[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

Talie Morrison has been an avid hiker, visiting all seven continents and her love of New Zealand took her back to the land below 13 times. She started her own hiking and backpacking business, Alpine Meadows, to share her vast joy of the outdoors with others, showing them the beauty of Crested Butte, Arizona, Utah and New Zealand. Talie also worked in Antarctica for 14 months from August 2007 through October of 2008, working at McMurdo Station, where winter was very dark for its long entirety. She also joined the Antarctica Search and Rescue where she got to play among the icebergs, watch penguins and visit explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s huts. 

In 2017, Talie was diagnosed with cancer, and over the course of a few years, her left leg had to be amputated. Although it has slowed her down, it hasn’t stopped her. This Saturday, she’ll be participating in Living Journeys’ Summit Hike to the top of Crested Butte Mountain, an annual event that raises funds to help and support cancer patients and their families.

Talie started her young life in Cincinnati with two older brothers and she laughs, “I was always trying to keep up with the boys.” Her father was in machine tools and mom was a homemaker. “As a child, I was never really very good in a scholastic ability but I loved playground and sports,” she says. In her all-girl high school she was always on a sports team – softball, field hockey, gymnastics, tennis, volleyball and basketball – I did whatever was offered because that’s where I could excel and be physical.” She graduated in 1964. 

Talie met her husband, Richard Dobbins, in her junior year of high school and after graduation her plan was just to get married, which they did in 1966. She had completed a year of college in North Carolina before deciding to return to Cincinnati to get a secretarial degree, which focused on teaching the art of filing, typing, shorthand and running an office, “So I could get a job,” she says, and she did, working at the Dean of Women’s office at the University of North Carolina for three years. She had moved to Carolina to put her husband through law school. It was in Chapel Hill where she had her two sons, Craig and Stephen.

The family then moved to western North Carolina to Spruce Pine, where her husband practiced law and Talie and two other mothers started a Montessori school in 1972 because, she tells, “There wasn’t a school for our children. I was teaching, administrating, and fundraising, doing everything. We started with 18 students and it grew over the years. I sold it to the teachers when I left in 1981 because we moved to Crested Butte.” They’d journey west for ski trips and Talie says, “We fell in love with it.” They had bought a condo at Columbine and decided to be fulltime residents in 1981, “Because why not?” she laughs.  “It was one of the smartest moves I ever did and I’m still glad I’m here.”

She arrived with no real plans but got a job working at the Columbine front desk. Later, she and her hubby, along with partners Joe Fitzpatrick and Vince Rogalski and their wives, started Solutions Property Management Company. “We were six people running the company. My title was owner-services coordinator. It grew by leaps and bounds and when I left in 1989, we had about 300 condos that we managed.” 

Talie split with her husband in 1988 and later married fisherman Mike Wilson. The couple moved into a motorhome and headed to Alaska for two years to caretake an upscale fishing lodge out in the bush on the river the Kvichak. “It was very interesting because there was no electricity, and no running water,” she says of their off grid living. “One winter it was really icy and the next winter it was really cold.” Since they were inaccessible in the winter, the owners would stock the food before they closed down the lodge, “You could only fly in if the river was thawed, once it froze, you were pretty isolated until the river broke up in the spring. It was just the two of us and our dog. Because it was a high dollar place, like $7,000 a week to stay there, they had to have someone there to take care of the place otherwise the insurance would become null and void so someone had to be living on site.” 

After two winters isolated in Alaska, they headed to New Zealand for the third winter, which was New Zealand’s summer. It was her first trip there. “I wanted to go where it was warm. We went all over, we had a car and tents. I love New Zealand, it’s beautiful,” she says. “But if all the people moved to all the beautiful places in the world they wouldn’t be beautiful anymore.” 

They traveled the country for four months and then returned to CB where Talie was hired at Forward Steps. “We took teenagers backpacking. I worked there for two summers from 1992 through 1993.” She and Mike went their separate ways in 1993 and Talie moved to Santa Barbara to be close to her son Craig and her grandson. “I had several jobs there. I was Kenny Loggins’ personal assistant. I also worked at a health food restaurant as a waitress and hostess.” But Santa Barbara was too busy for her. She was turning fifty and she decided to give herself the present of not working for a year and living in her van, “Everywhere and anywhere, wherever I wanted,” she smiles.

In her nomad lifestyle, she traveled around the west between California and Colorado, but she was ready to be back in CB by 1996. In 2002, Talie bought a truck and then a camper in 2018 and for 20 years she didn’t have a physical address, making her home out of her vehicles until June of 2021. “I had cancer in my leg,” which they discovered in 2017 when her femur broke. They reconstructed her femur and afterwards, she went backpacking in Iceland and back to her beloved New Zealand.

In March of 2020, Talie once again returned to New Zealand and got stuck in the COVID lockdown there. She hung out in Dunedin and kept busy walking her friend’s dogs. 

When she was finally able to return to the states in July of 2020, to deal with a loose screw in her knee, she moved back into her camper for a year, until the cancer returned in 2021. Her leg had to be amputated midway through the femur in June that year, and later the surgeons had to perform a disc articulation, removing her femur from the hip. “It was really more difficult than I thought it would be but it’s what I’ve got and there’s no sense crying over spilt milk,” she says bravely. Talie was fitted with a prosthetic in January and she’s been going out with Adaptive Sports to train, focused on doing the Summit Hike for Living Journeys. 

Last September, Talie moved into an apartment in town, “I need to stay positive, so I do what I can do and be happy with it and I won’t know what I can do until I try it. I can bike up the rec path and I can get around town on my recumbent bike. Living Journeys has been really helpful in my process, they’re a really good support group for people who’ve dealt with cancer. Once a week they do a meal for people living with cancer and deliver it and through Mountain Roots, they bring me a bag of fresh vegetables once a week. It’s a great program so whatever I can do to help them, like the Summit Hike, is important to me. Adaptive is also really supportive. They take me out hiking a couple times a week.” 

Talie is a tenacious and determined survivor who is appreciative of her community, and the opportunities and support that Adaptive Sports and Living Journeys bring, “I’m blessed that I live in Crested Butte. I’ve been here 41 years and it still takes my breath away. It’s still the best place on the planet.”

[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

It made perfect sense to Nicole DelSasso that she was destined to wind up in the mountains of Crested Butte, especially after she discovered that her surname referred to the Gran Sasso mountain range in the Abruzzo region of Italy where her family hails from, “sasso” literally translates into “rock.” Her Italian grandfather started a cabinet-making business out of his garage in Joliet, Illinois, where her dad and younger brother still work. Nicole’s mother was a dental hygienist and now leads an oral systemic health organization. As kids, the family would take yearly summer road trips out west visiting national parks and enjoying whitewater rafting, “I wanted to be a river guide after those trips,” she recalls.

