Riding the wave of life

By Dawne Belloise

Once inside the door of Mountain Tails, you’re greeted by a lively black Aussie-border collie named Aura, who will dare you to throw a somewhat slimy, tattered dragon clenched in her smiling mouth. Behind the counter sits her master, Brandon Johanns, the store manager, who has the low-down on the best nourishment, toy, collar or costume for your fur baby, be it canine or feline. Brandon fell in love with his puppy after Aura, one of a litter of eight, ran up, jumped into his lap and then fell asleep. And with that, he knew they were meant for each other. “Working at the pet shop, I wanted a dog and was dreaming of an Aussie-border collie and the litter in Crested Butte South was just perfect timing.” Like most locals, Brandon is multi-faceted with a myriad of life stories and experiences.

A native son of Colorado, Brandon was born and raised in Colorado Springs. His father was a medical lab tech and later became a medical business administrator. His mom was crafty and artistic, a flower designer and interior designer. Growing up, Brandon’s family stuck pretty close to home with family vacations spent in places like Breckenridge and the Four Corners area. “I was really into school sports and ran cross country and track. My friends and I rode mountain bikes, BMX and did mountainboarding.” The latter, which he explains for the uninitiated, is like a snowboard with big off-road wheels. “It’s a really big skate board that you can strap into. We’d go find grass hills and mountain bike trails and go to the U.S. Open Mountainboarding competitions in Aspen.”

He tells that mountainboarding was started by two guys in Colorado Springs and is very big in Europe and Japan. In his early teens, in the mid-1990s, Brandon went to work at MBS mountainboards. “They paid in equipment and since we weren’t rich kids and couldn’t afford $500 boards, it was super cool.” He’d compete in Aspen and travel to other competitions in California and Kansas. “It’s really like a hillbilly underground sport,” Brandon laughs.

Brandon had his sights set on going to Western State College (now Western Colorado University) when he graduated from high school in 2005. He had already met with their cross country coach, who had invited him to join the team during his high school meet and greet. “But my dad heard it was nicknamed ‘Wasted State’ and nixed it, which is funny because I wound up here later anyway.”

Brandon instead enrolled at CSU in Fort Collins. “I was into psychology and they had a good cross country team too,” but the training was intense. “I got really burned out. The training was too much. I couldn’t balance my studies.” So he quit running and dropped out of the team to focus on academics, which opened up a bunch of free time, time that he used to pursue a new sport. “I started snowboarding. We’d go all over Summit County. I had only snowboarded a couple times when I was growing up.”

In the summers, he’d mountainboard and when the snow started flying again he became passionate about snowboarding, so much so that his studies became secondary.

“At CSU I was having trouble with math because there was no teacher. The class was done all on computer so I took a class at Front Range Community College, where there was an actual teacher. I was also able to take art classes, which I couldn’t do with my major at CSU.”

Brandon discovered that he had an interest in photography and signed up for a film—not digital—photography class. “Suddenly I was getting A’s.” At the end of that summer he dropped out of CSU to pursue photography, signing up for classes at Red Rocks Community College. “It made me really happy and it was the most enjoyable couple years of my life. I was learning and successful.” He also took a job at Elway’s in Denver. “Denver living was pretty cool. I enjoyed it. I had never lived in a big city. Colorado Springs doesn’t really have a city culture.” After finishing his photography studies, Brandon began freelancing as a wedding photographer and for Snowboard Colorado magazine.

He had still never been to Gunnison or the valley. “I had a mountainboard friend who had moved to Crested Butte and kept telling me that I needed to visit for Soul Train, so we drove from Denver, went to Soul Train and I had a really great time. I watched the Grand Traverse start at midnight. The next day, I fell in love with Crested Butte. I had run into a CSU college friend on Elk Avenue, Lulu Nelson, and we went and hung out. My friends were at a Grateful Dead tribute band at the Center for the Arts and because the show was almost over, they let me in.”

