I might be the only one left to think so, but I really don’t believe what the polls are saying about the Hillary-Donald campaigns. A lot of people will privately fill out their ballots and not necessarily admit which name they put a checkmark by. If you think Donald has no chance to be president because polls are saying Hillary has a 96 percent chance of winning the election, think again. I won’t be surprised if he wins more than you or the national pundits think. Remember Brexit? How about Dewey defeating Truman? Not to mention Jesse “the Body” Ventura in MN! Just saying.

Hillary’s military hawkishness and her habit of going with the establishment majority when the surface politics tilt that way turns me off more than just about anything in this presidential election—except Donald’s mental state. As conservative Wall Street Journal writer Peggy Noonan noted last week in a column titled Imagine a Sane Donald Trump: “Oh my God, Sane Trump would have won in a landslide.”

Even nutty Donald Trump is going to draw probably 40 million or more votes. So don’t throw your vote away in this one. Every single vote will count and be important in Colorado. Your vote really truly matters in a swing state like ours, so do not waste it.

Former Crested Butte News editor Edward Stern eloquently made the case for Congressional candidate Gail Schwartz in last week’s paper and we agree wholeheartedly. In this time of toxic partisan politics where party loyalty trumps overall country benefit, Gail might actually be one of those sitting in Congress who could help pull back that poisonous attitude. Her political history demonstrates a willingness to work with members of both parties for the good of a cause and that’s really impressive and important right now. She works hard, she works smart and she will work for people like us living out here in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. Vote for Gail Schwartz for the U.S. House of Representatives.

I have to say I like Republican Bob Schutt. He is the Crested Butte physician running for the seat in Colorado House District 61. If I didn’t think Millie Hamner was doing a good job representing this mountain town, I would go with Bob. Plus, he lives here and that’s always an advantage. But Millie is doing a good job and the former school superintendent from Summit County understands Crested Butte. She is running for her final term as a Colorado state representative. Her experience in the chamber is an asset and comes with influence gained from time spent in the trenches. I believe she deserves a return trip to the capital. I hope that Bob’s initial foray into politics won’t be his last because he is really smart and would represent Crested Butte well in Denver. Here’s hoping that if he loses this November, he steps up next time after Millie’s terms are completed.

There are a ton of state issues that are on the ballot this year. Cherry-picking a few:

Amendment 69 is the ColoradoCare initiative. While the intent is good, especially with ObamaCare flailing, the ramifications of this being in the state constitution are too extreme. This could work nationally or perhaps even regionally, but as a single state offering universal health care coverage for everyone there are too many unanswered issues that could ultimately damage Colorado. The gargantuan tax increase, the negative impact on a lot of our local businesses, the uncertainty of too many nebulous things getting embedded into the constitution make 69 a no vote.

Amendment 70 is the minimum wage increase idea. It would take the state minimum wage from $8.31 to $9.30 per hour starting next January. It would then increase 90 cents an hour starting in 2018 until it reaches $12 per hour in 2020. Tipped workers could still be paid much less than the overall minimum wage and that would apply to a lot of people and businesses in Crested Butte and Gunnison. Slowly increasing the wage of the lowest-paid people in our community looks to be a reasonable idea in this resort town. Putting more money into people’s pockets for them to spend at local businesses seems to work. Vote yes for 70.

Amendment 71 is the issue that would make it harder to get something passed into the Colorado constitution. It would require that a certain number of signatures be gathered from state senate districts across Colorado to get a proposed amendment on the ballot. And then instead of the current simple majority needed to pass a constitutional amendment, the issue would need 55 percent of the voters. This seems to make sense. The constitution should not be where laws are made. That will put more pressure on our elected state representatives. And that is the way it should be. But this will still leave an opening for citizen initiatives to go this route if they feel so impassioned. We’ll be voting yes on 71.

Proposition 106 would allow access to medicine for terminally ill patients to speed the process. The so-called Colorado End-of-Life Options Act would permit terminally ill people to request aid-in-dying medication that the individual would have to administer him or herself. The issue includes a lot of safeguards but the idea of allowing someone to make a difficult decision in difficult circumstances makes sense. It provides a humane way for many people to transition to the other side. Vote yes on 106.

And as we mentioned last week, Crested Butte voters get to vote for 2A, the measure that allows some of the town’s future open space revenues to go toward a deal that could ultimately eliminate the threat of an industrial mine on Mt. Emmons. It is a measure that will pay healthy (literally) dividends well into the future and is something to support on your ballot this year. Vote for 2A.

You should have received your ballot in the mail by now. You can mail it back (put enough postage on the return envelope) or drop it off at locations in Crested Butte and Gunnison before November 8.

—Mark Reaman

For the first time since I’ve lived here, I was able to go in an underground mine Tuesday. It was pretty cool. At the invitation of the EPA, which is in charge of remediating the Standard Mine on Mt. Emmons, several people took a tour of the grounds and got to put on the headlamp and emergency air belt and walk back into one of the shafts. It’s dark in there. It’s wet in there. The ceilings (for a guy over six feet tall) are low in there. I gained much respect to those who earn a living underground.

As part of the remediation, a big bulkhead is being poured this Friday to manage water in the mine. Talk about blowing your mind. Half-filled concrete trucks will crawl up Red Lady to the opening and 90 cubic yards of cement will be pumped 800 feet inside the mine. It will be a long 12 hours for the boys. The bulkhead will be 25 feet thick and will take a month to cure. Special caulking will be used to seal the edges. Spending the morning around a bunch of really smart engineers and scientists was a good exercise for a newspaper guy. My mind was blown several times.

It’s not always smooth sailing, even here, but the relationship between this community and its cops is sort of mind-blowing as you look out in the real world. And one big reason for that is leaving this week. Tom Martin, Crested Butte’s chief marshal, is hanging up badge 601 to spend even more time (yeah, it’s possible) on the links. Tom embodies the principled small-town cop. He is honest. He is fair. He is not afraid to take the other side of an issue and has an ability to do it in a way that makes you think, instead of getting defensive.

Being a cop is not like most jobs. You are dealing in the muck. You are constantly between a rock and a hard place. Constant conflict is part of the deal. Tom has seen some nasty things. He has weathered them all with calmness, style and dignity.

Quick story: Tom had said many times he had an outstanding offer for years with pretty much anyone to call him no matter what time of the day or night if they were too inebriated to drive home. No one, he said, had ever taken him up on the offer. So one evening while discussing local politics at an Elk Avenue watering hole I remembered his offer. Being ever so slightly inebriated, I gave him a call shortly after I saw the late news ending on the bar’s TV. Sure enough, he answered the phone and he said “no problem” when I said I might need a ride home. I told him I would call him right back and then I somehow got sidetracked into another conversation—a three-hour conversation that ended when the bar closed. By then I was inebriated enough to call him back at 2 in the morning and he said “no problem” and came and picked me up and drove me home. The next day, Tom saw my son working at the Club and told him the story. He told Ben he was glad to do it (and disagreed with my 2:30 a.m. assessment that I could have made it home safely on my own) but next time asked that I call once, when I really wanted to go home. Fair enough. Sorry about that Tom—but thanks.

And really: Thanks for everything. Thanks for understanding this quickly changing community and being an integral part that keeps it special. Thanks for your leadership in trying to pass on the things to your deputies that will make them better officers for Crested Butte and not just big dudes in uniform in a resort town. Thanks for explaining the other side when I came with hard questions or concerns about the department. Thanks for working through another Vinotok and really trying to work with anyone and everyone who showed respect for you, the department and the town. That is a lesson worth remembering in life in general.

I remember Tom once explaining that the department was hiring marshals to enforce the laws, but it was his job to explain how to do it in Crested Butte. Right on. Now that responsibility will fall to new chief marshal Mike Reily. We hope Mike has gleaned some lessons from a good man who is heading to warmer climes.

My mind was blown the entire end of September but the beginning of October blew the leaves—off the tress. The last remnants of the glorious fall color are hanging on but it is safe to say the peak has come and gone. And what a great color show it was. No wonder so many people claim this time of year is made up of their favorite weeks. We are now left to bare aspens, time to chat, open parking spaces, cooling temperatures and the beginning of the next ski season. After the busyness of the summer, that is enough to blow anyone’s mind.

—Mark Reaman

During the busiest time of the year, Amy DeGraff Zay darts out of the kitchen like a racehorse out of the start gate, expertly balancing four plates of sumptuously prepared dishes at Ryce’s Asian Restaurant. She smiles broadly at her customers, who are also smiling with eyes fixated on their dinner, and for the most part, oblivious to her question, “Can I get you anything else?”

She scurries off to her next table of starving tourists or locals. Amy has learned to juggle a multitude of jobs, live on the road at an early age, and develop talents when she had to, all of which honed her for living in this valley. Her path hasn’t always been easy.

Her mother was only in her late teens when Amy came into the world. A few months later, Amy’s father was killed in combat in Vietnam. Her mother moved around quite a bit after that, working as an operating room technician. Amy submersed herself in books, admitting that her fervor as a quiet child and complete nerd was reading a lot of Sherlock Holmes and anything   British or mysterious.

At the age of six, Amy’s father’s parents took the youngster on tour with them—Amy’s famous grandfather was country pop star Rusty Draper. “I’d get out of school in June and I’d go to my grandparents’ house in Seattle,” she smiles, recalling the ritual of preparing for the summer-long tour. “We’d clean out Nordstrom’s. We’d have to stock up on our summer wardrobes because we were in the public a lot so we had to look good. And then we would pack up and hit the road. It was a Patsy Cline style tour where Nanna Fay drove the big Buick wagon and Grandpa Rusty drove the Caddy.”