From the time Nicole was 10 years old until she went to college she was an English riding equestrian, spending her time in training and show jumping. “It’s very proper, your horse has to look a specific way, along with your form and posture. It’s very graceful,” she explains. 

She competed at midwestern shows, traveling with her barn pals. “All those adventures made me want to move away out of the city and suburbs, but I didn’t know where.”

Nicole graduated from a Catholic high school in 2000 and attended Ohio State University, thinking she wanted to be a veterinarian since she loved animals. However, after a few classes she realized she couldn’t memorize anything and then there was organic chemistry, so she switched her major to humanities and “Mostly cultural studies because it’s so broad,” which she says was the attraction for her. “It was more about chasing a path to a career that had a broad perspective with a taste of a lot of different things. I wanted to try something new,” so she enrolled in a Semester at Sea. “It’s a three-month study sailing across the globe on a cruise ship,” Nicole explains. “I went to 11 different countries. We studied each country on the ship before we got to the country.” They started in Vancouver, then two days on open seas to Japan, traveling from there to China, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Africa, Brazil and Venezuela, before being dropped off in Florida. “What other time in life do you get to spend time doing all of that travel at once? It made me want to travel more and have more adventures,” she determined, and graduated in 2005 with a BA in Comparative Cultural Studies.

After college, Nicole returned to Chicago and got her first real job as a program manager for the Chicago Humanities Festival. “It’s a two-week long event with many different happenings from poetry to theater. You plan for it the whole year.” After a couple of years, she realized she needed more of a business background. “It was great to learn about culture, history and social problems but what are you going to do with all that? I wanted to do something that would positively affect society.”

It was 2008 and the recession had hit, so Nicole decided that enrolling in an MBA program at DePaul in Chicago would be the best use of her time. She was working part-time as a restaurant server but really wanted to work in environmental issues. “I wanted to work on helping our planet survive all the destruction we cause to it,” Nicole says. She was hired by an energy non-profit that was leading programs to help municipalities reduce their energy use. She earned her MBA in 2010 and went to work for the U.S. Dairy Industry, helping farmers across the country reduce their energy use. “I’d fly all over and talk to farmers about the equipment they were using on the farm and I’d talk to them about using different, more energy efficient equipment which would also save them money,” she explains, like a more efficient way to pump milk that uses less energy. “The dairy industry at the time had a goal to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. They were really ahead of their time as an industry for a goal like this,” she says.

In 2013, Nicole became a sustainability consultant at Guidehouse, where she’s still employed today. Guidehouse is a global consultancy for corporate, government and utility clients where Nicole helps big corporate clients reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. “I work with corporations like Pepsi and Taco Bell, but I also work with small governments, like Crested Butte,” where she led the Climate Action plan in 2019. She moved to CB six years ago when her company let her work remotely. She and her hubby, Jeremy Herzog, found CB on one of their many adventures. They had met in Chicago and traveled all over looking for the perfect mountain town to relocate to. “We wanted to live in a small town where we could give back to the community and enjoy the outdoors. When we moved here in 2016, I started volunteering for Sustainable CB.” She’s been board president for the past three years. 

Nicole is pretty excited about all the things Sustainable CB has accomplished for a small organization. “Our mission is to reduce waste in the Gunnison Valley. We have a program called Waste Free Events where we rent event place settings for businesses, weddings and events. It’s really competitive pricing compared to other services who provide this but we’re keeping the waste out of our landfill. We also have a program called Boomerang Bags, recycled material made into bags that you pick up at stores in town and on the mountain to be used instead of paper bags, then you return them to store,” Nicole explains. 

Another successful program she’s proud of allows residents and businesses to recycle items that curbside and CB don’t accept, like electronics, hard plastics, outdoor furniture and bike parts. “Unfortunately, we had to stop the program because we need to find a permanent location (for drop off) and secure more funding for it. But we’ve diverted over 40,000 pounds of material from the landfill. It’s quite costly which is why we really need the support of the town and county to continue this service.”

Nicole takes time to go to yoga, hike with her golden retriever Bruce, and in the winter she’ll take to the trails to Nordic ski. “I love the community. I love that it’s small and everybody knows each other and wants to help each other out. I’ve met a great group of friends and I love that I can just walk out my door to enjoy all the activities and the outdoors. I feel like I’m able to experience a bit of the adventure I was seeking but I also love my role with Sustainable CB and giving back to the community by being part of the change that we need to see in the world to keep our town sustainable and thriving.”

[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

Jay Prentiss was born into an adventurous family and from a young age his parents would take them skiing in Quebec in an old step van his father converted into a camper. If it got too cold, they’d stay at a cheap motel. The family loved to travel and would take road trips across the country. Eventually, his dad bought a little cabin at the base of Mount Saint Anne, a ski area in Quebec. 

Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Jay’s family moved to the Pennsylvania Poconos when he was 15, where he could throw a rock across the Delaware and hit the New Jersey shore. The Delaware was relatively calm and deep where it flowed by their property. “We were into swimming and eventually we got boats and jet skis. It’s wilderness, a really beautiful area,” Jay recalls. 

Although Jay enjoyed high school, life in the Poconos was quite a bit different than in New York where he had moved from. “It was very rural. I was always very much into sports in New York – soccer, wrestling and lacrosse – but I got more into individual sports in Pennsylvania, like skiing, motorcycling, rock climbing and mountain biking. I bought the first mountain bike that came into our town in 1986. I hadn’t been to Colorado since I was 4 years old and I always wanted to go because of skiing and mountain biking. I was a NASTAR ski racer when I was a kid then I got into club racing on a ski team when I moved to Pennsylvania,” which he did all through high school. Jay graduated in 1988.

Jay dreamt of attending college in Colorado. “I got a brochure of Western State, it had a photo of the ski resort and then the campus and I pictured a campus at the base of the ski area,” he says. 

He was accepted at WSC with a scholarship and ski raced all through college. “I had heard that Gunnison is the coldest place in the nation. I had a down jacket with me on the plane… in August. It’s 90 degrees in Newark and when I get off the plane in Gunnison it’s like 85 degrees, I don’t see any big mountains and I’m thinking I landed in the wrong place because it’s like desert and hot and I thought I was going to be skiing tomorrow. I realized that it wasn’t the coldest place in the country every day of the year,” he laughs and adds, “I fell in love with it, with everything, and I had four amazing years.”

Jay remembers the first dusting of snow in 1988, which was only an inch but enough to stoke his snow frenzy. He and a friend drove up to CB determined to ski and ruin their skis if necessary. “When it really dumped for the first time and they opened the resort, I had never seen anything like that before. The first year I got to Western I think was the first year the North Face opened. We skied everything. We’d hike up Kebler, no skins, no beacons, and boot-pack up.” 