What moved him was what he saw inside. “There was a group of people dancing together like I had never seen before, they were dancing with so much joy and bliss and comfort. I felt that I had found a place I never knew existed, where people could be more authentic and be comfortable in their own skin. Living in the city, people were so self-conscious but here, they didn’t care, they were just having so much fun dancing together.” He packed up and moved to town during the winter of 2012. He started as a lift op and put out a roommate call on Craigslist. “I got a call the next day, and I moved into the hippie house on the mountain,” and he laughs that he’s been living there on and off ever since.

Brandon was also curious about inner spiritual work. “I wanted to put some energy into my spirituality, explore myself and what life is a bit more so I signed up with Judy Theis to study Reiki. I received my Reiki 1, 2 and 3 [certifications] as well as learning about how to ride the wave of life. It taught me a lot about myself and reality as well as healing past trauma.” At the same time during his first year here, he was exhibiting his photography at the now-defunct ArtNest. “It was such a cool collective and fun to meet all those creatives.”

But when his housing situation fell through, he ended up moving back to Colorado Springs. “I couldn’t find housing in Crested Butte. It was my first off-season experience and I didn’t know what to prepare for. I moved home and did construction work and saved up money. Then my buddy in Brooklyn invited me to come live with him. Photography played a big part of the decision since my buddy was the webmaster for Complex Magazine and had a lot of connections to big-name photographers. I got to see inside the industry and do more studio shoots that I hadn’t really done professionally before. We were shooting album covers and celebrities for magazine covers.”

The position, like many apprentice jobs, didn’t pay and you were expected to be thankful for the opportunity and experience. Brandon’s entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and to make a living in NYC, he came up with a fabulous idea. “I would sell Polaroids to people walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. They’d get a photo of themselves and the whole iconic bridge in the background. I could make over $100 in two hours. For a while I thought Polaroids were going to be my art form because although it wasn’t digital, I didn’t need a darkroom.”

NYC, he recalls, was good and bad. “The subway, the energy and the traffic got to me. I was never worried about anyone messing with me, but the crowds and being in a tube underground… There were days I chose to stay in the apartment because I needed to decompress and recharge. I ended up spending a lot of time in the Greenwood Cemetery,” he says of one of the most beautiful and peaceful places in Brooklyn and the city.

And he also loved going to the art galleries, which, he says, “Were epic.” After four months of living with his friend in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, he realized the expenses of moving out and having his own place were more than he could afford. He had had his fill of NYC, plus, he was missing his Colorado, the lifestyle and its mountains.

Brandon landed in Boulder and worked at Natural Grocers as bulk foods manager. “In one year, that job taught me everything I needed to be manager at Mountain Tails.” He did a pop-up gear shop for Pearl Izumi, setting up at each stop of the U.S. Pro Challenge bike race. It gave him enough cash to move back to Crested Butte. “A room had opened again at the hippie house and I swooped back in.” It was the fall of 2015 and Brandon took a job working at Acme Liquor and also as a diver at Elk Avenue Prime. Mountain Tails had hired him to work a couple days a week but they quickly offered the full-time manager position to him when it became available. “When people come in to the store, they’re in such a good mood. I get to spend time chatting with people, especially the locals during the slower times. I get to spend time with their pets and the merchandise is super fun. I get to order toys and the cool collars and it’s all fun. I’m so grateful for that.” He’s been there over four years now.

This year, Brandon ran the Cart to Cart, a trail racing series. “I want to keep running and racing. I got back into running after 10 years of not doing it and one of my favorite things is running the trails here in the summer.” He’s run the Grin and Bear It, Living Journeys Half Marathon, the Park to Peak to Pint, placing second in the entire series the past two years. Of course, he’s still snowboarding in the winter and just discovered his love of splitboarding. “I’m just learning to get into the backcountry, and took my Avy-1 course with Irwin Guides.”

