bust after the boom,” he says. That’s when Mitchell decided to run for mayor. He would be the leader to stand for the community and declare, “NO.”

When AMAX pulled out in the summer of 1981, the headline ran, “W Mitchell: the Mayor who saved the mountain.”

These days, as a motivational keynote speaker, Mitchell reflects, “I talk about that in every speech. I love that because I don’t know how many people they’ve met that have saved a mountain.” Grinning, he admits, “I have the headline, but it’s not true. I explain that it was the community that saved the mountain. It was a town full of people who had a greater commitment to the air and the water than a pound of molybdenum. I got the headline because I chose to be the leader but it was all of us working together who saved the mountain.”

Today, W Mitchell lives in California and is a respected environmentalist and conservationist who has repeatedly testified before Congress. His accomplishments have received media recognition on shows such as Good Morning America, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News and others around the world. He’s been a radio and television host, a successful author and an award-winning international keynote speaker. Most Crested Buttians who have known him feel that he is undoubtedly the Avatar who helped save his people and paradise from an evil and greedy mining company.

It’s impossible to include all the many accomplishments and stories of W Mitchell in one news feature, so for more, go to wmitchell.com.

Last week, likely on either Wednesday evening or early Thursday, someone chose to graffiti the new bike park with spray-painted swastikas and crude depictions of genitals. In all likelihood it was an ignorant kid who does not understand the power of their actions, nor the severity of the symbol. Yet, even with this rationale, my mind reels.

We live here in this valley surrounded by beauty. To our north quite literally is Paradise. We celebrate wildflowers, pagans, fairies, softballers, skiers, the first snowfall in October, the first aspen leaf in spring, bicycles and beer. Here in our bubble, we celebrate the individual and the collective. So when I see these marks spray-painted so crassly on the town’s newest effort in building joy, all I can be is confused. And outraged.

Because how dare someone, whether they be a visitor or local, bring such hate into our beautiful home? It’s a perversion of what we hold sacred, and whether it was done out of malice or just stupidity, we cannot let such actions stand. We’re better than this. Here, where many of us know most of us by name, or at least notoriety, we have to be.

This place has plenty of problems. There’s a real disparity between classes. The housing situation is a mess. Traffic, parking, alcoholism, recreational drug use, littering, lack of diversity, limited health care, over-use of public lands. I can accept and work with these as part of the tax that comes with living in an end-of-the-road mountain town. But painting a swastika within a rock’s throw of our Community School and walking away like a coward? It is unacceptable and intolerable.

I know for many people this has the potential to be an us vs. them incident. We’ll look at each other, and lay the blame on the kid from out-of-town who doesn’t mountain bike and can’t tell a lupine from a log. But what if it wasn’t? What if this was the act of one of our own? What then? And, more so, does it matter? Would our message to the perpetrator be different?

I have two young boys at home. At night after I put them in bed, I look out my window toward Mt. Emmons, the mountain on whose summit my husband proposed and whose name is written on my older son’s birth certificate, and I give thanks for this place, for the chance to live here and to raise my boys here.

Because, I believe, perhaps more than anything, that the place we call home shapes who we are, and what I want for my boys is for them to grow up kind and brave. I think here that’s possible.

We live in this community of celebration. Let’s stand together and remind the world that hate and ugliness do not belong in our home by showing each other greater kindness, and reminding those around us that everywhere there is beauty.

And a huge thanks to the Crested Butte parks and recreation department and the marshals for getting the graffiti cleaned up. It’s a busy time of year, and fast-tracking this situation is something we appreciate and applaud.

—Aimee Eaton

Parking is number one priority

By Aimee Eaton

With the termination of the Mt. Crested Butte Performing Arts Center’s Biery Witt Center project, roughly $7 million in tax money from the Downtown Development Authority has been made available for new projects identified by the group.

The DDA is responsible for guiding future development within the downtown area of Mt. Crested Butte. The group’s board of directors had a meeting last week to begin discussions on what to do with the tax dollars, now that the funds are no longer obligated to the MTPAC.

“The funds will be used specifically for developing the infrastructure of the downtown area,” said Mt. Crested Butte town manager Joe Fitzpatrick. “The DDA’s priorities were two things: 1) the performing arts center, and 2) parking. The performing arts center is no more, so we’re at parking.”

According to Fitzpatrick, the DDA is currently under contract to purchase some of the land on the north side of the Nordic Inn, which is currently an open field. The land will be turned into a surface-level parking area with 150 spaces. Once that is done, there should still be some money left over.