Jay returned to Pennsylvania to work in the summers and come back to the valley the rest of the year for mountain adventures. “We’d ride bikes, climb mountains, rock climb and I learned how to kayak.” He graduated in 1992 with a BA in business administration and a minor in psychology but he really didn’t know what he wanted to do with that, except run a business. ”I had an obligation to be successful, so I moved to New Jersey, bought my own house, and started a small wholesale car business in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I’d buy cars, boats and motorcycles for resale.” Two years later, he merged with his dad’s business. Even though things were going just swell, he missed Colorado. 

So he bought a van, fixed it up into a cheap mini camper, sold his house, broke up with his girlfriend and hit the road in early January heading south for a hard-earned two-month party in Cocoa Beach before making his way back west to Boulder and Bozeman for some rock climbing, skiing and mountaineering. “I was living the life for a year but I really missed the Gunnison Valley. I ended up back in CB the fall of ‘96.”

Jay recalls that there was actually a serious housing shortage that year. “I was living in my van but it was starting to get cold and I couldn’t find a place. My friend Jody and I convinced Fritz of Mountain Express to let us share a room in his house, we weren’t dating but we both needed a place to live. I stayed for six years and I wound up having all kinds of roommates even after Fritz moved out to the Front Range.” 

Jay was painting in the summers and, he smiles, “Winters, I wanted to be a ski bum so I got a job working at the Twister Warming House at The Fondue. I also became a DJ at KBUT. My show was The Road Trip, my roommate Jody and I did it together. I got a part-time job working for the CBMR race department. That year we put on the X Games and all the ski races.” Through a friend, he got a gig doing extreme skiing photoshoots for one day and it turned into more work and a trip to Europe.

“Eventually, I started my own painting business, Altitude Painting, and now we have 17 employees,” he says. In-between work, Jay continued adventuring, motorcycling, climbing tall mountains in Peru and Denali and skiing. “But I really wanted to focus on making my business successful. I bought 10 lots in Gunnison out of foreclosure in the early 2000s. Because of the housing crisis at the time, I was really interested in creating affordable housing, so I put 10 modular homes on those lots.”

 Jay had fallen in love with a Mexican town he had visited, Huatulco, and was able to purchase a beach home there. “I’m a big surfer. I was fortunate to get into a home in CB back when it wasn’t expensive, but I worked my ass off to do it. I was never greedy and always took care of my employees.” 

Jay met his wife, Krista Seier in CB, she started working for him. In 2015 their son Ryder was born.

In early March of 2020, Jay contracted COVID and to everyone’s astoundment, it slammed him hard. “At the time, it was mostly older or compromised people who were affected and dying, not people like me. I have changed a lot of people’s behavior because of my COVID. A lot of people may not have taken the virus seriously if they hadn’t known me. It was two of the most hellish years you could imagine,” he relays and says that he was in and out of the hospital for over a year. They had to leave their home because he couldn’t breathe at elevation. They moved to Grand Junction but ended up at the Mayo clinic in Arizona, then bought a camper van and lived in it in New York for doctor appointments. When they were able to return home, Jay felt he was finally starting to live again. “But I’m the poster boy for long-haulers. I’m still seeing the doctor regularly for COVID,” he says.

 Back in CB, “We’re living the dream and I feel that life is really, really good. Crested Butte is the most beautiful place in the country. I have my business here, and an amazing group of people working for me. I want them to live a good life here in the valley. Having a son and my wife and family really kept me going when I was sick. She was a saint for what she had to put up with. This is the best place to raise a child, it’s like winning the lottery.”

I briefly entertained the idea of just putting a couple of the ‘moon bus’ photos on page 2 and calling it good. The iconic Crested Butte last day of the ski season tradition sort of sums up much of the CB attitude: irreverent, a little raw, insulting to some, funny to others. While I would no longer be shocked if some Tucker Carlson-type newcomer tried to file a police report over the incident or have the town ban such pornographic displays, the late afternoon Sunday moon bus lived on this past weekend. That is one sign of hope that not everything has transitioned to gentrified high-end resort blandness. The moon bus is a local’s sign of transition that the ski season is over and it is time to move to spring, the quiet off-season and eventually biking and hiking.

Last fall and into the early 2021-22 ski season we had a good ‘flip the switch’ transition. We were able to ride bikes into November and then just a few days later move to riding boards on the ski area. The same light switch transition is happening now and that is one of the blessings of our valley.

CBMR ended the ski season last weekend with costumes and pond skims and still good snow on the steeps. There was Flauschink, the GT, historical pub crawls, snowblades taming Rambo, sunshine, soft snow and DeadHead Ed’s birthday party. There was some tiredness enhanced by low pressure and obvious feelings of big picture changes happening too quickly to CB, but it was a good finale. 

And then Gunnison Trails announced on Monday that many Hartman Rocks bike trails were opening. Thank you. For those that prefer the links to the rocks, Dos Rios opened Saturday.

For a place that embraces the outdoors, such a transition is gold. I’ve always said that Hartman’s is the off-season secret treasure. My friends that like golf say the same about Dos. When it is cold and wet in the North Valley (and Tuesday’s windy rain-snow mix was one to test the soul) the west side of Gunni can be dry and warm. The Hartman trails in the spring offer early season flow that will remain buried beneath snow and mud for many more weeks around Crested Butte. 

The 30-mile trek from the Four-way is easy and represents a primary valley artery linking the two communities. While getting a tad more expensive given current gas prices, it is still worth the trip. Of course, there is a responsibility that comes with using the place. There is still some snow and mud on some of the trails and bikers and hikers should follow the protocols that protect the early season trails. Gunnison Trails basically recommends you be cool, respect others, slow down and go through muddy spots instead of around them. That is good advice any time of the year in most any situation.

Some of the trails will stay closed into the middle of May no matter how dry they are in order to protect the Gunnison Sage Grouse. Let them mate in peace! That too is a responsibility that comes with using those public lands. We have an obligation to protect all our neighbors including the wildlife.

Business transitions this time of year are not unusual. Some move locations, others close, new ideas prepare to come to fruition and open for the first time. That can be an exciting period and while there is more uncertainty than usual this year, which has led to some general community fatigue, such shifts in the spring are somewhat normal. The one transition to spring I’m not a fan of is the Little Blue Canyon Highway 50 road closures between here and Montrose. That too is a much-used artery and the work seems expensive, thoughtless and a stereotypical waste of government money. Straightening that road will encourage faster drivers and save less than a minute of travel time. But right now, for those of us wanting to head west, it is a big pain in the ass — which in some minds touches a similar theme, but is the opposite of the annual moon bus. Get it?