Brandon is home here and he feels satisfied. “I don’t see myself leaving Crested Butte because it has everything I want. Housing is really scary though because there’s not enough affordable housing. The big dream is to one day be a homeowner but I don’t know if that’ll ever happen. I love the hippie house, the location and my roommates, but it would be nice someday to have no roommates or just one roommate.”

For the time being, Brandon is living the dream, a boy and his dog. “I’m really looking forward to taking Aura running with me,” he says, now that she’s almost a year old, “and revisiting places and exploring with her.”

A Northwoods man in the West Elk mountains

By Dawne Belloise

John Polzin’s Facebook pages are filled with photos of high elevation snowmobile escapades, grinning in chest-deep backcountry snow. One shows him hunting wild fowl with smiling dogs; there is the sanctity of his fly fishing and the reverence at the edge of a river, long views of misted mountains and fields of wildflowers, charts of backyard medicinal herbal remedies and his recognizably broad smile on a dusty face in dirt-bike gear. One definitely gets the overall picture of John’s life and it’s all about loving a life in the outdoors.

He was born and raised in the Northwoods, in Oconomowoc, Wisc. The town’s name in the Menomonie Native American tongue means “falling waters.” Oconomowoc is a small city surrounded by five lakes and because of that geologic fortuity, John recalls growing up, “My life was water. We were always at my uncle’s farm, where we had a river we could fish at and catch frogs, and woods where we could hunt small animals for food.”

John’s father was a rural letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. His mom worked for the Milwaukee Journal as a proofreader and office assistant, and she was also an artist, hired to hand-color photography portraits. He tells a story of his grandparents’ and parents’ generations coming through the Great Depression as hunters and gatherers, homestead farmers with a huge garden. The family canned and pickled and made their own wine and root beer, and the latter John would sneak a bottle or two from the cellar. 

“I bought my own shotgun when I was 12, a 20-gauge pump Winchester, and afterwards, I’d go down to the farm and hunt pheasant,” he says. It was the best life, a close family of German descents living wholesomely off the land with all the woods and lakes for an adventurous kid to explore.

John was a month old when his parents brought him to the small cabin that his dad built on three acres on the shores of Two Sisters Lake in McNaughton, in far northern Wisconsin. He and his sister, cousins and friends would all sleep outside in pup tents, with a fire pit raging outside and lots of roasted marshmallows. He fondly remembers spending entire summers at the lake. “We’d sneak out at night and do flashlight woods exploring,” he recalls.

Back home in town, John was appreciative of his father’s schedule and companionship. “It was really cool that Dad would always be home when I got home from school because he worked from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m., then we’d go fishing or hunting.”

He tells a story of when he was 8 years old, in the car riding down to the local bar with his dad and grandfather. Granddad was a card player, and a good one at that, John recalls. He was told to stay in the car while the adults went inside, but they instructed him to be attentive and if they were walking out the door, then everything was fine but if they came running out of the bar, he was to quickly start the car. “They came running out the door. Grandpa had lost and couldn’t pay his tab so they got kicked out of the bar.”

John went to a Catholic elementary school. “I had to go to church twice a week. Now I’m an agnostic,” he laughs. “And I question everything. There are three things you can’t trust—somebody’s driving, religion and politicians.”

He adds a fourth: “Never let anyone tie a fly on your fishing rod. I learned to fly fish at 14 and it’s my religion. When I’m on the water, it’s such a life-changing sport because of what you have to know. There’s so much that you need to understand. Casting is one thing, learning to tie knots is another, but you have to understand the entomology and what your river system supports as far as its insect life. There’s so much life underneath the water, and you have to know how to figure out the hatches and present the fly in its life cycle stage that the fish are feeding on at the time. It’s almost a science. It’s what grabs me. It’s not just the beautiful places you hike into, it’s also understanding and applying all that you’ve learned. That’s what I love about it. And every day it changes.”