The first stop of the tour was at a resort in Jackson Hole, where the Rusty Draper Band would play two shows a night, six nights a week for six weeks. “We never got home till 3 a.m.,” Amy said of the musician’s life of late nights. “When we first arrived, we’d roll in and go right to the bar inside the Wort Hotel and set up with the rest of the band. He played the room next to the Silver Dollar Bar. It smelled like cigarettes and stale beer and I loved it! I don’t drink beer to this day,” Amy laughs. There were additional tour dates to Reno and other resort towns that involved more smoky bars.

Her grandmother ran a tight ship when it came to the professionalism of the band, whose members were all required to be sober or else. “My grandmother would freak out,” Amy says. Back in those days of the 1970s, Jackson Hole was not much of a resort, according to Amy, but her grandfather’s band drew a crowd and they had their groupies, who were wealthy couples that would follow the band around. “I attended all the shows and kept seeing these same people,” Amy says.

While they were living at the resort for the duration of their musical stint, Amy tells that they’d get up in the morning, go into town, and do the shopping. “Everything from toilet paper to fur coats, whatever my grandmother wanted to buy. My grandfather would be playing golf while we shopped. We’d always have dinner together because there was a family value and work ethic. I don’t know if that’s present in entertainment families today.”

After dinner the family would head out to work, off to play the shows. While her grandfather was onstage, Amy would get sent to sit in the back of the bar and, as she recalls, “Drink multiple Shirley Temples and sell eight-track tapes between shows while grandpa autographed them. I can remember when cassettes came out because it was a big deal. If I hadn’t fallen asleep, I’d sell tapes after the shows too, but,” she remembers fondly, “I was carried to the car by my grandfather many times and we’d drive home up to Teton Village where we stayed.”

Being the granddaughter of a famous recording artist, and being able to be a part of the tour, Amy would feel so much pride when her grandfather sang a song from the stage just for her. “He’d sing me the classic, ‘Once in Love with Amy.’ Grandpa was not a songwriter, he was a musician and entertainer, playing an old Gretsch guitar.” Amy beams as she shares her road stories and the history of grandpa Rusty Draper, who had multiple recordings that sold more than a million copies in the 1950s and ‘60s. When he was younger, he had worked at a radio station in Des Moines, Iowa, where he often filled in for Ronald Reagan, who was then a sportscaster. He later had his own radio shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Calif. and was often on television, including two appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, and he even hosted his own TV show for a season on NBC.

“Willie Nelson wrote ‘Nightlife’ for my grandfather to record and they co-owned the Pink Garter Saloon together in the 1950s, back when Willie had a crewcut,” Amy says of some of Draper’s more memorable accomplishments. But more than his fame, Amy remembers her grandfather for his kindness, guidance and the love her grandparents showed her, shaping her life with positivity in what she feels were the most formative and best years

“My grandparents’ home was my haven,” she says. So when her mother decided to move to Texas as Amy was heading into eighth grade, it didn’t sit well. “I’m still recovering from high school.” She grimaces about the move to the Dallas area in 1982. When her mom remarried, her step dad, who worked for telephone company GTE, was transferred to Dallas. “I got thrown into this very wealthy area,” which was alien to her coming from an average middle-class neighborhood in Seattle. “I was 14 and it was a difficult adjustment.” Amy was in culture shock.

“I didn’t understand who Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein were, and at the time they were new and expensive. So I wasn’t popular. I had no connection there with anyone.” She graduated in 1986 and enrolled at North Texas State University in Denton (now the University of North Texas) taking a business curriculum.

“I had a really good time, but I was not really focused on classes, so I immediately started a family with a man I had known in Denton.” They married in 1990 and the couple had two daughters, Victoria, born in 1991, and Priscilla in ‘95.

For employment, Amy took over her family’s successful dog boarding kennel in Denton after her mother moved to Gunnison in 1996, and a couple of years later Amy sold that business. She then went to work for the Denton Chamber of Commerce, running all their programs and business events. “It was a great job and I still miss it. It was during a growth time, which made it a lot of fun, connecting with all the business owners.” Probably needing more caffeine from an exceptionally busy work life and raising her girls, Amy decided to start up her own drive-through espresso shop, which became instantly popular.

When Amy divorced in the late 1990s, she felt as though she had lost her focus, and moving closer to her mother in Gunnison in 2001, Amy landed a sales job at the Gunnison Country Times. She later went to work in sales for The Yellow Book. In between the various types of employment, Amy picked up seasonal winter work as a counter agent with United Airlines. Her third daughter, Jillian, was born in Gunnison in 2003 during a brief marriage.

Amy excelled in customer relation skills, and Yellow Book wanted to keep her as a saleswoman, moving her to Portland, Oregon, in 2006. “Portland was a great area but didn’t speak to me, and I moved back to Gunnison in 2010,” she tells, and adds that she started working as a server at Ryce.

Amy remembers what it was like to be pulled out of her element and tossed into another universe at the critical age of 14 and wanted to make sure her daughter gets to stay in Gunnison. “Jillian is going into eighth grade, and being 14 is more crucial than people realize. You need things consistent, you don’t want to make big changes in their lives.” Although Amy doesn’t ski because she swears she’d just get cold and fall over, she makes sure her daughter gets to ski.

Amy muses that through all her musical exposure, she has no natural musical skill herself. “But I was taught to appreciate all kinds of music and we weren’t allowed to criticize anyone’s music. I don’t particularly have an ear but I know talent when I see it. Personally and absolutely music is a big part of my life today, as an observer. For me, live music literally gives me a high without any added substances.”

Amy’s experience from “Being in the inner workings of shows through my grandparents and listening to my grandfather’s recordings in the studio with him over and over, just to make sure it’s right,” gives her an in depth perspective of both the industry and the music itself. “When the instruments come together, there’s a magic and I’m always just blown away,” she laughs again and shakes her head, admitting, “but I haven’t found my groove yet.”

In the far southwest corner of the panhandle of Oklahoma, just before you cross into New Mexico, is the very tiny town of Felt. “And that’s where I grew up,” beams DJ Brown, “on a farm that wasn’t big enough to be a ranch but we had everything from cattle to chickens and horses to pigs and we grew veggies,” for her family’s self-sufficient lifestyle. As a typically close extended family, DJ was raised between her grandparents and parents, all of them living on the same farm.

She spent most of her childhood days with her grandmother, doing the endless chores required and learning ways that are barely practiced in modern America today, like canning and baking from scratch.

“A lot of what I do, a lot of my recipes, are from my grandmother,” DJ says proudly. Living on a farm meant everyone had to help with everything. They grew wheat, corn, and milo (a grassy wheat grain) to sell, and when harvest time came around, DJ and her brother worked in the fields, driving the farm equipment.

During harvest, her whole family, including aunts and uncles, would come together to spend days and days working. “Everyone would camp out on the farm, harvesting everything in my grandmother’s garden. It was enough food to feed all five families. They’re some of my best memories. I had a million cousins and we all chipped in, some of us would be in the garage shucking corn, others would be in the backyard snapping beans. That’s how I grew up,” DJ remembers fondly.

When DJ went into high school, farming had become less lucrative financially so her parents decided to pursue careers and her farm family diversified. “Dad became a respiratory therapist and mom became a nurse assistant. My first job outside of the farm was a certified nurse assistant while I was still in high school.” DJ explains that in a small town, you could do or be anything. “Kind of like here in Crested Butte, where everyone does a million different things to make ends meet.”

DJ’s high school graduation class in 1995 consisted of seven students, and the year before there weren’t any graduates at all. She was anxious to get out of small-town life and into a city, any city where half the population wasn’t related to each other or grew up solely within their small population.

“I thought I knew what I wanted to do out of high school, so I enrolled at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.” She had plans to earn her bachelor of science degree in nursing—DJ considered this the easy path since it was what she had been doing, so it felt like a natural progression. However, it didn’t take long before she realized that the nursing path was no longer engaging or challenging to her.

DJ turned to art. “I had always liked art, dabbling in sketching and drawing. My grandmother painted all the time, in oils and on every medium… wood, canvas, paper or anything that she had at her disposal. I feel like I was exposed to art through her. Mom had done a lot of craftwork so I always loved that stuff while I was growing up. I never had the option of taking art in my small school because they didn’t offer it.”

It was a pretty big jump for her when she changed her degree to arts and majored in graphic design in her sophomore year. Although she lost about a year having a different core focus in science and math, she was thrilled after taking her first official art class in college and she realized that it actually helped solidify some of her thought processes. “I’m a big non-conformer, not coloring between the lines, so it was somewhat of a relief to be in that environment on the opposite spectrum of sciences.”

DJ graduated in 2000 with a degree in graphic design and a minor in computer science (a.k.a., MSCS), the latter supplementing her major because she didn’t want to be a starving artist. During college she had worked for Creative Labs in Stillwater as a tech support and it was there that she met her future hubby, Brian Brown. The couple married in 1999 and now have a daughter, Mattie, who is 14 and a son, Connor, who is 10.

After DJ graduated from college in 2000, they moved to Tulsa where she secured a job as a forms designer, creating medical forms, and eventually moved into the supervisor job and then into an IT position. A decade later, in 2010, she left that job for a position in IT at a financial institution.