Look, the spring transitions are part of our cycle here. Off-season snow for example, is meant to weed out the posers. Despite some transitions I’d rather not see, so far just a few days after the ski lifts stopped spinning it appears we are blessed with the switch being flipped. There is still backcountry skiing to be had but for many, the attitude has flipped from skinning slush to pedaling dirt. It seems the right move. 

See you on the trails…

—Mark Reaman

[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

“I was in love with traditional maritime culture, and passionate about politics,” says Andris Zobs, a once aspiring social justice warrior born of political hippie parents. In his lifetime so far, Andris has mastered several disciplines, lived among various cultures and peoples and is happily landlocked in Crested Butte, entrenched in his chosen community.

Born in Boston, his mom was studying psychology at Boston University and his father was a carpenter and community organizer when they abandoned city life and moved to Walpole, New Hampshire, when Andris was less than a year old. He spent the next 10 years shuttling from New Hampshire, Michigan, Virginia, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands after his parents split. “My parents were seekers and that’s the reason they moved around so much. My dad was connected to the Latvian refugee community,” moving to Michigan to build the Latvian Study Center. When the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Andris’ grandparents and father were forced to abandon their home farm and flee in 1945. After five years in German refugee camps, they came to America. 

As a sophomore, Andris attended Proctor, a boarding school that his good friend Noah Wight had told him about. Interested in the outdoors, there was a ski program and Andris was on the whitewater kayak team. He also took classes in boatbuilding. “I was a very serious student. I loved bikes and boats.” In Sarasota, Florida, with his mom for summers and holidays, Andris learned to sail. “We didn’t have our own boats so I would go to the marina and talk my way onto various boats as a deck hand. We had lived on a boat in the Virgin Islands for a short time.” He graduated from the experiential school in 1993. 

“I had an inkling that I wanted to be a lawyer. I was politically passionate. I wanted to be a social justice warrior,” he says. And he picked up carpentry, like his father. “I had an opportunity to work in a boatyard, restoring a historical schooner, the Harvey Gamage, in Fairhaven, Massachusetts,” he explains. He spent the next couple of months rebuilding the 130-foot boat. “I lived basically in a squat with about 20 other boat builders and we slept on the floor.” 

When the boat launched, he signed on as a deck hand. “I spent the next year-and-a-half working on the boat between Maine and the Caribbean, learning traditional seamanship skills,” he says

In January of 1994, Andris jumped off the boat at St. Martin and hopped a flight to New London to start classes at Connecticut College. “I walked into my dorm room with my sea bag and it was kind of alienating, I felt like an adult amongst children. I was a serious guy, in love with traditional maritime culture, passionate about politics and the kids were into partying,” he recalls. Andris followed his passion, majoring in government and political science. He also joined the competitive sailing team, but he was culturally different than the yacht club kids, and left the team to focus more on his studies. In his junior year, he jumped at the opportunity to enroll in the one-year program at London School of Economics and Political Science in England. “London is so culturally rich. People were engaged in their coursework in a way that they weren’t at home. We also saw a ton of music, art and theater.” He returned to Connecticut to finish his final semester. 

[  By Dawne Belloise  ]

Forty. Laura Puckett Daniels doesn’t really feel or relate to that as an age factor of any sort as she headed into her fourth decade on January 12.

Although, as a writer, she might be inspired to wrap some prose around it and reflect on her incredible journey so far, one that has taken her from multiple childhood homes to the far reaches of Mongolia. “I was born to be 40, at 16 I should have been 40,” she laughs. “I’m just hitting my stride.”

Having had a somewhat nomadic childhood when her father continuously moved the family to advance his banking career, Laura went from South Carolina to Ohio, Indiana and Minnesota, where they finally settled when she was 10. She resoundingly rejects the millennial generation classification she was born into, however, growing up without cell phones, social media and dial-up Internet she says, “I’m grateful because we could interact with each other, as a kid it was much healthier.”  

 As a youngster, church was part of their family life, where she and her father sang in the choir. She wasn’t very outdoorsy, she admits. “I preferred to read, do art and my own thing. I was a pretty shy kid.” But in seventh grade she began running cross country. “I liked cross country because it was the closest I could get to flying. There was a real sense of freedom to it. It was the first time I experienced the joy of movement. In the Gunnison Valley, we know that feeling, whether it’s riding bikes, skiing or dancing, there’s a real joy of moving our bodies through the world.”

Through high school, Laura became more focused on cross country running in the fall, track in the spring and Nordic skiing in the winter. Beginning at the age of 13, she attended an intense canoeing and backpacking camp on the edge of the Boundary Waters in Minnesota every year, which profoundly influenced the course of her life. Each subsequent summer, the trips became longer and further north so that by the age of 18, she was spending 42 days paddling through the Canadian Arctic Ocean with 24 hours of daylight, no communication and accessible only by bush planes. “It changed how I perceived myself. I was an indoor kid, I didn’t see myself as hardy or sporty. I started to realize that I was strong and had endurance. I started to believe I was capable of things I never thought possible,” she said of her growing self confidence. “It was really formative for me for how I approach life and that’s how I’ve done every job ever since.”

After high school graduation in 2000, Laura enrolled at Davidson College in North Carolina on a running scholarship. “College was good at helping me understand that I was a small fish in a big pond,” she says of her running. “I was top 10 in high school, but in college I was trying hard to be in the top 50.” However, Laura was really more of a poet and chose English as her major with a semester abroad in New Zealand. “I was interested in the environment and how people interacted with it so I took an ecology field study,” she smiles and adds, “Also, I was a big Lord of the Rings fan. “We did backpacking, snorkeling and birdwatching in different ecosystems with so much biodiversity. I didn’t love the science part of it, sampling invertebrates from a stream was not my passion but I loved watching how people interacted with the land. I talked to people about their history and relationship with the land they loved.”

Laura had her dreams of being a poet and traveling. “If I was going to be a writer I needed more experiences in the world to write about,” she says. In the summer 2004 she became the canoe guide for the camp program she had been in. In the fall, she taught middle school English for a year in Chambery, in the foothills of the French Alps. “I joined a Nordic ski club there not realizing that these clubs were training grounds for the Olympics.” She started out training with others in her age group, which she confesses was a disaster because she was out of her league. “They kept moving me down into younger groups,” finally putting her in with the 10-year-old girls, “where I finally learned how to Nordic ski.” 

In 2006, Laura returned to guiding canoe trips, staying at camp that winter to teach environmental education. “I loved living at camp but it was in far north Minnesota and isolated, and I really missed doing things and the cultural scene.” She bolted for Minneapolis where she was hired as an editorial assistant for an arts and culture magazine called The Rake. When she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study poetry and nomadic culture in Mongolia, she left for the Steppes. “I wanted to go to a traditionally nomadic country because I was interested how people interact with place. I was looking to understand my own nomadism because I had moved so much in my life. I had always felt pretty displaced. 