“The DDA is looking at a pretty long list right now of potential projects,” said Fitzpatrick. “They’re working to determine what is going to be better for the community. They’ll be meeting in September to narrow down the list to the projects that will have the greatest impact.”

The list includes projects such as: building a skier drop-off near the Grand Lodge entrance; making traffic improvements along Gothic Road between Emmons and Treasury roads; repairing the Snowcrest Bridge; increasing broadband infrastructure; and lastly, building a rec center, which Fitzpatrick said is very unlikely to be chosen.

“It’s important for people to remember that we previously went through several exercises to determine the feasibility of many of these projects prior to the decision to move forward with the performing arts center,” said Fitzpatrick. “We found that a rec center would be very expensive to build and even more expensive to operate. A feasibility study said there was no way we could afford to keep the lights on without a tax or another funding source. Because of that, a rec center is at the very bottom of the list.”

One item that hovers around the middle of the list is the partially completed multi-level parking garage in the large parking area north of the Grand Lodge. The garage currently has room for about 120 cars, but if it’s completed would have around 350 spaces.

“The plans are complete for the garage and it would be good to get finished,” said Fitzpatrick. “It’s just expensive to finish and it could consume most of what the DDA has for funding through 2026.”

The next meeting of the DDA will be on September 4 at 4 p.m. in the council chambers of the Mt. Crested Butte town hall.

Heavy metals, low pH water seeping into Slate River from hillside above Gunsight Bridge

By Aimee Eaton

Among the wildflowers, free-flowing rivers and snow-capped mountains of the Upper Gunnison Valley, it can be easy to forget that Crested Butte and the surrounding areas were at one time home to large mining operations.

In the mid-1800s coal and silver mines provided jobs and helped build the infrastructure for town. More recently, extraction of molybdenum from Mt. Emmons has been attempted.

These once-prevalent industries have left their mark on many of Crested Butte’s nearby hillsides and waterways, including the hillside above Gunsight Bridge on the Slate River, a popular picnic, swimming and fishing area that also serves as a gateway for several heavily used hiking and mountain bike trails.

That popularity, and the amount of mining impact nearby, has led the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition (CCWC), a local non-profit focused on watershed health, to lead a group of agencies in the cleanup and reclamation of the area.

According to the Gunsight Processing Area Reclamation Project Implementation Plan, the hillside is the site of an abandoned mine, and the four prominent benches and the slopes that connect them are made from mine waste. Combined, the hillside is “an impervious area devoid of vegetation, with extensive evidence of surface water runoff and erosion.”

Runoff from the area drains through several gullies toward the Slate River, which is located approximately 400 feet away—about the length of a football field. Several seeps also exist in the hillside and while some are only present during wet periods, at least three are persistent throughout the year. The water coming from the seeps and in the runoff has been tested and has shown very high metal concentrations and low pH levels.

“Addressing this water quality impairment at the Gunsight Processing Area is imperative to sustaining the environmental integrity of the Upper Slate River Watershed; while the location of the site and the poor water quality characteristics identified only present a low-moderate risk to human health, if unaddressed, they can negatively impact plant and aquatic life in the area,” said Coal Creek Watershed Coalition’s executive director Zack Vaughter.  “As a headwaters community, this project will have a positive impact not only on the immediate environment and ecosystem, but for all downstream water uses and users.”

Beginning this fall, the CCWC, in collaboration with the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety (DRMS), Colorado Nonpoint Source Program (CNSP) and the Bureau of Land Management: Gunnison Field Office, will take on the Gunsight Processing area in a four- to eight-week-long project that will, according to the implementation plan, “use a series of mine reclamation best management practices to restore natural topography, permanently stabilize and isolate mine waste, and to re-vegetate the site.”

When completed, the practices will “minimize water contact with mine waste, thereby reducing metals loads and improving water quality in the Slate River and preventing human health risks.”

According to Vaughter, the project is being funded through the state’s Nonpoint Source Program, as well as by the BLM and DRMS, to the tune of about $550,000.

“The CCWC has been working with the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining, and Safety, the Colorado Nonpoint Source Program and the Bureau of Land Management staff to develop a reclamation design. The CCWC contracted with Tetra Tech in May to complete that final reclamation design,” Vaughter said. “Final design should be completed by early to mid-July. Upon completion of the final design, the project will be bid for contract, with work beginning on the ground in early September.“

To keep the public abreast of the project and what can be done to mitigate the impact of abandoned mining sites, the CCWC will be developing and releasing a short film about the project that will feature before, during, and after footage during the 2017 field season. That video is expected to be released in the fall.