DJ’s husband, Brian, throughout his childhood was skiing Monarch from Oklahoma and during summers his family would head to Estes Park, so he was already enamored of Colorado. DJ had skied Angel Fire, Red River and Taos in her youth, but never Colorado until after the two married.

They hit the CBMR slopes for the first time in 2000, and DJ excitedly recalls, “I loved it, from the tourist perspective. I loved the terrain and the mountain itself,” and she noted that the other resorts they had been skiing were not what they were looking for. “The feel we got from Crested Butte, just from skiing, was a community feel.”

At that point in her life she was coming around full circle. “We were thinking of starting a family, and a small community atmosphere was enticing to me,” she says of the familiarity of growing up in her own tiny town. Like many who succumb to the Crested Butte magic, they started talking about how they could make their lives work from this somewhat remote town and they started thinking about how to move here. They had never seen a Crested Butte summer but after taking multiple ski vacations here, the growing family bought a house at Meridian Lake up Washington Gulch in February of 2012 and started seriously dreaming about a mountain life for their kids and themselves. By the end of that May, they decided to move up full-time.

DJ could work from home as her employer was a very forward-thinking company as far as resources go. Brian was and still is a computer consultant, running his own company, Slopeside Technologies, after their move to Crested Butte. They came up in July for two weeks to initiate the move, with the wildflowers exploding around them.

DJ smiles broadly and remembers, “Oh my God, it was amazing. I had no idea before that summer. We had always heard people talk about how beautiful it was with all the flowers. It was eye opening and reaffirming that this is really where we were supposed to be. When we left Tulsa it was 115 degrees so to be someplace where we could go out and hike or bike during the day was tremendous. It was good for our kids because the environment here is so much better.

“I felt like everything that I tried to get away from when I was growing up is everything I was trying to get back to. It’s very comparative here to the lifestyle I grew up with, everybody in the community knows everybody. It’s not everyday normal here. That’s what we were looking for, for our kids, having freedoms, being able to ride a bus by themselves, being able to play in the yard without fear. And on top of that you have all of nature around you, all of those outdoor activities that we like to do. It’s a complete package.”

So let’s cut to the cake… DJ tells, “As I was growing up, my mother dabbled in cake decorating before I was born, doing a lot of work for weddings, birthdays and events. As a kid, I never ate a store-bought cake. After my daughter was born in Tulsa, I started doing some cake decorating for fun, just for family and friends. In Oklahoma I either had to rent space or work under another baker, so I didn’t do a lot commercial baking since I didn’t have my own commercial kitchen at that time.

“After we moved here, in the fall I started trying to bake and discovered that I just could not bake,” DJ says of the challenge of altitude baking. “I tried baking the same cake three times and each time it was awful. I thought I’d never bake a cake again,” she laughs, remembering the frustration.

She read online recipes and sought out various instructions trying to figure out the difference. It took her about 10 months before she finally converted all her recipes and the trial and error stage stopped being painful. “A lot of flour and sugar went into the trash,” she grimaced.

With Colorado’s Cottage Foods Act, which states you can operate as a home baker and sell to end consumers, DJ felt it was time to open up her side job business, mostly for fun. She calls her baked creations “A Taste of Cake.”

“Gum paste and fondant work are my specialties,” she says of the art that’s also called sugar work. “I do blown sugar work as well, where you heat up a special kind of sugar and you can make displays, it’s like glass blowing with sugar.”

The only formal training DJ had in cake making was several courses under Nicholas Lodge, who is a world-renowned sugar artist. His background is in botany and his whole intent was to become well versed in that science to rebuild the florals in sugar.

DJ is adept in both blown and handcrafted flowers as well as other decorative cake art. Her cakes depict colorful and even translucent scenes, as though the fairies of confection conjured up fantasy pictograms of underwater scenes, forest animals, flowers and delicate foliage.

As word got around about her tasty creations, DJ started making cakes for birthdays, anniversaries, and novelty events. Clients will email a photo or picture to her and DJ takes joy in figuring out how to create it. “That’s fulfilling for me, the sculpting, the flowers—that’s my favorite part.”

“I’d love to do it as my sole job, however I found that for me, I have to have a balance of my analytical side and the artistic cake side, which is more fun, more of an outlet, and when I get really busy with cake orders, it almost becomes work then. It’s still fun, but not as fun, and it becomes stressful at that point. Eventually, I’ll retire from my day job but I don’t know that I would ever make the cake business something that I use to solely financially support me.”

And the odd part is, she laughs, “I don’t like to eat cake,” and that can be difficult in the cake biz, especially if the baker is at the event they’ve provided the cake for. “I might eat a couple of bites because it’s difficult to explain to people why I won’t eat my own cake… but I don’t eat any cake. Now pie is a whole different ballgame,” she admits with a grin. “I love pie. My family loves cake and they get a ton of it because there are always scraps, so there’s always cake at my house.”

THURSDAY 21
• 6:15-7:15 a.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga for the Peaceful.
• 7 a.m. Core Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 7:30-8:30 a.m. Foundations for Alignment / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 8 a.m. Ecumenical Meditation at UCC.
• 8:30 a.m. Women’s book discussion group at UCC.
• 8:45-10 a.m. Vinyasa Flow / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 8:45-10 a.m. Vinyasa at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 9 a.m. Historic Walking Tour of Crested Butte. Leaves from the Crested Butte Heritage Museum. 349-1880.
• 9-10 a.m. Yoga for Everyone with Yoga For The Peaceful at the Center for the Arts Outdoor Stage. 349-7487.
• 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Summer Science Tour: From Shoots to Roots: Tracking the Building Block of Life within Alpine Meadows with Dr. Lara Souza at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory Visitor Center. 349-7156.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Gunnison County Branch Office is open at the Crested Butte Town Offices.
• 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Weekly Sketching Series with the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 10:30-11:45 a.m. Yoga Basics at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 11:30 p.m. Duplicate Bridge at UCC. 349-1008.
• noon All Saints in the Mountain Episcopal Church Community Healing Service at Queen of All Saints Catholic Church. 349-9371.
• noon-1 p.m. Shoulders, Knees and Feet Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• noon-5 p.m. Paint Your Own Pottery at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 12:30-1:30 p.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 3-6 p.m. Coloring Wildflowers, Sound Currents and Tea Time! with the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 4-5:30 p.m. St. Mary’s Garage. 300 Belleview, Unit 2. Free clothing and bedding. 970-318-6826.
• 5:30 p.m. Communion service at Queen of All Saints Catholic Church.
• 5:30-6:45 p.m. Vinyasa Flow / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 5:30-6:45 p.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 5:30-8:30 p.m. Silversmithing I at the Center for the Arts. 349-7044. (Six week class runs through August 11).
• 5:45 p.m. World Dance Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 6-8 p.m. Pick-up Adult Soccer at Town Park.
• 6-9 p.m. Canvas & Cocktails at the Gunnison Arts Center. 641-4029.
• 6:30 p.m. AA Open Meditation at UCC.
• 7 p.m. Women Supporting Women Group Discussion at the Nordic Inn.
• 7:30 p.m. Narcotics Anonymous meets at 114 N. Wisconsin St. in Gunnison.

FRIDAY 22
• 6:30 a.m. All Levels Iyengar Yoga Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 7-8:30 a.m. Mysore Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 7:30 a.m. Barre Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 8-9 a.m. Aerial Conditioning with the Crested Butte Dance Collective at the Center for the Arts. 349-7487.
• 8:30 a.m. Alanon at UCC Parlour (in back). 349-6482.
• 8:45 a.m. Core Power Yoga Class at the Pump Room.
• 8:45-10 a.m. Yoga for the Flexibly Challenged / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 9-10:30 a.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 9 a.m.-noon Open Wheel Throwing at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Wildflower Art Journal Immersion (through July 23) with the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Painting Petals in Paradise with the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• noon Closed AA at UCC.
• noon-1 p.m. Lunch Break Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• noon-1:15 p.m. Restorative Yoga at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• noon-5 p.m. Paint Your Own Pottery at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 5-7 p.m. Crested Butte Tennis Club Social Mixer at the Town Tennis Courts. (weather permitting)
• 5:30 p.m. Communion service at Queen of All Saints Catholic Church.
• 6-7 p.m. Poi Playshop at the Pump Room.
• 7-9 p.m. Pick-up adult Karate, Fitness Room at Town Hall.

SATURDAY 23
• 7:30 a.m. Open AA at UCC.
• 8 a.m. 30/30 Indoor Cycling Weight Circuit Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Precious Metal Clay (PMC) Jewelry Making at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 8:45-10 a.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 9-10:15 a.m. Vinyasa Flow with Inversions / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 9-10:30 a.m. Community Yoga at the Sanctuary Yoga & Pilates Studio, Gunnison.
• 10-11 a.m. Hip Hop Community Dance Class at the Pump Room (above Fire House on 3rd & Maroon). 415-225-5300.
• 10:30-11:45 a.m. Slow Flow at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 10:30 a.m.-noon St. Mary’s Garage. 300 Belleview, Unit 2. Free clothing and bedding. 970-318-6826.
• noon-5 p.m. Paint Your Own Pottery at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 1-3 p.m. Summer Knitting classes at Kasala Gallery. 970-251-5055.
• 6:30-7:30 p.m. Guided Sound Meditiation at 405 4th Street.