“I was trying to find a way of feeling a sense of home and place while being in motion,” she explains. “I thought living and studying nomads could teach me something about that.” Laura lived among Mongolian peoples for 11 months, learning their obscure language and culture. “I went with a research idea but the reality on the ground was a lot more difficult. I focused on a specific region, Hovd, on the far western border of Kazakhstan, and focused on meeting poets in that region. They have a long heritage of poetry in their culture.” From Hovd City, Laura traveled to more remote villages in that province, interviewing poets there.

Afterwards, there was the extensive work of translating the concepts with her interpreter. “I would interrogate them in Mongolian about their experience of place, then try to capture an English equivalent.” 

As much of a learning experience as it was, Laura returned to the States a bit rattled, tired and searching for her own sense of place. “I thought I wanted to travel my whole life and be a nomad, but instead of looking for the next big trip, I started looking for a home.” When she was teaching in France, a friend there with a family home in Meridian Lake had spoken of Crested Butte with such fondness that Laura visited her in the winter of 2008. “I thought it was like a fairy tale. I had never been someplace so beautiful.” She was working as a barista in Minneapolis, freelance writing and, “Trying to write my big book about Mongolia. I was trying to figure out what was next for me. I wanted to make a home somewhere and I needed it to be closer to nature than living in Minneapolis. I was always happiest in wild places.”

She spent that fall driving around the west and applying for jobs in places she thought she could make home. “I visited a lot of cool towns but CB was always there as the ideal,” she says. But right about that time, the economy crashed and Laura was out of money with no work. “I realized that if I was making coffee and cleaning toilets I might as well do it in the most beautiful place on earth,” so she packed up the Subie and arrived in CB on her 27th birthday, “And I haven’t left since,” she smiles.

Being here has given Laura a sense of groundedness, she says. “To me, it meant I had access to wild, soul soothing places but I quickly fell in love with the interconnectedness of knowing people.” She immediately signed up to teach at the Nordic Center. Within a month, she started coaching high school track at CBCS. Throughout her time in CB, Laura worked multiple jobs but in the winter of 2009 she became assistant manager, then manager of the CB Nordic Center (CBNC) and in 2012, development assistant for CBNC while attending Western Colorado University for a teaching license. She spent five years as a middle and high school English teacher at CBCS. “I love teaching, the kids, and I love that school, but I felt called to serve our community in other ways.” 

In 2016, Laura completed her masters degree in education from WCU, while she was teaching English. She’s still a cross country running coach in the fall. “I’ve coached something 11 of the 13 years I’ve been here.” She had been on the board of the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association for two years, after which she was hired there as staff in 2018, but the Nordic Center wanted her back. “They scooped me back up in 2019 as development and marketing director,” she says of her current position.

One of her first jobs was Shades on Elk, which is where she met her now husband, Pete Daniels, who came in to buy sunglasses. “He was really witty and we chatted. I was 27, single and living my best life, skiing a lot, hanging with friends, going out to every party and fest that existed in CB. Pete would walk the bars as his night shift (he’s one of our beloved CB marshals),” and one night they had an in-depth conversation. They started dating in July of 2010, “We’ve been together ever since,” Laura tells. They married in February of 2016. 

Laura is immersed in the community she feels is her everlasting home, serving as the chair of the Gunnison County Planning Commission for the past three years, as the first woman to hold that position. It’s also her second year serving as secretary on the School District Accountability Committee. Additionally, Laura was recently named to the Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (POST) as well. 

“It’s hard to imagine living anywhere else,” she feels that it’s about the community. “I have incredible friends here, but one of the things I love about our town is, you have your first tier of friends but then there’s your acquaintance friends, your next circle is so large it’s hundreds of friends – the folks you have a beer with on the deck of the Brick in the spring, the folks you see on the Nordic trails, the folks you see at the KBUT Fish Fry, or those who commute on the Rec Path the same time of day that I do. I feel like that interconnectedness is what makes this place so special. I firmly believe our community is still there and still strong, but sometimes you might have to look a little harder,” she says of the changes here. But she tells of walking down Elk, sitting on benches with people and feels, “A real easing of my heart.” 

[  By Dawne Belloise  ] 

Eric Davis was at one point determined to live his life as a surf bum. Instead, he found his way east, trading the California waves for the vertical frozen white stuff of Crested Butte and the surrounding mountains. E.D., as he’s locally known, spent the first few years of his childhood in Annapolis, Maryland, and with his father as a Navy pilot, the family moved around quite a bit. As a young boy, while the family was living in Memphis, his father brought him outside to witness a meteor shower and that event became one of his fondest childhood recollections. “I was 6 years old and there were fireballs and everything,” Eric smiles and also recalls the many airshows he attended with his family. 

The Navy family was eventually moved to San Diego. “Our backyard sloped off into an undeveloped canyon and we played there, where there were rabbits, lizards, the occasional rattlesnake and all those things that kids like. It was great growing up next to the canyon.” They loved California so after the aerospace program collapsed, they moved to Los Angeles. “It was a drag moving to L.A.,” he says, because they missed their canyon playground. But now he was only three miles from the Hermosa Beach so when he hit his teenage years and could drive, he’d head to the shore where hanging out at the beach and surfing became his passion. “I thought I was going to grow up to be a surf bum but instead I ended up being a ski bum,” he laughs. 

The market for engineers, along with the economy, wasn’t doing so well in the 1970s when Eric’s father took a job in construction in Aurora, Colorado, and Eric followed him there from LA. in 1971. Eric discovered that he really enjoyed the work. “It was no stress. I liked all the aspects of physical labor and being outside.” He had begun to explore the nearby mountains when a neighbor raved about this place called Crested Butte. “She continually went off about how cool it was. I had only skied once on a hill in Wisconsin. I didn’t know how to turn, I just jumped up in the air and tried to turn the skis sideways.” 

Every few months, Eric would travel back to L.A. from Aurora in his VW van, working so he could support a surf bum lifestyle. What he discovered was, “I started liking the mountains and being upstream from all that people pollution. I wasn’t liking L.A. anymore.” On his way back to Colorado in 1973, Eric decided to check out this Crested Butte place that his neighbor carried on about. His air-cooled VW classically sputtered along like a sewing machine over Kebler Pass as night fell. “I didn’t see CB until the next morning from the side of Highway 135,” where he had pulled over to sleep. When he emerged from his van and looked up at Paradise Divide, he was wowed. “My jaw dropped. Just seeing the shapes of Purple Mountain against Mineral Point and the flatness of the valley floor contrasting with Paradise Divide, it’s hard to describe but I thought, oh my god, maybe I want to live here.” He came back several times, hiking Conundrum to soak in the springs and exploring the area. “Back then you could drive a VW to Copper Lake.” 