While the Gunsight Reclamation Project is perhaps the largest project the CCWC is currently working on, it’s not the only effort under way.

The organization, which has a staff of three including Vaughter, is also in its eleventh year for monitoring water quality within the watershed. Data collected by the organization is shared with the town of Crested Butte, the public, the state of Colorado, and the EPA.

The CCWC also installed two temporary portable toilets at the Musicians Camp dispersed camping area at mile marker 6.2 on Slate River Road from June to October 2017. This is the third year that the toilets will in place, and this summer the CCWC will also be collecting nearby water samples specifically looking at e. coli, nutrient, and fecal coliform from eight locations in the Upper Slate.

“This monitoring effort will supplement data collected by the CCWC in 2011 and 2013 to analyze changes and the impacts that the portable toilets we install, as well as the ones BLM installs, during the summer in the Upper Slate are having in the face of increased recreational use and impact in the USR watershed,” said Vaughter.

The CCWC has been working in the Upper Valley for 13 years, and has a long list of accomplishments under its belt, including developing a protection plan complete with 19 steps that could be taken to better protect the people, land and animals within the watershed.

“The CCWC has been very active, effective, and mission focused as an organization over the last 13 years, and we have kind of gotten to a place where we have already completed all of the ‘low hanging fruit’ projects in the Coal Creek and Upper Slate River Watersheds that address water quality,” said Vaughter. “What we have left in those watersheds are much larger in scale reclamation efforts. In the Coal Creek Watershed we have a large-scale re-vegetation project that we are currently exploring and seeking funding for to begin work in 2018. In the Upper Slate, we are completing the Gunsight reclamation this year, and then have our sights set on reclaiming the Daisy Mine in Redwell Basin.

“The CCWC board and staff are currently thinking to the future on not only these projects but our role in Crested Butte and the Gunnison Valley moving forward in the next three to five years,” continued Vaughter.

To learn more about the CCWC, to get in touch, or to learn more about its accomplishments and goals, visit the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition website, at www.coalcreek.org.

Opening game ends in extra innings blowout

by Than Acuff

You really couldn’t ask for much more out of the opening game to the 2017 slowpitch softball season. First of all, it was at Pitsker Field with Crested Butte Mountain, Paradise Divide and Mt. Emmons as the backdrop in a variety of directions. Jakki sang the National Anthem as the two teams lined each base line with hats over their hearts. Forty-year veteran (and still going) of the local leagues, Jim Schmidt, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Drew Stichter had a PA playing tunes and a grill going.

And then there was the game. The game had everything. There was a comeback, a blow-out, extra innings, pitcher struggles, a diving catch, an inside the park home run (ITPHR), a traditional home run, walks, strike outs, base path confusion, a couple of disputed calls, a couple of overturned calls, some errors, the infernal racket of children, open consumption, dogs at-large, a woman on one team named Boomer, and the local police stopping by, not to write tickets, but just to say hi.

While the pomp and circumstance set a nice tone for the game, it took a while for the game to get going. Granted, the Meatsticks jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the top of the first inning, paced by RBI base hits from Rhett Yarbrough, Jess Johnson, Thomas McLean and Jessica Thomas. And while I credit the hot bats of the Meatsticks, it wasn’t without some fielding assistance from the Winehouse Monkeys.

The Monkeys came back swinging with Vince Scola, Jessica Taylor leading off with back-to-back singles and Joe Knight driving a run in with a sac fly RBI but the Monkeys soon cooled off as the Meatsticks slowly, oh so slowly, built an 8-1 lead over four innings.

Phil Escue stretched a routine single for an ITPHR and Jessica Thomas cracked a RBI base hit down the right field line for a 6-1 Meatsticks lead. Some crafty base running by Roland Mason, a hit from Sooner “Boomer” McKay and a walk helped the Meatsticks to an 8-1 lead by the bottom of the sixth and it looked like we were in for a snoozer of an Opening Day game.

Then things got good, real good, as the Monkeys stopped playing around and started playing. Knight doubled and scored on a double to centerfield by Pete Basile. Jimmy Hensley stretched a routine single into an error-assisted three-RBI triple and Shirley Considine cracked a RBI single to pull the Monkeys back to within two runs.

Feeling the heat, the Meatsticks woke back up. Jess Johnson led off with a single and scored on a double up the middle from Bryan Densmore (related to Doors drummer John Densmore?). Scott Sanders rolled up to the game fresh off his job at the Alpineer to pop up a sac fly RBI—and the Meatsticks had a four-run lead heading into the bottom of the seventh inning.