SUNDAY 24
• 7-8 a.m. Meditation at Yoga For The Peaceful, by donation.
• 8:30 a.m. Mass at Queen of All Saints Catholic Church.
• 8:30 a.m. Worship Service at Oh-Be-Joyful Church.
• 9 a.m. Worship Service at Union Congretional Church. 349-6405.
• 9-10:15 a.m. Slow Flow at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 9:30-11 a.m. Community Free Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 10 a.m.-noon Mandalas for Mindfulness at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 10 a.m. Worship Service at Oh-Be-Joyful Church.
• 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Crested Butte Farmer’s Market and Art Market on Elk Avenue.
• noon-5 p.m. Paint Your Own Pottery at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 1-2 p.m. Zumba class with Barron Farnell at the Pump Room.
• 4-5 p.m. African Drum Class with Laine Ludwig at the Pump Room. 970-275-0067.
• 4-5:15 p.m. CBCYC Community Book Club at 405 4th Street.
• 5-6 p.m. All Saints in the Mountain Episcopal Eucharist at Queen of All Saints Catholic Church. 349-9371.
• 5-7 p.m. Pick-up Adult Basketball. HS Gym, CBCS.
• 5:15-6:45 p.m. African Dance Class with Angela Carroll at the Pump Room. 970-596-8385.
• 5:30-6:45 p.m. Yoga Basics at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 6 p.m. AA meets at UCC.
• 6-8 p.m. Pick-up Adult Soccer at Town Park.
• 6:30 p.m. Duplicate Bridge at UCC. 349-1008.
• 7 p.m. Gamblers Anonymous meets at the Last Resort.

MONDAY 25
• 7 a.m. Cardio Core Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 7:30-8:30 a.m. Community Flow at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 7:30-8:30 a.m. Pranayama & Namaskar / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 8-9 a.m. Open Aerial Dance with the Crested Butte Dance Collective at the Center for the Arts. 349-7487.
• 8:45 a.m. Mat Mix at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 8:45-10 a.m. Vinyasa Flow / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 9-10:30 a.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga For the Peaceful.
• 9-11 a.m. Summer Knitting classes at Kasala Gallery. 970-251-5055.
• 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Plein Air Watercolor Workshop Series with the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• noon-1 p.m. Slow Flow at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• noon-1 p.m. Lunch Break Vinyasa Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 4-7:30 p.m. Tang Soo Do classes for children and adults with West Elk Martial Arts, Jerry’s Gym at Town Hall. 901-7417.
• 5:30 p.m. Communion service at Queen of All Saints Catholic Church.
• 5:30-6:45 p.m. Yin Yoga Nidra at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 5:30-7 p.m. Moms in Motion class at the GVH rehab gym.
• 6:30-8 p.m. Women’s Domestic Violence Support Group at Project Hope. Childcare available upon request. 641-2712.
• 7:30 p.m. Open AA at UCC. 349-5711.
• 7:30 p.m. Narcotics Anonymous meets at 114 N. Wisconsin St. in Gunnison.

TUESDAY 26
• 6-7 a.m. Meditation at Yoga For The Peaceful, by donation.
• 7 a.m. Core Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 7-8 a.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 7:30 a.m. AA/Alanon Open at UCC. 349-5711.
• 8:45-10 a.m. Vinyasa at Yoga for the Peaceful.
• 9 a.m. Historic Walking Tour of Crested Butte. Leaves from the Crested Butte Heritage Museum. 349-1880.
• 9 a.m.-noon Exploring Nature and the Photographer’s Creative Vision at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Gunnison County branch office is open at the Crested Butte Town Offices, 507 Maroon Ave.
• 10-11 a.m. Power Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 10:30-11:45 a.m. Yoga Basics at Yoga for the Peaceful.
• 11:30 a.m. League of Women Voters meeting at 210 W. Spencer in Gunnison.
• noon AA Closed at UCC.
• noon-1 p.m. Lunch Break Athletic Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 12:30-1:30 p.m. Therapeutic Yoga at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 1:30-3:30 p.m. Tech Tuesdays at Old Rock Library. 349-6535.
• 4-5:30 p.m. St. Mary’s Garage. 300 Belleview, Unit 2. Free clothing & bedding.
970-318-6826.
• 4-6 p.m. Canvases & Cocktails at Bonez with the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 5:30 p.m. Communion Service at Queen of All Saints Church.
• 5:30-6:45 p.m. Slow Flow at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 5:45 p.m. All Levels Iyengar Yoga Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 6-8 p.m. Figure Drawing Sessions with a live model in Downtown Crested Butte. 349-7228.
• 6-8 p.m. Pick-up Adult Soccer at Town Park.
• 6:30-7:45 p.m. Gentle Restorative Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 7 p.m. Alanon meeting at the Last Resort.
• 7-8 p.m. Movement & Meditation at Yoga For The Peaceful. 349-0302.
• 7-8 p.m. Aerial Conditioning with the Crested Butte Dance Collective at the Center for the Arts. 349-7487.
• 7-8:30 p.m. Blessing Way Circle support group at Sopris Women’s Clinic. 720-217-3843.
• 7:45-9:45 p.m. Drop-in Adult Volleyball, CBCS MS Gym.

WEDNESDAY 27
• 6:30 a.m. All Levels Iyengar Yoga Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 7:30 a.m. The Crested Butte / Mt. Crested Butte Rotary Club breakfast meeting in the Shavano Conference Room at the Elevation Hotel.
• 7:30-8:30 a.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 8:30 a.m. Hike with HCCA. Sign up at hccacb.org.
• 8:45 a.m. Pilates at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 8:45-10 a.m. Inversions and Backbends / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 9-10:30 a.m. Prana Vinyasa at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 9:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Two Buttes Senior Citizens van transportation. Roundtrip to Gunnison. Weather permitting. Call first for schedule and availability. 275-4768.
• 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Middle School Art Sessions: Woodworking (through Thursday, July 28) at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• noon Closed AA at UCC.
• noon-1 p.m. Lunch Break Blend Yoga / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• noon-1 p.m. Yoga Basics at Yoga For The Peaceful.
• noon-5 p.m. Paint Your Own Pottery at the Art Studio of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 12:30-1:30 p.m. Yoga Outside at Totem Pole Park with Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 4-7:30 p.m. Tang Soo Do classes for children and adults with West Elk Martial Arts, Jerry’s Gym at Town Hall. 901-7417.
• 5 p.m. Mass at Queen of All Saints Catholic Church.
• 5:30 p.m. Prenatal Yoga class in Crested Butte South. 349-1209.
• 5:45 p.m. Boot Camp Class at The Gym. 349-2588.
• 6-7:15 p.m. Give Back Yoga at Yoga For The Peaceful benefitting High Country Conservation Advocates.
• 6:30-8 p.m. Restorative Yin-Yoga-Nidra / CB Co-op at Town Hall.
• 7-9 p.m. “GriefShare,” a grief recovery seminar and support group, meets at Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church, 711 N. Main St., Gunnison. 970-349-7769.
• 7:30 p.m. Alanon at UCC Parlour (in back). 349-6482.

Kid’s Calendar

THURSDAY 21
• 9 a.m. Munchkin’s Music & Dance Class in the High Attitude Dance Academy in Gunnison.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Little Innovators Camp for ages 3-5 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Art and Science Camp for ages 5-8 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 3-8 p.m. Youth Gymnastics, Jerry’s Gym at Town Hall 349-5338.

FRIDAY 22
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Little Innovators Camp for ages 3-5 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Art and Science Camp for ages 5-8 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 11 a.m. Big Kids Storytime for ages 3-7 at Old Rock Library.
• 3-3:45 p.m. Kid’s Yoga (ages 4-9) with Yoga For The Peaceful.
• 4-5 p.m. Tang Soo Do Martial Arts classes for youth with West Elk Martial Arts, Town Hall Fitness Room. 901-7417.

MONDAY 25
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Little Innovators Camp for ages 3-5 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Art and Science Camp for ages 5-8 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Advanced Art for ages 9-11 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 4-7:30 p.m. Tang Soo Do classes for children and adults with West Elk Martial Arts, Jerry’s Gym at Town Hall. 901-7417.
• 4:45 p.m. Tang Soo Do classes for juniors at Town Hall. 901-7417.

TUESDAY 26
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Little Innovators Camp for ages 3-5 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Art and Science Camp for ages 5-8 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Advanced art for ages 9-11 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9:30 a.m. Munchkin’s Music & Dance Class in the Fitness Room at Town Hall. • 11 a.m. Romp & Rhyme Storytime for families and kids of all ages at Old Rock Library.
• 3-8 p.m. Youth Gymnastics, Jerry’s Gym at Town Hall 349-5338.

WEDNESDAY 27
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Advanced Science for ages 8-11 at The Trailhead.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Little Innovators Camp for ages 3-5 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Art and Science Camp for ages 5-8 at The Trailhead. 349-7160.
• 9:30 a.m. Munchkin’s Music & Dance Class in the Fitness Room at Town Hall. • 11 a.m. Babies and Toddlers Storytime at Old Rock Library.
• 3:45-4:45 p.m. Tween Scene (ages 8-12) at the Old Rock Library.
• 4-7:30 p.m. Tang Soo Do classes for children and adults with West Elk Martial Arts, Jerry’s Gym at Town Hall. 901-7417.
• 4:45 p.m. Tang Soo Do classes for juniors at Town Hall. 901-7417.