Returning to Denver to work for a few more years so he could totally trick out another VW van for living in the varying mountain climates, Eric and his Irish setter named Freedom packed up and headed over the Divide to choose between either Telluride or Crested Butte in November of 1978. He had determined that skiing only 12 days a year on the Front Range wasn’t cutting it, “It just wasn’t enough.” 

On the road, he picked up a hitchhiker on Highway 285, who happened to be Peachtree Jim’s roommate, Jim Guther, who was living with a host of others in the old “Cathouse” in Gunnison. “He suggested I live in CB and get a job as a maid but that didn’t sit too well,” Eric mused, but Guther’s explanation of why Eric should take a job in housekeeping piqued his interest. “Think about it,” Eric recalled Guther’s reveal, “a new guy in a new town and most housekeepers are women and you get a ski pass. The light bulb went off,” Eric laughs. It was the day before Thanksgiving when Eric walked into Ptarmigan Property Management in the Emmons building, just above the deli that Jim “Deli” Schmidt, the now retired mayor of Crested Butte, got his name. Eric was hired as a housekeeper on the spot, and began cleaning at the Emmons, Axtel, Whetstone and Snowcrest condos.

Eric lived in his van, most often parked in Whetstone or Axtel lots after a full day of working and skiing. One brisk evening, he let his dog out to do his thing and then fell asleep. When he awoke, his pooch had bolted, “Here’s this long haired and bushy bearded guy in a VW van yelling, ‘Freedom! Freedom!’ at 11 p.m. and then I see lights going on in the condos,” he grinned. Eric hightailed it out of there as soon as his dog named Freedom returned, “Because I figured the people in the condos thought I was some long-haired freak on acid screaming freedom.” 

Eric moved to 417 Whiterock for a few years and then moved to First Street before buying the house next door in 1987, now known as the Air Conditioned house. “When I was living on Whiterock, a roomie moved out and left a bunch of stuff and this old air condition sign was part of that. We actually had it on 417 for awhile, and that’s how my house got its name. We figured it was a joke because nobody ever needed air conditioning here.” In fact, he tells of those days when Crested Butte’s houses or systems weren’t so energy efficient or insulated. “There’d be a really cold morning and you’d wake up and the pipes would be frozen so you’d go to the Forest Queen for breakfast, head to the bathroom, and sit at the community table with your friends and nod, ‘Oh your plumbing froze too.’ I think business doubled at the Forest Queen when the pipes froze around town.” 

From 1984 to 2000, Eric was on the CBMR ski patrol. “I wanted to be on ski patrol because we got paid to ski, throw bombs and help people, I mean how good can it get? It sure was a good time with the camaraderie, early mornings out there on control work, being out on the mountain when it was so quiet. Some of my favorite memories was what we called taking super sweep. You’d be up at the top at ski patrol headquarters waiting for all the sweeps to get down and call in clear,” he says of the nightly task of ski patrol scouring every run to ensure no skier is left on the mountain. ”And then you’d ski down by yourself with this beautiful view of the whole range and the whole mountain to yourself. Most often I’d like to come down International because of the view. At that time of day, it’s sunset and it’s magnificent.”

After ski patrol, Eric shoveled many a roof, did various construction jobs and says happily, “I even did a little bit of housekeeping again.” He met Audrey Anderson at a camp out at Lost Lake where he led a group of friends for a hike up East Beckwith. “We’d go dog walking,” he says of their budding romance, “I had another Irish setter named Seamus.” In a town where dog birthdays are an event, he and Seamus were invited to a party for Audrey’s dog. “It was her golden retriever Estee’s second birthday party, January 12, 2008, and we’ve been together ever since,” he says. The couple recently tied the knot on 4/20 at 4:20 p.m. on skis in a Woods Walk ceremony with just the two of them and their pooches as witnesses during the height of the COVID lockdown. 

Throughout his decades here, Eric has many exceptional memories of winter crossings to Aspen via Conundrum, winter snow caves at Copper and Green Lakes, Save the Red Lady tours over Pearl Pass to Aspen, and extraordinary summers which brought even more camping and mountain biking. “We didn’t even call it mountain biking back then, they were just klunkers with brakes and gears. My first mountain bike weighed like 40 pounds back in 1981 and we rode those over Pearl Pass.”

Eric and Audrey don’t think they’d find another home that feels as unique as Crested Butte. “I just still love it here, and all the memories. All my friends are here. There’s a sense of security here, being around town, hiking or camping, and then running into someone, an old friend who says, ‘Hi Eric.’ Besides,” he grins, “it would be too late to start over somewhere else and if we went someplace else it would have to be a place that had more snow than here. Even though it’s changed and become gentrified, and we’ve thought about moving, I feel it would be the biggest mistake I ever made.”

[  by Dawne Belloise  ]

Elle Truax grew up surrounded by the lush orchards and vineyards nestled along the banks of the Columbia River in Hood River, Oregon, where breweries and watersports are fostered. Despite being quite a distance from the coast, the area is known for its windsurfing and Elle proclaims kitesurfing the Columbia Gorge was her passion. “You rig up on the Oregon side and surf into Washington,” she says. Both Elle’s parents were environmental engineers – her mother focused on air quality and her father on water quality. Her dad grew up skiing the icy East Coast resorts, but her mom hit the slopes around the Seattle area and Elle laughs, “She kicks his ass skiing.”

As a kid, when it was time to stash away the board and kite for the winter, Elle dove into her other passion, ski racing. She joined the local Mt. Hood team when she was 7. “I was the kid who would throw a fit when I had to go in to eat lunch because I just wanted to keep skiing. I’m pretty competitive, so I grasped the sport early on,” she says. As a freshman in high school, she was successfully competing.

Elle recalls the regimen of hard core ski racing discipline. “In the summers you’re in the gym working out and during the winters you’re training all the time,” she explains.

Her dream was to be an Olympic ski racer so when she won an academic scholarship her high school sophomore year to attend the prestigious Rowmark Ski Academy in Salt Lake City, it made it affordable for her family to find a way to fund the rest of the expenses. “I was ecstatic. It was a big deal, especially financially,” she tells. “My family has worked hard for everything we have.”

She arrived in Salt Lake City in August of 2013, living with a host family. “School was so hard and I was training with the ski team every day after school. We’d do a lot of outdoor training, like road biking and running.” It was October, just before the team’s scheduled trip to train on Colorado resort slopes, when Elle’s dreams were literally shattered.