In grade school, John played basketball and football. In high school he was third baseman. While in high school, he worked for his uncle in construction and he had a paper route. He graduated in 1982 with a baseball scholarship at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. “I ended up with a degree in finance although I wanted to go into history but I knew I couldn’t make a living off it,” he says, but he minored in history.

In college, John worked for three years for an aircraft parts manufacturing company, running shipping and receiving. In 1985, he figured it was a good time to explore and travel, and hung out in Los Angeles for a couple of months, where, he declares, “We were all Deadheads. I went up to Berkeley after that, later hitchhiking up to Tahoe. Up in Tahoe I ran into these people from London who were traveling around the world working odd jobs.” John joined them to find work at a ski resort in Vermont.

“We drove a drive-away car to Boston, a new BMW 525 with the plastic still on the seats. We partied in it for six days and when we got to Boston, we parked it and ran, hitched to Vermont and got jobs at Mt. Snow.” The resort had bought Big Bear in California and offered the new lifts operations position to John. He and his college roomie bought a hand-painted purple VW bus that they painted flames on and headed west.

“We were burning so much oil that a guy pulled up next to us on I-80 and stuck out a can of oil as he was going by us. He had so much oil on his windshield from driving behind us.” Notoriously wind-challenged, the VW couldn’t go faster than 40 miles per hour with those Kansas headwinds, so they left the interstate for the two-lane highway backroads. “We went to war with tumbleweeds in the middle of pitch-black nowhere going through farm land.” They never made it to California.

They detoured to Crested Butte to visit a couple of Milwaukee friends who were working at Crested Butte Mountain Resort with the student program and John remembers the arrival well. “The night we pulled in, it was dark and snowy and there wasn’t a single street light on. The only light we could see from the Four-way Stop was at Kochevar’s. There were no cars on Elk Avenue. We pull up in front of Kochevar’s and it was packed. That’s when I met pretty much the entire town. And within a hour, Whitey had taken my last $10 in a pool game.”

Outside, their VW bus wouldn’t start so they pushed it up First Street and down the alley by the old Sign Guys building, plugged in an electric heater and spent the night there. They hadn’t even met up with their friends yet. The next night they got a bunk room at the Forest Queen for $12 a night and it included breakfast. It was October 1986 and they wound up staying a month and a half.

“Alan the owner had us working off the rent by shoveling, cleaning the kitchen, mopping the floors, helping Thelma doing laundry, shopping and making beds. I learned who everyone was, and who was nice and who was naughty, by watching out the window with Thelma. We sat for hours.” Meanwhile, John’s employers from Mt. Snow were frantically calling his parents’ house to see where he was since the lifts were going to start running soon. “I told my father to tell them I’m stuck in Colorado and I’m not leaving.”

He took a job as lift op on Paradise at CBMR. “Crested Butte was mind blowing and I really liked my bosses at lift operations.” He took a second job washing dishes at Casey’s, saying, “That’s where everyone hung out and I’d get a meal.” Between the two jobs, he was able to survive that winter, moving into the four-plex behind the arts center for $225 a month. John turned down the opportunity to purchase it at $39,000 because he thought, “I’m not going to be here for that long.” Eight years later he decided to move down the street.

Jim Talbot was one of the first people who was influential in John’s first winter. “Jim had some hunting camps on the front side of Whiterock Mountain in Perry Creek. He asked if I wanted to help pack out some hunting camps.” Afterwards Jim became John’s tile mentor. “I became part of the Midnight Tile crew. All of us learned from Jimbo.” John became a wrangler for Fantasy Ranch in 1989, which Jim co-owned. “There’d be days we did tile all night and then ride all the next day.” John now has his own company, John Polzin Tile, that he started in 2000 and he admits that his contractors keep him quite busy.

John has a fondness for Irwin, where he spent three years. “I loved it. I loved the solitude, the rawness. What I loved the most was the nights with the crazy whiteout blizzards. I would have the fire lit, playing my guitar and just hanging out watching the storm rage and the snow pile up my deck, knowing the next morning I’d have to break out my 900 mod snowmobile and break track for everyone going down.”