But the Monkeys weren’t done. Andy Richmond kicked the Monkeys’ next rally off with an ITPHR. The next two hitters chose to walk rather than swing and Knight rapped another RBI double to pull the Monkeys back within two. Terann Wight, never afraid to swing, looked off a bunch of junk to walk and load the bases for Basile.

With their lead in jeopardy and their pitcher struggling, the Meatsticks brought Cody “I’m too” Sexe in for the save but there was nothing stopping the Monkeys. Sexe did what he is supposed to do as a pitcher, threw a strike, and Basile jumped on Sexe’s meat (that’s disgusting) to drive the ball to right field and tie the game with a two-out, two-RBI single. The next Monkey hitter struck out, though, sending the game into extra innings.

Thanks to the modern era of rule changes, extra innings is softball on speed. The team at bat starts with a runner on second and every hitter steps to the plate with a full count. Talk about pressure. Well, sort of—I mean we’re still talking about local slowpitch softball. But, still, there’s some pressure.

And said pressure got to the Monkey pitcher who will remain nameless simply because I am that nice of a guy. Let’s just say his name starts with a V and rhymes with since.

At any rate. The pitcher known as “Since” struggled to find the plate with his one and only pitch, walking five out of the first six Meatstick batters, with the one lone hitter connecting for a two-RBI single, and allowing four runs. After his sixth walk, Since pulled himself from the game and Tony Wildman was brought back in to stop the bleeding. Ice cold from sitting since the fourth inning, Wildman walked the first batter he faced to allow two more runs. Shelby Newberry stepped up to take a swing, driving in another Meatstick with a single and then Sanders closed it out with a three-run, single-wall bat, home run over left field (Go Terps) for a 20-10 Meatsticks lead.

In the interest of expediency, and mercy, the umpires enforced the 10-run rule (which, remarkably, Wildman disputed, despite the fact that it was his team getting pummeled). But enough was enough as the Meatsticks retired the side in the bottom of the eighth for the 20-10 win.

See what I mean? The game had everything.

Sees real progress is being made

by Mark Reaman

For perhaps the first time ever, the local governments and watchdogs of Coal Creek are supporting a concept put forward by the owners of the Mt. Emmons mine and water treatment plant when it comes to monitoring water quality in Coal Creek.

The Coal Creek Watershed Coalition (CCWC), the High Country Conservation Advocates (HCCA), the town of Crested Butte and Gunnison County have all agreed to a mining company proposal to implement seasonal temporary modifications and aquatic life water quality standards with the Colorado Water Quality Control Division through the year 2022.

In a joint response statement to the state Water Quality Control Commission, the so-called Joint Respondents (HCCA, the CCWC, the town and county) believe the Mt. Emmons Mining Company (MEMC) has demonstrated a strong commitment to a collaborative approach to improve Coal Creek water quality.

“We are still in the hearing process so things are continuing to develop but the Mt. Emmons Mining Company put forward a proposal and we as a group responded to the state and said we support many of the concepts,” explained HCCA Red Lady program director Alli Melton.

The MEMC, a subsidiary of global mining giant Freeport McMoRan, proposed the continuation of “seasonal” temporary modifications and the four groups agreed with the idea that seasonal standards “better characterize current ambient conditions, document seasonal variation and represent significant progress in eliminating uncertainty in water quality conditions in Coal Creek.”

The groups have been frustrated in the past when the state continually allowed the mine owners to use temporary modifications to monitor water quality in Coal Creek. But the current owners have narrowed the use of the modifications to the high run-off season and Melton said that is huge progress.

“It’s a refreshing change to now have an owner and operator of the water treatment plant that is serious about taking on-the-ground actions that are expected to reduce heavy metal loading in Coal Creek,” said Melton. “For the first time we are looking at concrete actions that are going to benefit water quality in Coal Creek. In short, although we are not currently setting standards, collected data has narrowed the application of temporary modifications. Over the next few years, we can expect on-the-ground actions to further reduce loading that will further benefit water quality in Coal Creek.”

The joint statement said the groups support the extension, given “the commitment MEMC has made to work to eliminate temporary modifications, resolve uncertainty, and continue meetings with stakeholders. The Joint Respondents are hopeful that temporary modifications may be eliminated prior to 2022 as more data is developed.”