Events & Entertainment

THURSDAY 21
17th Annual Writing the Rockies Conference runs through July 24. 943-2058.
• 11 a.m.- 1 p.m. Local Author Wildflower Week Signing with Fae Davidson at Townie Books. 349-7545.
• 7 p.m. Renee Wright and Nichole Reycraft play at the Princess Wine Bar.
• 7 p.m. Crested Butte Film Festival Monthly Film Series: Janis: Little Girl Blue. 303-204-9080.
• 7-8 p.m. Michael Mahoney of River Light Gallery will be sketching and speaking about Leonardo da Vinci.
• 7:30 p.m. 14th Annual Friends of NRA Banquet at the Gunnison Rodeo Grounds. Doors open at 6 p.m.
• 7:30 p.m. The Subdudes play at the
I Bar Ranch.
• 8 p.m. Ladies Night at the Red Room.
• 10 p.m. Karaoke upstairs in the Sky Bar at the Talk of the Town.

FRIDAY 22
• 11 a.m.- 1 p.m. Local Author Wildflower Week Signings with Fae Davidson and Briana Wiles at Townie Books. 349-7545.
• 3:30-4:30 p.m. Jim Wodark artist reception at the Oh Be Joyful Gallery. Exhibition July 20-July 31. 349-5936.
• 4:30-5:15 p.m. Registration at Jefe’s for Sitka® 3D Fridays, free twilight archery series at CBMR with after party at Jefe’s.
• 5:30-7:30 p.m. Judith Cassel-Mamet Artist Reception at the Piper Gallery of the Center for the Arts. 349-7044.
• 6 p.m. Townie Takeover in support of the proposed bag ban in Crested Butte starting at Totem Pole Park.
• 7 p.m. Dawne Belloise and Chuck Grossman play at the Princess Wine Bar.
• 7:30 p.m. Local Vocals Concert in the Black Box Theater at the Gunnison Arts Center. Doors open at 7 p.m.
• 8 p.m. Comedy Night with Aaron Urist at the Center for the Arts. 349-7487.
• 8 p.m. Karaoke with DJ Triple L at the Red Room.
• 10 p.m. Gaslight Street plays at the Eldo.

SATURDAY 23
• 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Summit Hike to benefit Living Journeys.
• 2-4 p.m. Artist Demonstration by Jim Wodark at the Oh Be Joyful Gallery. 349-5936.
• 7 p.m. Monthly Film: Janis: Little Girl Blue at the Gunnison Arts Center.
• 7 p.m. Craig McLaughlin plays at the Princess Wine Bar.
• 8 p.m. Due West at the Center for the Arts. 349-7487.
• 10 p.m. Dave Jordan and the NIA plays at the Eldo.

SUNDAY 24
• 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Art in the Park at Legion Park in Gunnison.
• 2 p.m. Happy Hour Sundays with Chuck Grossman at the Eldo.
• 5 p.m. High Country Conservation Advocates Environmental Possibilities Series: “Healthy Environment vs. Healthy Economy: Which is more important?” with Luke Danielson at the Guild.
• 7 p.m. Casey Mae and Tyler Lucas play at the Princess Wine Bar.
• 7:30 p.m. Arts in Elevation – Elaine Kwon & Friends at the Center for the Arts. 349-7487.

MONDAY 25
• 5:30 p.m. Alpenglow: Roosevelt Dime at the Center for the Arts Outdoor Stage.
• 7 p.m. The Icy Mitts play at the Princess Wine Bar.
• 10 p.m. Open Mic Night at the Eldo.

TUESDAY 26
• 9 a.m. Socrates Café: “Can betrayal ever be justified?” at the Old Rock Library.
• 6:30 p.m. Burgers & Brews: Rapid Grass plays at the I Bar Ranch. Doors open at 5 p.m.
• 6:30-7:20 p.m. Free Community Class for National Dance Day with the School of Dance, all ages.
• 7 p.m. “Mesa, Mountains and Canyons” with WSCU professor Bruce Bartleson at the Old Rock Library.
• 7 p.m. Chuck Grossman plays at the Princess Wine Bar.
• 7:30 p.m. Crested Butte Mountain Theatre presents Pippin.

WEDNESDAY 27
• 5 p.m. gO Pinnacle Series Race #5 at CBMR.
• 5:30 p.m. The Black Lillies play Live! From Mt. Crested Butte at the Red Lady Stage at CBMR.
• 7 p.m. Evelyn Roper plays at the Princess Wine Bar.
• 7:30 p.m. Crested Butte Mountain Theatre presents Pippin.
• 7:30 p.m. Science Festival Kickoff Event! in partnership with the Public Policy Forum: “Translating Conservation Science into Public Policy” with Brian McPeek at the Center for the Arts.
• 7:30 p.m. Pool tournament upstairs at the Talk of the Town.

Looking for community support and input

By Alissa Johnson

As a child growing up in Taos, N.M., Conor Hagen listened to his parents tell stories about his birthplace, Crested Butte. He lived in town for three years and moved away at a young age, and he was transfixed by his parents’ tales of the mountain town and its transformation from a mining community to a ski town.

“These stories always bewildered me and showed me that there was a more interesting way to live life than the standard norm,” Conor said. “People would come to Crested Butte, and they just sort of did whatever they wanted. They had freedom and the independence to lead the lives they wanted to, and out of that emerged a community of people who were thick as thieves and didn’t favor things like greed. They favored things like community and friendship.”

A filmmaker whose work has screened at festivals across the country, Conor has always wanted to make a film about that era in Crested Butte, telling its stories and also examining the alternative subculture that grew out of the 1960s and ’70s. He has, in fact, already made a film about Crested Butte, BEYOND MIDNIGHT: The Grand Traverse, which tells the story of the 40-mile backcountry race that leaves Crested Butte at 12 a.m. and heads to Aspen.

Enter Alison Batwin (Ali), who has produced films around the world, from Prague to San Francisco, and the new film project began to take shape. She has been coming to Crested Butte with her family for 15 years and was hooked by Conor’s vision.

“I’ve worked in film all over the world, and I’m always looking for a project that means a lot to me,” she said.

The pair founded Red Lady Films, and they are now fundraising and connecting with local characters who were part of Crested Butte during the ’60s and ’70s. It will come as no surprise to locals that the trailer for the project features the likes of history buff Duane Vandenbusche and longtime local George Reinhardt.

The pair has also made connections with the growing Crested Butte Film Festival and the Crested Butte Heritage Museum. The latter has provided them with access to its historical records and artifacts, and is also acting as Red Lady Films’ fiscal sponsor. Donors can contribute to the project through the museum and have their donation be tax deductible.

“They are super supportive, both the previous director [Glo Cunningham] and now Shelley [Popke]. They really believe in our mission,” Ali said.

“The Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum is excited to be working with Red Lady Films on this documentary. Our partnership is a wonderful way to advance the Museum’s mission ‘to preserve and share the uniquely diverse cultural history of the Gunnison Valley. We make the past a living part of the future,’” said museum director Shelley Popke.

Ali and Conor expect to complete fundraising this summer and into the fall, with filming starting this winter and into next summer. In addition to raising funds, they hope to connect with locals who are interested in the project, have archival materials like film or photos, or have stories relevant to the project.

“We’re really trying to utilize a lot of archival assets. It’s going to make the film so much richer, so…, hopefully they’ll come forth and lend us some of their resources. Someone could have a reel of 8mm film from 1965 hidden away on a shelf,” Conor said.

He admits that there is a nostalgic component to the project—he has always loved the attitudes and the mentalities of the ’60s, including the music and the sort of reckless abandon. It provides an interesting contrast to what he sees going on now.

“It’s technology and progress and development, and most of our communities are online. I feel like I’m somewhat radical in my feelings about this; while I also feel technology is good, we’re constantly moving away from solid, strong, communities that are human and integrated and more toward these communities that are more disparate and based on some sort of digital community. It doesn’t feel as authentic,” he said.

At the same time, however, he’s careful to point out that he and Ali are not naïve or placing the ideals of the ’60s on a pedestal. They know that the same people who helped transform Crested Butte during the ’60s and ’70s and eschewed greed had to and wanted to make money in some form. Many went on to become entrepreneurs and business owners and raise families. Yet at the same time, they made decisions about the town and the natural environment to preserve the character of Crested Butte. That included disallowing conglomerates and corporations, and protecting the natural environment.

“That’s also part of story we want to tell, to start with the transition from miners to Crested Butte becoming a ski town, and then, how does one walk the line between progress and development, and maintaining the culture that is Crested Butte,” Conor said.

In many ways, that same question is being asked today as Crested Butte manages the growth of tourism, exposure from events like Whatever, USA, and maintaining the feel of the town and the backcountry at the same time.

“There is a conversation going on in Crested Butte right now but also everywhere. We want to be sure to relate this film to a larger audience and tell the bigger story too, because it is a conversation happening everywhere,” Conor said.

While Hagan is currently based in San Francisco and Ali in Boulder, the pair return to Crested Butte frequently and were just in town over the 4th of July weekend. To make the film a reality, they’ll be returning to town often and are open to traveling wherever they need to go in order to conduct the interviews that will make the film richer.

As Ali pointed out, they plan to travel to Florida if it makes it possible to connect with Dick Eflan, a founder of the local ski resort who now lives in Florida. First, however, they’re looking for the community’s help, both through financial support and through ideas, footage, and photos. It’s that local participation that will make a film about Crested Butte truly representative of the town.