At times, John’s experiences here overwhelm him. “I was taught everything that is available, like skiing, snowbiking, dirt biking, hunting and fishing, by different people,” he says of those who showed him the way of these mountains. “The first time I went to the Gunnison Gorge in the spring of ‘87 was the most epic thing I’ve ever experienced. Thirty-something years later it still blows my mind.”

John understands the connectivity of this community. “We struggle, we fight and we bitch but when I stare at what’s surrounding us, I think, this is me—our houses with the bikes hanging on the fences and the ski gear laying on the snow in front, just those little things mean so much. In the summer, you see the wildflowers and it blows your mind.”

First and foremost, he feels, “When we need each other, everybody’s there. I try to explain this to friends who live in other places—the community, friends, family, hugging each other wherever it may be and the intimacy of the relationships we all have with each other here. It’s so important to me. It’s the most special thing to me about Crested Butte—I love the views but without the people the views wouldn’t be as full.”

Fashioning a rich life in the mountains

By Dawne Belloise

Missy Ochs was rather British until her second birthday, when her military family moved from a base in England to Lowry Airforce Base in Denver. Her father had been in three wars—WW2, Korea, Vietnam—and the invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Her mother, Missy says, was a worldwide ski bum who wanted to retire in a place that she could pursue her love of the sport, so Missy grew up skiing Vail, Breckenridge and Winter Park. As a child, Missy was quite athletic, kicking a soccer ball around and putting in a lot of pool time as a swimmer. Her mother imparted the love of art and culture, motoring the kids out to events in a VW pop-top camper all over Colorado because she loved to go places.

When Missy graduated from Arapahoe High School in 1990, her first college choice was Western State College in Gunnison (now Western Colorado University). “It was the closest to a ski area and I received a scholarship for academics,” she says, which all fit perfectly into her future plans to study sports-related kinesiology as applied in sports performance. She took many classes in recreation, biology and physiology, also figuring a business minor would complement her studies.

“I wanted to do physical therapy for sports. I was skiing five days a week with the college freestyle team. We skied Monarch, where we trained twice a week, and on weekends and Wednesdays.”

She was on a “Western Scholars Year,” which is essentially a semester system that stacks classes all summer so students could get in as much skiing as possible during the winter semester without having to deal with a loaded class schedule. “The team competed under the United States Ski Association [USSA] and traveled around the state,” she explains, noting that it’s a competition of mogul, aerial and ballet skiing, although none of the team did ballet. Missy also judged the freestyle skiing for the USSA for an entire decade, from 1995 to 2006. She graduated with a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology in 1994.

After graduation, Missy chose to stay in Gunnison. “I didn’t want to leave,” she confesses, because she loved the area. She was working as the assistant manager at Joseph’s, a restaurant east of Gunnison, and in the summer she was slinging burritos and scooping ice cream while silkscreening tee shirts at the Seabar in Gunnison. Surprisingly, Missy wasn’t a mountain biker yet. “At the time it was so new—and it hurt!” she laughs. “We were still riding rigid frame hard tails.” But she was skiing, working and hanging out with friends, living the mountain town dream at 21 years of age.

The following year she moved back to Denver to continue her education but, she discovered, “It was very competitive to get into physical therapy school. You were wait-listed. Spas were just starting to become a viable business opportunity, so my focus was spa development, which essentially covered needs assessment to operational start ups.” She received her master’s degree in hotel and resort management from the University of Denver in 1996 and did her internship with the Oxford Hotel and Spa in Denver.

“I worked for Dana Crawford, who was involved in the development of Larimar Square, the Union Station revitalization and the loft concept of LODO. It was such a great start,” Missy says of her three years there before moving on to Hotel Monaco to help with their start-up when they opened a spa in 1997.