Ashley Bembenek of the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition believes the cooperation being seen between local stakeholders and the mining company is providing dividends for everyone. “If MEMC’s proposal is adopted, the temporary modifications would apply until 2022. We support this extension because MEMC has proposed to characterize conditions at the Keystone Mine Property and use that information to complete projects that will improve water quality in Coal Creek,” Bembenek explained in an email to the News.

“Once the effect of work at the site on water quality has been measured, then we will have more information to determine appropriate water quality standards,” continued Bembenek. “MEMC has also committed to continue communicating with local stakeholders regarding activities at the Keystone Mine Property and to collaboratively revise water quality standards in the future. Because of MEMC’s commitments, CCWC feels an extension of the temporary modifications is the most effective way to assure that water quality improvements occur in the Coal Creek watershed.”

Crested Butte town attorney John Belkin agreed that while details remain to be figured out, the concepts on the table show a new degree of teamwork and that teamwork will benefit the local community.

“The collaborative approach set up by the WQCD allows the community an opportunity to work with MEMC to identify the best way to deal with stream standards downstream of the Keystone treatment plant. At this point, several technical questions remain about the best approach, which will be discussed with MEMC in the stakeholder process before we get to the hearing itself,” said Belkin. “MEMC’s commitment to openness ensures that the community’s interests are part of the process. We are all working collaboratively through the process and all indications are that that will continue for the foreseeable future.”

The groups made it clear to the state that while they have been engaged in water quality efforts on Coal Creek for many decades, “since MEMC acquired the Keystone Mine property, stakeholder communications, transparency, and relationships have improved dramatically as a result of MEMC’s leadership and the Division’s close attention to the stakeholder process.”

Melton said there are many historical instances in which the community has stood together working to secure a mine-free Red Lady and protect water quality on Coal Creek. This joint statement to the state, Melton said, is just one more example of that sort of action.

The state commission will make a decision on the request in June.

Six big picture goals and how to get there

by Mark Reaman

The Crested Butte Town Council arrived at a half dozen big-picture goals during the council’s March retreat at the Crested Butte Nordic Yurt.

The broad goals included: preserving our sense of community; increasing the number of local families residing in town; diversification of the economy; excellence as stewards of the environment; maintaining core municipal services; and providing leadership for the community.

Town manager Dara MacDonald prepared a document outlining the major goals and included “possible metrics or relevant ways that we can measure that we are achieving these goals. Following that are steps that can be taken to achieve the goals.”

Here is a sample of the big goals and how to measure their success based on outcomes at the retreat:

Preserving our sense of community could be measured by community involvement through volunteering, the quality of floats in the Fourth of July parade, the number of registered vehicles more than 10 years old, and residents knowing their neighbors on their block. To achieve these measurements of success town could provide training and culture to ensure town staff are approachable and knowledgeable, create ways to measure funkiness, prioritize quality of life over financial gain, and hold a town picnic in early summer.

Increasing the number of local families residing in town could be measured by the percentage of Crested Butte Community School students living in town and making sure there is adequate staffing for local businesses. To achieve that the council wants to make sure the town achieves and maintains at least 25 percent deed-restricted housing units in town, provide adequate rec facilities including support for a regional approach to create a rec center, and review opportunities for increased density.

Diversification of the economy incudes the creation of new, non-service sector businesses and providing help to a thriving Creative District. Council wants to pursue live-work housing opportunities and expand air travel to support local employers and business travelers.

Excellence as stewards of the community includes the elimination of the mining threat on Mt. Emmons, the reduction of negative impacts on the neighboring backcountry, and a reduction of the community carbon footprint. To achieve the goals, the council will work to achieve withdrawal of unpatented mining claims (on Mt. Emmons), implement the town’s Energy Action Plan, increase transit access to the backcountry and pursue renewable energy alternatives for the community.

Maintaining core municipal services includes keeping a balanced budget while maintaining services even through down economies, maintaining healthy fund balances, and having housing for town employees. So council hopes to achieve 15 rentals for town employees within five years, will increase and maintain bike and pedestrian safety, and enforce two-hour parking.

They hope to provide leadership for the community through utilizing values-based decisionmaking, having proactive leadership rather than just quickly reacting to situations, practice civility, and recruit and retain quality council members. Council will hold periodic meetings with other local elected officials, open two-way communication with the multiple constituencies of the public, give pay increases for council, and consider appointing a mayor rather than it being an elected position.

“I anticipate another council retreat in mid-summer to discuss these priorities and how they will integrate into the 2018 budget and long-term capital plans,” MacDonald wrote in a memo to the council March 20.