“Any footage we can get will be awesome and make that time come to life… We really feel that these stories are important to preserve an historical record,” Ali said.

Learn more about the project or connect with Ali and Conor at redladyfilms@gmail.com or redladyfilms.com. There, you’ll also find information about how to donate to the project, which can be done through the Crested Butte Heritage Museum website, crestedbuttemuseum.com.

by Olivia Lueckemeyer

In this two-part series we explore the recent phenomenon of short-term rentals, the effect on the community, and what town is doing to solve the prevailing issue. This week, we delve into the stories of locals who have both suffered and benefited at the hands of industry giants such as AirBnB and VRBO. 

Over 22 months, local event planner Heather Sengelmann moved seven times.

Her story starts like many others, with the February 2014 flooding and subsequent condemning of Mt. Crested Butte’s Marcellina apartment complex. After scrambling to find long-term housing with two roommates, Sengelmann decided to go out on her own, eventually resorting to living out of her car while crashing in a Gunnison basement. Once off-season rolled around, and the housing trail once again turned cold, Sengelmann headed home to San Antonio.

“Unfortunately, the housing shortage caused me to take whatever I could find and there were always multiple people looking at the rooms before the renter selected someone,” she recounted. “I went home for six weeks after that for off-season, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t find anything to rent before June.”

After the Marcellina apartments flooded, 44 units were deemed unfit for habitation, and with some units housing up to three tenants, a significant number of locals were displaced as a result of the mass eviction. The majority of tenants were young 20-somethings working in the service industry, so as a result, the market was inundated with millennials on the hunt for affordable housing. And although the housing shortage has been a problem for many years, this event heavily contributed to the current dilemma that is the Crested Butte housing crisis.

Sengelmann eventually returned to the valley and resumed her search in a cramped, expensive market. Temporary subleases were her fallback, but the imminent reality of having to pack up and move again was always on her mind.

“From there all I could find that I could afford were four- to five-month subleases before the original renter would come back and I’d be on to the next place,” she explained. “I always knew I was going to have to move again, but I was hopeful the next place would be more long term.”

Finally, in the summer of 2015, Sengelmann landed a one-year lease on the mountain in what used to be a vacation rental by owner (VRBO). And while she is grateful to have found long-term housing, she fears she might once again fall victim to the unpredictable whims of the housing market.

“We plan to renew for another year in October, but we have no idea yet if they will continue to long-term or turn it back into a VRBO,” Sengelmann said. “It’s been nice to settle into a place finally, but the idea of having to move again in a few months scares and worries me constantly.”

Like many communities across the United States, the phenomenon of short-term rentals (STR) has had a noticeable impact on the local housing market. Landlords and homeowners who used to rent long-term to locals now opt for the more profitable route of listing their properties on STR sites such as VRBO or AirBnB. As a result, during the slow seasons of Crested Butte, once-vibrant streets are now lined with vacant, unlit homes.

Kochevar’s bartender Alex Shelley lost his housing to a VRBO in June, just two weeks before he was supposed to renew his lease, forcing him to move for the fifth time in two years.

“We were going to renew our lease and were even told we could, and then the landlord, who has been really good to townies for a long time, kicked us out and the people below us,” Shelley explained. “He is turning it into a vacation rental, and because of that, six people lost their housing.”

Shelley is no stranger to the housing crisis. Last summer, he was homeless for three months after his landlord, who hoped to renovate and sell the property, refused to renew his lease. To this day, the house sits empty with a “for sale” sign in the front yard.

He eventually secured housing in the Columbine Condominiums, but it didn’t take long for lightning to strike twice. Due to construction plans, his lease was shortened by two months, so in anticipation of the inevitable, Shelley didn’t waste any time in securing backup accommodations.

“I didn’t want to get stuck with a bag in my hand, so the first place I found I started paying rent on,” Shelley said. “I was paying two rents at a time just to make sure I would have a place to live when the other one ended, because I didn’t want to get stuck homeless again.”

Of course, many landlords handle the transition to STRs in a more civil manner. Avalanche bartender Jill Wilkinson will also lose her housing to VRBO next May. Thankfully, her landlord gave her a year’s-worth of notice, allowing Wilkinson plenty of time to search for accommodations.

“My landlord has been great in giving me ample notice that this is his decision,” she explained. “I am definitely upset about the fact that I’m losing my place to live, but I am not surprised. I’ve felt this was inevitable due to the significant amount of short-term rentals that have been created in the past couple of years in Crested Butte…

“I do understand and respect his decision. He feels he will make more money short-term renting,” Wilkinson continued. “There is a large construction project that has to take place on the building sooner or later, and I believe he thinks short-term renting will be more helpful in funding the expensive upcoming project.”

As a bartender, Wilkinson has noticed the negative impact the housing shortage has had on the service industry. With fewer places to live, businesses are constantly short-staffed, causing them to lower their hiring standards.

“Staff is hard to find, and when you do find someone they may very likely be inexperienced or not invested in the job they’re hired for,” she explained.

The housing shortage has left a sour taste in the mouths of many locals, and for some, it’s enough to resort to the most drastic solution: leaving the valley altogether. Local artist Jesse Blumenthal has lived here for nine years, but soon he and his girlfriend will move to Montana. Loss of housing over a disagreement with his landlord concerning what constitutes “commercial work” when using the garage to produce art, as well as the bothersome construction of a VRBO in front of Blumenthal’s rented accessory dwelling, prompted a move to Gunnison, which hasn’t panned out the way he had hoped.

“The last search for housing a little over a year ago was very difficult,” he recalled. “It took us over six months to find the place we live in Gunnison. We wanted to stay in the Butte, where we’ve formed more of a community, but it just wasn’t possible.

“While my girlfriend and I are working down in Gunnison, we have decided it’s just not for us,” he continued. “The community is different, and in a lot of respects that’s nice, but after so long in the social environment of Crested Butte, it feels less like I live somewhere magical and more like I could be Anywhere West, U.S.A.”

Blumenthal, like many others, acknowledges that the town powers-that-be are working to find a solution, but change is not happening quickly enough—and meanwhile, long-term residents are being phased out.

“We live in a small place, and the physical limits are such that with inevitable growth, we are seeing gentrification that has hit the fan in the last two years,” Blumenthal said. “I don’t think anyone expected change to come so rapidly, but it is undeniable. The response from the town has not been as aggressive as the gentrification. They’re trying, but not affecting change as fast as the other groups of second-home owners, short-term renters, and location-less income workers.”

On the other side of the debate are long-time locals who are struggling just as hard to survive Crested Butte’s difficult economic landscape, but who happen to also own property. Crested Butte News feature writer and vocalist Dawne Belloise is using a room in her home as a source of additional income, because without it, living in Crested Butte would be impossible.

“Because there’s no way I can make it in Crested Butte on my income, I short-term my tiny downstairs bedroom,” Belloise explained. “The income I make from AirBnB allows me to pay my property taxes and pay down the exorbitant credit card bills I’ve racked up in daily living expenses because it’s so damned expensive to live here. Even when I was driving the bus 40 hours weekly and working on weekly profiles and features for the paper, I still couldn’t keep my head above water.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’ve chosen this life,” she continued. “This non-conforming lifestyle in a place that is so magnificent, you’ll do practically anything to stay here. Many locals short-terming their rooms or homes just need to make a decent wage, and local wages have never been comparable to the cost of living here.”

Stay tuned for Part 2 in next week’s issue, when we will delve into what the town is doing to tackle this pressing STR issue. 

by Dawne Belloise

Tully Burton grabs a slice of pizza between phone calls, deliveries and the busyness of ongoing daily operations in his new restaurant and bar in Crested Butte South, named appropriately and deservingly, Tully’s. He’s a big guy with an even bigger smile and a lot more on his plate these days than pizza. But the restaurant is his dream, and he’s not only making it work, he’s living it and loving the challenges and rewards.

As the youngest of three brothers, and the self-proclaimed troublemaker, Tully may have gotten an early influence of restaurateur from his father, who managed an eatery where, as a kid, Tully would ace Pac-man while sipping a Shirley Temple. He grew up 17 miles north of Cincinnati in Green Hills, one of the greenbelt communities initiated by President Roosevelt in the 1940s as a self-sufficient town built to create jobs and economy. By the time he graduated from high school in 1999, Tully was enthralled with live music and traveling to concerts. He was also very gifted in a variety of mediums in art and was especially interested in architecture, which he put to use when he designed and drew up the elevations of his new building.

Immediately after high school, Tully was working odd jobs, trying to find a direction in life and enrolled in architecture courses at a community college. He later transferred to the University of Cincinnati but his friends were starting to move out of the area and he found himself wrapped up in wanderlust. One of his jobs was working for an entertainment company as a groundskeeper and the general go-to guy. It allowed him to see all the concerts and he could be backstage hobnobbing with the big-name artists. Being introduced to that kind of a scene at a young age triggered a desire to create something bigger, because after experiencing it from the perspective of a ground floor employee, he realized the complexity of production. “It’s not just that a person shows up and is on stage. It’s the coordination of what it takes to get to that point and get it done,” Tully grasped.