Cramming in as much mountain time as her demanding corporate jobs would allow, she was snowboarding with her buddies, doing the I-70 corridor ski resorts on weekends when one day, she hit the wall. “I totally bonked on the corporate vibe. I was driving in traffic to get to work, and from 1994 to 2000, I worked in four different hotels. All of a sudden, it all felt empty to me and I just wanted to travel,” she says.

Her father had just passed away, and she took to the highway, driving north to Canada. “I hiked across the Olympic National Park for 27 days with the National Outdoor Leadership School [NOLS]. If I wasn’t going to work I wanted to do something that would be life enhancing so I did two courses,” she says of her gap year.

The second course was a high-end biking vacation experience with a company called Backroads. “We started in Golden and rode to Banff, Canada. It was a six-day trip and it just blew my mind.” She was moved enough to stay on as a guide for two years out of Berkeley, Calif. because she felt, “I loved hospitality, loved having unique nature adventures and Backroads was the number one company in the industry. I guided in Glacier National Park in Montana, Yellowstone National Park and the wine country in California,” where, she grins, she fell in love with wine.

In the winters she skied Jackson Hole, returning to the valley and Crested Butte in 2003, where she was hired to work on reopening the Irwin Lodge. “Irwin was looking for someone to do due diligence, to see if the project was viable. We got far into the process and were close to getting approval when the owner’s business interest took him in another direction,” she recalls. Eleven then bought the property and Missy worked for them for two years as general manager in 2007, handling acquisitions and reviews from sewer and water issues to land boundaries and real estate interests. “It was fast and fun. I really enjoyed working for them.”

But once again, Missy had that same realization. “I bumped my head against that corporate ceiling again. I was working all the time. I don’t live here for that. I would rather be conscientious with my lifestyle than spend all my time working, so I went into real estate during the recession.” Working for six banks, Missy dealt with foreclosures and distressed properties from here to Chaffee County. She still sells real estate.

Milky Way, the high-end fashion boutique on Elk Avenue with its colorful façade and vivid flower boxes, was opened in 1994 by Deb Cheesman. Missy had worked for Deb during the holidays in the shop, helping out during the high seasons, “So I could have access to clothing since I love clothes and fashion. I always have. It was another interest of mine, everything from couture to the new black legging craze.” When Deb decided to sell in 2011, Missy bought the shop. “The timing was right and the package was right for me. What keeps me impassioned by my work is the women I get to work with.”

Missy says she’s intrigued with the intricacy of the work, as trade and materials evolve to more environmentally friendly production and quality. “It’s an ever-changing industry. Fashion is always changing, from color and style to fabrics. I’m trying to focus on environmentally conscious companies. I buy their products and if I’m supporting them, hopefully that will help them continue their products. The fashion industry doesn’t have a very positive carbon footprint in general, but I think it can. It helps if you focus on U.S.-made, fair trade, and eco-friendly companies. And my business practices help. I’m energy efficient, I practice water conservation, recycling, resource management, I ride my bike or walk to work, along with most of my staff, I use alternative transportation. And in business management, meaning how I buy, I try to work with companies who are conscientious. You try to find ways to make a positive impact in life because I feel it’s the little things that make a difference.”

In 2003 she met Dave Ochs while riding in the Cannibal Classic from Crested Butte to Creede. “It was me and 14 guys,” she laughs. “I preferred road riding but then I kind of realized there was only one road here.” When she and some friends gathered to ride the notorious 409 in the spring of 2004, Dave Ochs was also on that adventure. As for the 409, “It was brutal,” she winces. But it was during Fat Tire Bike Week in 2004 when the two actually fell for each other, “and we’ve been together every day since.” They married in 2007 and their son, Ozzy, was born in 2011 with Cadence joining the family in 2013.

“If I were to do my business career over again I’d try to start my own business right off the bat because the rewards then are yours. You are what you put into your own business and I love my business, it’s fun. I get to dress up, learn about different regions of the world, different fabrics. I get to travel and I get to be around women all the time, which is awesome. You shape your own destiny. I’ve learned so many things.