“We were road biking up Emigration Canyon. I was doing warm up laps, crossing the road to group up to start the ride,” when a speeding car T-boned her at 40 mph. Her bike went under the car and Elle flew up on top. “I remember being in the air thinking, I’m going to die if I don’t land right. I landed on hands and knees and my left patella took most of the force.” Elle’s kneecap shattered. “I had so much adrenaline that I got up and walked to the side of the road.” She describes a traumatic scene where her teammates were crying and her coaches came running. “I remember, being on the ground, looking at my kneecap. It’s about a week before we go to Colorado to start on-snow training. I was totally in denial saying, I’m going skiing, I’m fine. I wasn’t paying attention to the pain, I was just pissed.”

Her team had to take off without her. After multiple surgeries, wires and screws, a massive brace and in a wheelchair for a month, Elle was determined to still get out on the slopes. She began upper body workouts, building her strength, along with intense physical therapy. “I’m frustrated and in disbelief. I’m nagging the doctors about when can I ski.”

Incredibly, she was able to strap on her skis in February but she says, “I couldn’t do anything. I was just sliding around. My knee wasn’t strong. I couldn’t ski a race course with my team.” She was cleared to ski for real in March. Her goal was to qualify for Junior Olympics at the end of March in Alaska. However, she missed the qualifier by one spot. “I wasn’t ready to compete at that level yet. But it was still quite an accomplishment,” she says, rightfully proud.

With mounting hospital and medical bills, Elle was maxed out financially and emotionally and didn’t return to the academy for her junior year. She finished out high school at Mt. Bachelor Ski Education Foundation in Bend, Oregon, where she graduated a semester early in 2015 and took the opportunity to simply ski through her final semester of high school. “I’d go up every day. I started to freeski a lot, skiing with people who were better than me, going off cliffs, doing 360s. I became a really solid, all-round skier. It wasn’t about ski racing anymore, it was more about having fun.”

Taking a gap semester before college, Elle traveled to Chile for two months to freeski at Portillo and, “to find my passion again.” She stayed with a Chilean friend in Los Andes. Fluent in Spanish, she was able to work in her friend’s family bed and breakfast in exchange for housing. While in Chile, she decided to attend Western Colorado University in Gunnison because she had several friends from Hood River at WCU. “I heard they had a Big Mountain Freeride ski team.” Elle was accepted into WCU with a scholarship as a Borick Scholar, arriving on campus in January of 2016.

She joined the freeride team for Big Mountain competitions on the freeride world qualifier tour. She hadn’t even seen Crested Butte yet. “The first time I ever skied CB was on Headwall as a forerunner for the competition. I couldn’t believe all that was so close to Gunnison. I instantly fell in love and everyone was there because they wanted to be,” she says. Elle had her revelation, “I decided it’s what I really wanted to do. My passion shifted away from the U.S. Ski Team and the Olympics to freeride and big mountain skiing.”

Elle began competing that first semester. “Ed Dujardin was my coach, and I was stoked. Our trainings were serious. We’d push ourselves. Ed would be at the bottom of Body Bag screaming at me to huck myself off of whatever was in front of me. Things like that are such a good feeling after you do it,” she laughs. “That’s my whole experience in freeride, you’re really so scared but it’s so rewarding.”

Every summer Elle returned to Hood River to kiteboard and work, becoming certified as a wildland firefighter, fighting fires in California. “But it was traumatizing for me, it was a wake up call. I was a little 18-year-old girl fighting fires with all these creepy guys. I felt uncomfortable. Someone broke into my truck and stole all my gear. It made me decide to go back to WCU and get my degree and have a different job to support myself.” She graduated in 2019 with a business major in marketing and a minor in communication.

“I wasn’t sold on CB yet and I was a broke college kid. I wanted to live the life I wanted to live,” Elle says and moved back to Hood River, getting a job in the marketing department of Naish Kiteboarding Company. “It was a full-on nine-to-five behind a desk all day. But it was a dumpster fire for me. I couldn’t ski.” And she admits, “It was back to the Pacific Northwest cement snow.” Then COVID hit that spring of 2020. She missed skiing in the Butte, so she moved back that September, working at the Dogwood and remote part-time marketing with Smak Strategies.

Another realization recently led Elle to her new business endeavor, “I’ve always worn wide brim hats and there weren’t any hat shops in Crested Butte like there are at most ski towns,” she noticed. She took off for Denver to gather info and instruction on becoming a milliner. “I wanted to learn to make hats and get insight as how to make them. I always admired the work of hatter Nick Fouquet,” she says, researching his hats and videos online. “His hats are extremely expensive,” she describes some of the famous milliner’s methods of steam shaping, taking sandpaper to hats, and using fire to give smoothness and shine to his felted creations. “I thought that was so cool.”

Serendipitously, Elle met a hat toolmaker who gave her a hat block and some felts and a Tennessee milliner’s phone number who also tutors. She was on the plane the following week for an intensive workshop with the master, after which she began to drain her savings to set up her Elk Avenue shop, Bjorkstam Hat Company (Bjorkstamhatco.com, also on Instagram and Facebook). “Bjorkstam” is Icelandic for birch tree and as a child, Elle had an enormous one with a treehouse. But more importantly to her, it’s a dedication to her mom, whose surname is Bjorkstam.

“It was a turning point to risk everything to get the mandatory machinery. The CB Center for the Arts came through with a temporary winter workspace,” in which she cranked out hats all off-season to prepare for her June 4 opening. Elle partnered with Caitlyn Ward of Lonewolf Collective who makes hatbands for her creations. “Everyone in town was so supportive. I realized through this process that CB is my home. Making hats here in Crested Butte made it feel like home and I felt like I had a purpose. Everyday is a new challenge that I love. I’m so thankful for this community and friendships that I’ve grown.”

Some new tweaks to uphill access policy

[ By Kendra Walker ]

A last-minute dusting of snow graced Mt. Crested Butte Tuesday and Wednesday morning to welcome the opening day of Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s 2021/2022 winter season. Snowmaking crews have been hard at work this past week to provide enough skiable terrain accessed from the Red Lady Express just in time for the mountain’s day before Thanksgiving opening tradition.

“The Red Lady Express started spinning at 9 a.m. for our 60th anniversary season!” said senior manager of communications Jessica Miller. “Guests were welcomed with fresh pocket bacon, donuts and music in the base area followed by our first chair banner breaking. We were also treated to some fresh, white flakes falling from the sky– hopefully a sign of a great winter ahead!”

Open terrain included Peanut, Lower Keystone and Warming House Hill. The Peachtree lift that was replaced this summer with a new three-person fixed grip lift is not yet running but will open for the season soon. “CBMR will continue to make snow at every opportunity to expand terrain offerings this early season, as weather and conditions permit,” said Miller.