Tully’s love of music led him into the festival scene, and while he was enjoying the jam bands at the All Good Music Festival in West Virginia with 18,000 other partygoers, his van broke down, which turned into a life-changing event. He couldn’t leave so he signed up as a volunteer to do the massive after-fest clean up. He also noted that the variety of goodies you can find laying on the grounds after concerts like that can be a real bonus. He discovered that the company hired to organize the clean up, Clean Vibes, actually had contracts for several festivals so they had a core crew who not only got paid well, but were also provided with other stipends like hotel rooms, three meals a day, plane tickets, backstage passes and the opportunity to meet the performers.

At the time, Clean Vibes was new and inefficient, and it took a month for the 100 people they started out with to clean up the large acreage and farms where the festivals were held. Tully hired on with them and moved up to supervisor within the year. He stayed on for three summers before moving to San Francisco, feeling it was time to return to school.

Enrolled into the Community College of San Francisco, Tully was doubling up on art and business courses through scholarships and grants. He had a sweet deal with his art studio on the piers, looking out on the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“I was doing more print making, getting into all the techniques, especially really old techniques, which are more interesting than Photoshopping,” he felt. But just as he was ready to begin his fourth year, California changed their funding parameters, and his tuition funding was cut completely. It was going to cost an exorbitant $40,000 just to finish that last year. It was a difficult decision, but he knew he couldn’t afford to spend that kind of money, so he packed up and left for Cincinnati, as a home base to return to work for Clean Vibes.

“I wanted to experience the city but cities are crazy and I was ready to get out. I got to know the underbelly and the scenes that tourists would never know, the heartbeat and life of the city,” he said of his time in San Francisco.

Back in Cincinnati, Tully was enjoying working for Clean Vibes. It was an easy life. During his first stint working for the company a few years prior, before the West Coast move, his work supervisor was Elise Meier, and they had a lovely fling but Tully admits he wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship since he had already decided to move to California. When he returned to Clean Vibes for the second time in 2006, the two reconnected while working at Bonnaroo.

“So, I’m at Bonnaroo in a short bus and rekindling our relationship, traveling to the different festivals doing cleaning up and at the end of that summer, Elise and I talked about what our plans were,” he smiles of “The Talk” couples eventually must engage in, and although he was planning to move to Asheville, Elise had been living in Crested Butte for a couple of years and told him it’s the only place she’d consider living, especially since she had just bought a house there.

“I had no idea where Crested Butte was. My dad’s family was all from Colorado but we only went to Rifle, once, to hunt. Elise hadn’t even moved into her house yet and was moving her stuff from Philadelphia.”

Tully drove into Crested Butte at night after flying in to Denver, so he didn’t catch even a glimpse of the mountains or breathtaking surroundings until he woke up the next morning and looked out his window from Crested Butte South up the valley and promised himself, “I’m never leaving! It was an amazing feeling. I’ve seen places all across the country and seeing Crested Butte relinquished the desire I had to travel. And still, to this day, every time I come around Round Mountain, I still feel the same.”

That was September 2006; he and Lisa have been together for 10 years now, and the really big news: the couple is expecting their first child early in October.

Tully’s first job here was managing the Crested Butte South General Store during the winter of 2006. It was busy and booming, he notes. The next summer he and Elise were still contracted to work the summer festival circuit with Clean Vibes, and returning in the fall, he had lined up a job at the Crested Butte Mountain Resort ski rental shop for that winter of 2007. Tully did the seasonal shuffle of being gone in the summer and back in the winter for four years through 2010.

He had never experienced a summer in Crested Butte until he starting working with Tyler Cappellucci’s Spring Creek Landscaping. He recalls hearing about the magnificent summers here and the valley was just starting to green when they were leaving for work with Clean Vibes. After finally spending an entire summer home, he was hooked—hiking, camping, rafting. “That clinched the deal,” he laughs. “Standing on top of a peak on the mountain made me feel that I had to figure out a way to never leave. It can be hard, it can be tough making a living, and there are sacrifices that you have to make but you make it work. You find a way.”

Winters now found him working at Red Mountain Liquors and back at the General Store where he was cooking, making the sandwiches and serving the Crested Butte South crowd. When the General Store closed its doors in the spring of 2011, Tully leased the building and went into business for himself that summer. He felt the economy was improving and he could make it work. He was carefully watching the trends and realized that the demands in Crested Butte South were increasing to the point that a grocery-convenience store, gas station, restaurant and bar in one location wasn’t what the down valley population needed.

He bought a commercial lot and broke ground on the summer solstice of 2015, opening Tully’s this April 2016. He smiles that as an owner you have to be prepared to be the cook, dishwasher, bartender, server, janitor and accountant. “You do it all when you own it,” he knows from experience.

And he’s grateful to the Crested Butte South community whose response and support have been overwhelming. “They’re enjoying it so much, along with the live music. It’s great. I’m here now with a dream and a goal that’s come true. It’s weird when they put up your name in lights,” he laughs about his new sign. “When I stepped back after the sign installers put it up I thought, ‘It’s game on!’”

by Dawne Belloise

Tucked away around a corner and down a darkened hall in the quiet back of the old town offices, there is Andy Tyzzer’s office, stuffed with Korean wall scrolls and cases of instructional books on the martial arts. Andy has been a Tang Soo Do instructor to many, with 900 students coming through his studio, ranging from the very young to retirees.

Tyzzer started training in the art in 1973, at Woodlands Hills Tang Soo Do in Woodland Hills, Calif., while he was still an undisciplined and skinny college student. He started with one of the best and most demanding instructors, Bob Burbidge, who had trained under the famed Chuck Norris.

Practicing the art had a profound impact on Tyzzer that carried over into his college studies and life in general. Although martial arts films were then at their height of popularity, the actual practice went far beyond the extremely difficult kicking and fighting. For Tyzzer, it was all about the tough training and even more important, the discipline and respect. The discipline not only made him a forward moving, better person; he discovered he was achieving much more in college.

He attended college first at Pierce Junior in Woodland Hills, later transferring to California State University at Northridge, best known as the epicenter of the last great California earthquake in 1985. Tyzzer was enrolled for a couple of years longer than he had anticipated because, he laughs, he was not only working to pay his way through school, but he was training hard in the martial arts—and then there was the beach. It was the mid-1970s and he had been in school for almost six years and felt it was time to get out of college. He was only one test away from getting his black belt in Teng Soo Do but he put his training on hold and graduated in 1979 with a bachelor of science degree in business with a concentration in finance.

While he was still in college, Tyzzer was already becoming a successful accountant in the business world. He participated in a pilot program called Service Corp of Retired Executives, or SCORE, started by the Small Business Administration to pair organizations with business students to help them with their financial management. He also volunteered for a pilot program through the IRS called Voluntary Income Tax Assistance, or VITA, which gave him college credit for being trained and sent to places where people were not doing their tax returns, either because they didn’t have the resources or they were (understandably) afraid to do so.

Both programs helped him put it all together in the experiential world when he started his own tax practice and was recruited by a large company, Tax Corporation of America. By the time he was 21, Tyzzer had his own business as an accountant and tax consultant. He hired two of his college friends to work with him and was well on his way to being super successful when Tyzzer decided he didn’t want to do that high stress career thing, especially in Los Angeles where he was living.

Although he enjoyed the finance aspect of his chosen career, he wanted out of the accounting part, and out of L.A. The mountains of Colorado, which he had visited right out of high school in 1973, began to call to him.

Having been a Boy Scout in his childhood home of New Jersey, and after hiking 50 miles of the Appalachian trail, and after he backpacked in the Olympic National Park for two weeks the summer after high school graduation, Tyzzer decided to visit his cousin, Patricia Dawson, in Crested Butte.

Tyzzer hitchhiked—the preferred mode of transportation for many in 1973—from Washington State to Crested Butte. He arrived at Dawson’s funky little river house at the end of the alley on the southwest side of town. All of the community was dirt, funk and far smaller, and truly the end of the paradisiacal road. He was 18, wide-eyed, and indefatigable when he hiked straight up the old lift line on Cement Mountain. He stayed there for an entire week, thinking about where his young life would take him and enjoying his time in the wilderness. This is what called him back to Crested Butte when he had had quite enough of the frantic L.A. lifestyle.

Tyzzer recalled the joy of spending his childhood on New Jersey lakes, where in the summers he went shoeless playing in the woods and on the beach, just a kid getting into the muck, fishing and sailing and swimming. And even though he had a highly successful business and a great relationship with his then-girlfriend, he decided to get the hell out of Los Angeles, noting that during the several years he had lived there, the west end of that valley had changed drastically. Where there were strawberry and corn fields by his home, there were now high-rise buildings and the air had turned foul. So he said to himself, “You know what? I want to move to the mountains.” He wanted to ski. And Crested Butte topped the list.

Tyzzer hitchhiked back out to Crested Butte in the autumn of 1979 and one week later had a place to live and a job as accountant with a local airline that flew small planes into Denver and Aspen, run by Ron Rouse and operating out of Crested Butte. During the huge snow winter of that year, the planes couldn’t get out to fly, and there was an economic turndown as a recession hit. The airline couldn’t maintain operations since they couldn’t fly and the business was forced to fold.

Luckily, Tyzzer was in demand as an accountant. The following year he worked for a large property management company on the mountain. In another unforeseen turn of weather events, Tyzzer recalled that there was essentially no snow in the winter of 1980 to 1981 and he took a job as the business manager for the Crested Butte Fire Protection District.

During all this, Tyzzer still wanted out of having to sit in an office all day; he wanted out of business management and finances. He was doing all the fun things Buttians do, skiing, backpacking and living life to its fullest—and in 1983 Tyzzer became certified as an EMT. He especially enjoyed the community service aspect.