“I love my life,” Missy continues.“I have a good life here and I’m really grateful for my support. I’m doing exactly what I’ve always wanted to do in my life—to own my own business and to live in the mountains. I have a really fine family. I get to bike and ski every day. I have great friends here. It’s community and lifestyle. My lifestyle is my community because the friends I have do what I love to do and are such good people. We share that high alpine value system. Knowing that my friends had an amazing experience in their day as well, whether it’s walking to the Gronk or even just going to the post office, it’s gratitude and celebrating Crested Butte goodness.”

Rebel muse

By Dawne Belloise

Rachel VanSlyke sits down on a tall stool and picks up her well-worn guitar. Sandy blonde tresses piled atop her head with a few escapees falling around her face, she gives her audience a big smile, a few interesting anecdotes as she arranges herself and then breaks out in song with a voice that draws in another 40 people from the street in an instant.

Although she’s mostly a summer performer in Crested Butte, occasionally staying on through late autumn, Rachel has been a mainstay and crowd gatherer at all her shows in the valley for the past several years. Her brother, Chris (also a guitarist), and his wife, Natalie, own and operate the Sunflower restaurant on Elk Avenue, where Rachel is also a part-time server.

Born and raised in Johnstown, N.Y., Rachel had the advantage of having a family full of musical talent. Her mother was a multi-instrumental musician and a social worker. Her grandmother was a jazz singer and, according to Rachel, an incredible artist, with a stained glass studio as well. “She was a wild one and I’m just like her,” Rachel says. “I was very much encouraged to find a career in whatever made me happy. My mom was full of love. We grew up poor but there was an emphasis on following your dream and treating people kindly. There was a lot of compassion.” This was the basis of her upbringing.

Rachel began writing music when she was 11 years old, although at the time, she didn’t even play an instrument. “I just started writing about things I was feeling.” Eventually, she picked up guitar at 14. “It was a guitar that I got from my biological father, although he didn’t raise me,” she says.

She actually started with piano and still writes her music primarily on that instrument rather than the guitar. She claims she doesn’t know many chords on either, but you wouldn’t realize it in her performances or her songwriting. “I always knew music was my language. It always felt like home to me. I felt that music was part of a bigger picture of the language that I speak. In life, I had a lot of tragedy but music has always been the one thing that parallels with a belief and a strength in knowing that you’re supported to move on, to move forward from these things,” she says.

Rachel tells of a life different from anyone else’s in her high school. “In ninth grade I lived on my own. I moved out at 15 and worked two jobs while going to high school. I doubled up on classes so I could graduate early, but I ended up graduating with everyone else because I had to stop going to classes because of life,” she smiles.

“After graduation, I definitely felt inspired by my grandmother who, in addition to being a musician and an artist, was a construction worker. She’d build things for herself all the time, her house was like a fairytale world. There was a room where you jumped through a round door into all pillows and black light paints,” she says with admiration. The inspiration led her to earn an associate’s degree in construction.

“I was influenced by my grandmother, who was doing a lot of things in her time that weren’t being done by other women,” Rachel says. She also has a real estate certificate from New York State and she had a plan. “I thought I would create new spaces by fixing places up and selling them. I also thought it was incredible to defy expectations in doing things that women don’t normally do.”

When Rachel started college, she was inspired to move into a new direction. She says, “Because I felt I was living other people’s lives. I started doing martial arts, Kenpo, and that really changed my perception. It was empowering. I felt safe and also that I could accomplish anything I wanted to. It made me feel wonderful.”

She set out for California, landing in Venice Beach to visit her brother, Chris. “I loved it there. It was a catalyst for me to be able to let go of the fear of performing in front of people. I was so shy up to that point and I would only sing in the bathroom,” where, she laughs, “the acoustics are great. I ended up playing a lot in California and recording.” She also clinched a record deal there.