Uphill access is also now permitted with the opening of the season, permissible only before and after operating hours on designated routes.

As in past years, uphill travel is allowed after 4:30 p.m. and before 8:45 a.m. during the entire operating season. Headlamps are required and reflective clothing is recommended. For best visibility, it’s recommended to stay in the center of the trail. Also, no pets are allowed on the mountain at any time to allow for increased safety when snowmobiles and snowcats are present.

Uphill users are required to stay on the designated uphill route at all times, both going up and down. This is the same route from previous years – Warming House Hill – Lower Keystone -Upper Park – Yellow Brick Road – Paradise Bowl – however; new this year is that there will be no uphill access permitted beyond Paradise Bowl, including on Silver Queen Road and Windy Gap.

Also new this season, no uphill access is permitted at all when ski patrol is conducting early morning avalanche control work. A red light will be on at the top of tower 3 of the Red Lady Express lift to alert users of this closure.

Fat biking is permitted before 9 a.m. and after 4:30 p.m. on the designated winter bike route: Warming House Hill – Lower Keystone – Houston. Extra points are given if you have a Dave Ochs sighting.

As a reminder, health and safety protocols are in place at CBMR. While face coverings are not required outdoors in the lift lines or on chairlifts, they are required in all resort indoor settings including restaurants, lodging properties, restrooms, retail and rental locations. Guests ages 12 and over are required to show proof of vaccination for indoor dining at Paradise Warming House, all-day SRS programs, and Mountain Sports Teams programs.

This season also marks the 60th anniversary of CBMR, and the celebrations will continue throughout the season, including the return of local favorite events like the Al Johnson Telemark Ski Race, the New Year’s Eve Torchlight Parade, the Pond Skim and a spring Ski Town Breakdown.

Was it voter fatigue or just public participation fatigue? This was certainly no Trumpian election that triggered emotions that then led to a massive turnout as 6,061 ballots, or less than half of those eligible, were cast this fall throughout the county compared to more than 11,000 during last year’s presidential election. Granted, the races on this year’s ballot were a lot more tame and the debate over the issues were actually a lot more civilized but the relatively low voter turnout was a bit of a surprise.

I say it’s time for incoming CB mayor Ian Billick (congrats) to get on the horn and call in the Cyber Ninjas and see where all those votes disappeared to. Nine of them might have gone to the Gunnison Fire District race where its property tax proposal failed by just those nine votes. Talk about close.

In the end a bunch of Crested Butte citizens braved the Tuesday snow and sleet to cast their ballots in person. Poll workers at the Parish Hall said a steady stream of people rolled into the space to mark their ballots throughout the day. Some people still consider Election Day in CB to be a holiday.

Congratulations to Jason MacMillan, Anna Fenerty, Beth Goldstone and Chris Haver, who Crested Butte citizens chose to join Billick and lead the community into the immediate future. All eight people who threw their hat into the ring to run for a seat on council and serve the community did so with good hearts and sincere intentions. All have a love of the community and those who fell short this week will hopefully stay involved in some fashion as there is no shortage of opportunities to help influence this small but powerful community. Having a deep bench is just another attribute for this community.

Despite hours and hours and hours of debate over the summer and fall, the controversial Crested Butte Community Housing Tax went down as voters did not support an annual fee on second homes in town. Many of those opposed to the tax cried foul and suggested a broader, more North Valley inclusive tax be put in front of the electorate and that could happen in 2022. I too think there are more equitable and politically palatable pathways to raise good money to address workforce housing. The need remains and now it’s time to find a more thoughtful approach to planning and funding for affordable housing projects at this end of the valley.

In another close race the Crested Butte Fire Protection District saw 53 percent of the voters approve a property tax to pay for a new fire station to be located along Gothic Road. People here rightfully step up when asked to support our first responders and this was a big step toward a bigger (31,000 square feet) and better facility for firefighters, EMTs and the Mountain Rescue team. I personally think it wasn’t fully baked and it still has to go through the town’s BOZAR review and council annexation process so the concerns raised can still be addressed. But a win is a win and this election result is a big step forward for the CBFPD.

And that leaves us with a farewell to longtime public servant and CB mayor for a few more days, Jim Schmidt. Known around town as Deli, Jim has spent 10 years as the Crested Butte mayor presiding over the town council in the middle seat. Emerging from the working man roots of the Crested Butte tourism base, Deli has sat as mayor while working as a bartender and bus driver.

He embraced the political role and was not shy about letting his passengers know the mayor was their driver. I’d guess the mayor makes 23 percent in tips compared to a councilperson that might pull in 20 percent. But it also led to deep relationships that gave him a broad perspective of how Crested Butte worked beyond people coming to meetings.

Deli treasured interactions with old and young, residents and second homeowners, struggling workers, tourists and trust funders. He has sat through literally thousands and thousands of hours of meetings. He has served as mayor or on town council with scores of individuals (myself included) in the 1980s, 1990s into the 2000s and up until this month.

As a guy in his 70s, he was not afraid to grasp the technology of Zoom meetings that kept citizens involved during a once in a hundred year pandemic (something Mt. Crested Butte might watch and learn from) and embraced the role of mayor in a small town. He listened to others and while not always agreeing with their position, he tried to understand where a differing view was coming from.

You can’t be in the position Deli was, for as long as he was, without ruffling a few feathers. And he did. But he spoke his truth, pissed some people off, made others happy and made decisions while listening to both his head and his heart. When he knew a council debate was going to be contentious, he as mayor always started the discussion by reminding the crowd to be respectful, not use personal insults and to speak to the council, not another audience member. He wanted respectful debate, not insane argument and while not always achieving that goal, he always made it clear that was his expectation. It mostly worked and he set the proper tone for what I saw many times could have turned into ugly arguments.

My friend Deli prided himself for being able to ride meetings well into the wee hours as he was a night owl. Not everyone shared that pride or ability. His natural inclination was to let every person who wanted to speak, to speak…as long as they wanted…to a fault. He would pretty much cut someone off only at the prodding from fellow councilmembers — otherwise we might still be listening to an argument from 2014 about why bike racks should stay out until November 1 instead of October 31. But hey, he presided over perhaps the shortest council meeting in a decade last Monday as the meat of the meeting lasted just over an hour. Thanks for saving that gem to the very end, Deli. Now, hopefully his replacement Ian Billick can carry that final example forward.

Jim Schmidt has helped guide this place in some “interesting times.” The town remains a special place thanks in large part to his leadership. Last Monday, he mentioned that he would have a few parting words as he handed over the gavel at the November 15 meeting. He then smiled as he announced he would be heading into the sunset…starting with the sunset in Maui. Not a bad plan for a down-to-earth guy who loves this community and leaves a pretty sweet legacy.

—Mark Reaman