He also attended ski patrol school and realized it was exactly what he wanted to do. At the time, Crested Butte Mountain Resort was pushing to improve the level of medical certification of ski patrol and he was already an EMT and had done well in the exam portion of patrolling. It landed him a part-time job on the mountain.

He was still working full-time for the fire protection district and a couple of years later was hired on full time with the ski patrol, leaving the fire district position. By 1986 he had switched to summer construction work while waiting for the lifts to start up again for his winter ski patrolling.

Twixt seasons, in the spring and early summer, he’d ski the peaks every morning, driving the old 1962 Ford up the Slate, sleeping in the back, waiting for the sun and then hiking up to carve lines down Augusta and still be to work on time by 9 a.m. Life was good.

One morning, while he was on top of Augusta, waiting for the sun to come up to warm up the snow, Tyzzer spied a couple of ski patroller friends and another he didn’t know. The trio was also hiking to the top for some turns, and it was there and then, on Augusta’s summit, that he met his future wife, Sue Heller. It was 1987, and they married in ‘95. The two have a daughter, Taylor, who is 18 and a Crested Butte Community School 2016 graduate, and son Dylan, 13, continuing on at CBCS.

After Tyzzer became a ski patrol full time, his thoughts returned to getting that black belt degree he had put aside so many years prior. He had continued to train solo in any spare time he had between jobs. He competed in a regional tournament in Grand Junction and won in his division. Tyzzer explains that the Korean style Do Bahk, the “uniform” of this particular martial art, is distinctive with its color lapel trim.

He hadn’t seen another Tang Soo Do practitioner in the area but there were many at the tournament who came from Aspen. Their instructor invited him to train with them.

During off seasons, Tyzzer moved to Aspen to continue his training, basically having to start over to achieve a black belt degree, which he finally earned in 1990 in his fourth year, a mere 17 years after he had put his goal on hold. He laughs that it might seem that he’s a little slow, but points out that life happens and you keep moving forward. Theoretically, there are nine levels of black belt degrees, and since then, Tyzzer has earned five, traveling to Korea five times to train and take the weeklong tests at the master level. Tyzzer is also a two-time national champion for forms in Tang Soo Do, winning the title in 2004 and 2006.

Tyzzer left the ski patrol in 1993 to create Tang Soo Do of Crested Butte. His first studio was in the old depot, and classes started up that November. The first year saw only adults practicing, but by the second year, the studio enrollment grew exponentially when he offered children’s classes.

He expanded to Gunnison in 1998 and the studio began teaching an accredited course in character education through traditional martial arts training in the middle school district.

They became a nonprofit in 2003 because Tyzzer felt it would better serve the community. When the Crested Butte town offices moved into the old school, Tang Soo Do was allowed to train there for free, where they remain today, although, Tyzzer says, it’s no longer free rent. They continue the instruction in Gunnison at the Gunnison Arts Center, with adult classes entirely full so they’re not able to accept new students.

Tyzzer smiles in his quiet way and says of his years in this valley, “Why go someplace else? This is the best place, and when we leave and then return, it just affirms that this is the best place for us. It never happens that we come back with a better place to be. Our roots just keep getting deeper. It’s a great place to raise a family.”

And of his lifelong practice, he walks the way of his art. “I’m not going to stop training. Ever. Someone once asked a painter, ‘Why do you paint?’ His answer, ‘Because I must.’”

by Dawne Belloise

Preceded by her spunky persona, Janet Biggers leaves an almost visible wake of color and a dab of pizzazz as she walks through the door. Today, as she’s done most of her winter days, she’s heading up to the mountain, this time for a late-afternoon ski. Her polka-dot glasses, bright yellow parka and red plaid ski pants are almost no match for her effervescent smile.

As an Oklahoma cattle ranch girl, Janet started skiing at Crested Butte with her family when she was 10. Her father was buddies with the original owners, Fred Rice and Dick Eflin, who started up the resort back in the early 1960s.

“Dad said to mom, ‘We’re loading the kids up in the station wagon and going skiing,’” Janet laughs, remembering the mountain when it was a sparse little resort with just the tiny warming house, the J bar and the gondola, Klinkerhaus and a couple of the condos. They slapped skis on her and put her and her siblings in ski school. “We had a blast when it wasn’t cold.” Janet recalled a day so cold that her fingers were frostbitten. After their first visit, she said, “All our family vacations revolved around skiing twice a year.”

Janet confesses that she was kind of a wild child growing up in Bartlesville, Okla., just north of Tulsa. “I just liked to have fun, go to parties, and I had lots of friends. We lived 30 minutes from town so for me to get to town and have fun was a big deal.”

Her parents sent her to boarding school in Colorado Springs from tenth grade through graduation, but it was Janet’s choice. “I thought it’d be cool, like college, and sort of like being on your own. We chose the school because of its proximity to the mountains.”

She signed up for the Broadmoor Ski Team because, she grinned, “If you could get on the ski team, you could ski train at night, you’d get out of the dorm and you’d get to go hang out with the boys. Plus, we got to travel and go to the ski races for the weekend. We went all over, including Crested Butte. I loved skiing and I was totally hooked by then.” She graduated in 1978.

But she didn’t much like school and like most teenagers, she had no idea what she wanted to do. So she enrolled at Western State College, basically to ski. “I did what I had to do to ski,” but her father intervened with the ultimatum, “This out-of-state tuition and you not going to class is not working out,” so he gave her a choice: she could either go home and attend college in Oklahoma or find a job in the Gunnison Valley.

“I found a job. I started working for Robel Straubhaar teaching in the ski school in 1980. Robel did put me through the ringer. I was sort of a spoiled brat probably in the beginning. He always thought I was gonna break but I never did. If I didn’t do a turn right he’d make me hike back up and perfect that turn. While in a training class, we’d have to demonstrate our turns and how we taught. Robel was tough but sweet.”

The year Janet started was a year of basically no snow, she recalls. “We had to take beginners up to the stables because that’s the only place there was snow. There was no snow at the base area. We didn’t have much work that year, so we skied what we could. They were putting hay down that year, people were skiing through the mud but we still had a good time.”

To this day, Janet still runs into adults on the mountain who she taught when they were kids back in the early ‘80s. “Molly was only 7 years old when I first taught her,” she says, as she remembers a child student. “She showed up in a cute fluffy pink outfit. They’re still coming here and now. Molly’s kids are in ski school, and I get to ski with them [although Janet no longer teaches]. There are still people from back then who I taught that I get to see.”

In the summers Janet would head back home to Oklahoma, staying with her parents and being a lifeguard at the pool but when the seasons changed, she would return to the slopes to teach in Crested Butte’s ski school. In 1982 she met Austrian ski instructor Franz Wiesbauer. They married the following year and spent their summers in Austria.

“It was beautiful there. I did what I could with the language, but it was my first time abroad,” she says of the learning curve of picking up enough German-Austrian to get by. The couple returned in 1986 to live year round, working in Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s marketing department covering the Oklahoma territory and living between Oklahoma and Crested Butte. When they divorced a couple years later, Janet stayed in her home state, although she would come back to ski and spend a month in Crested Butte every winter.

Back home, Janet got involved in teaching aerobics, which was a popular fitness fad in the era. She also went big, as she tells it, and started doing many triathlons. When she returned to Crested Butte to race as part of the Tulsa Ski Club, a faction of the larger Flatlanders Ski Club, she just never returned to Oklahoma.

It was 1990 and she spontaneously decided to stay. It was a good move and she met the love of her life. “I stayed through the rest of the winter. Johnny Biggers was on ski patrol. I was with my girlfriends and we were getting on the Silver Queen when Johnny saw me and asked if I wanted to ride the chair up with him while he ate his lunch. We had known each other at WSC, back in the day. The rest is history,” Janet grins. They married in 1993.

She started teaching skiing again while Johnny was building houses in the summer and patrolling in the winter. After he retired from the ski patrol in 1999, he and Janet started their business, Crested Butte Builders. The company did well, with Janet handling planning and interior design. In between work, they’d hike, bike, and boat but mostly Janet was still into running and spent a lot of time in the gym as well. She proudly takes credit for getting her husband into water skiing, trekking off to Lake Powell whenever they can.

These days, Janet and Johnny have settled into their busy lives, recreating whenever they can get away, but fully taking advantage of the outdoor life of Crested Butte that they love. “We have our small houseboat at Lake Powell,” she says, and they have a home in Grand Junction because Janet loves the heat and longer summer days where she can garden and there are loads of biking and hiking trails.

The milder seasons of the southwestern slope also mean she gets in a lot more golfing and more important, waterskiing.

continued on next page

continued from previous page

“My life is all really happy. We have the best of all worlds. I see still being here in Crested Butte for skiing and our business is here. We’re having fun here as well as Grand Junction, being on the water and enjoying life. Johnny’s family is in Australia, so we go once a year. We’ll be going to Sydney in May. My family is still in the same house I grew up, with lakes and fishing and swimming and I still enjoy my roots in Oklahoma. We’ve got all these great things to do when we spend time with our families. Between all the stuff we do here and running the business, we’re pretty much booked up.”

Janet feels that Crested Butte is truly her home though, having been coming here since the first decade of her life and the beginning of the town as a ski resort. “What I like about Crested Butte is that it’s a small town and I’ve had good friends here for years. This place feels like home since I’ve been coming here since I was a kid. This is home.”