She returned to New York, fell madly in love with a guy and they loaded everything up in a van and moved to Ft. Lauderdale. “We wanted to be by the ocean. He was also a musician and was very encouraging to me and arranged for my first studio time, and that changed everything for me. After I heard what a recording engineer could do for my music, I felt like it was the only thing that I needed to do and had to do. It gave me confidence in my music.” Rachel started a couple of open mics and had a regular bar gig. She went through a heart-wrenching breakup when she and her beau split, but within months she signed with a Los Angeles-based record label and headed to Santa Monica to record her debut album.

There was a tour planned to support the new album but Rachel returned to New York because her grandmother had passed away. At the same time, her uncle, who she describes as, “another crazy artist, painter and musician,” also passed away. “My intention was to save my grandmother’s house,” Rachel says of postponing her tour to return to New York.

“For some reason, I thought the tour to support my newly released album would be great to do on a bicycle. The record company thought that was a horrible idea, but I did it anyway. My plan was to get all the local community centers, like bike co-ops and festivals involved that were pushing for sustainable efforts. I wanted to incorporate my shows into what people were doing sustainably for their communities.”

While planning for the tour, Rachel was waitressing and bartending at night to support herself and the tour, but she’d spend her days at a local college’s computer lab to plan the tour itself. “It was a lot to organize and the one thing I didn’t work out was where I was going to sleep at night,” she shakes her head and laughs. “I’m booking the shows and involving the things people were doing sustainably in their communities. I’d try to bring awareness to what people were doing locally through radio shows or my performances.”

Just before the tour started, while she was riding her bike in Florida, she was hit by a drunk driver. “I had no helmet on and I lost consciousness. I was badly injured with a lot of head injury and lost 90 percent of hearing in my left ear. I was in a wheelchair for a while,” Rachel recalls.

In the years since, most of her hearing has returned but the injuries still remain in various and ongoing aches and pains. “I could have let that set me back or I could move forward with what I had poured my whole soul into all my life,” Rachel says.

She moved forward. “I basically got out of the wheelchair and back onto the bike, this time with a helmet, and said, ‘Let’s do this.’ I ended up doing 24 of the 30 shows I had booked. The accident definitely changed my life for the best. It gave me a wonderful new outlook and made me want to live. It made me want to share. Before the accident I felt extremely stubborn, independent and alone, but I needed so much help after the accident and having that experience made me realize how much I needed to rely on strangers, which was a perfect precursor for the bike tour. Once I got out there, I was knocking on people’s doors every day, explaining what I was doing and asking to camp in their backyard. “ Rachel camped out for 110 days on tour and says, “It was the most incredible experience of exploring America at 10 miles per hour.”

After the tour, Rachel was uplifted and encouraged. “My mind was blown. I went to live in Pickens, South Carolina, alone in the woods for two years in a one-room shack that was mostly off-grid. I left for a month-long tour but my car broke down in Florida, and my next stop was Nashville. I kept filling up the radiator with water until I made it to my one show in Nashville and I ended up staying.” She got a job there bartending while playing gigs. “I did my next two albums in Nashville.”

Somewhere in the midst of all that, Rachel started coming to Crested Butte to visit her brother, who with his wife had just opened the Sunflower restaurant. “I pulled into Crested Butte and within five minutes, I was working and helping out at the restaurant. I fell in love with the community, and since then, I’ve been completely supported by the community to fully be myself and express myself musically. I’m incredibly grateful for the work and to be a part of the heartbeat of this town.”

Rachel’s been returning to Crested Butte every summer and some winters for seven years. She had been spending most of her winters in Nashville until recently. Now she spends her winters in the tiny home she’s built on some property in South Carolina.

Even though Rachel is one of the busiest musicians in town, she’s made time to teach a workshop in songwriting as part of the Literary Festival at the Crested Butte Center for the Arts on August 9 (go online to crestedbuttearts.org or stop by the Center to register for her class).

“I have 760 voice memos,” Rachel says of one of her methods of retaining ideas in her songwriting. “Melodies come to me and that’s how the song process starts. It’s a matter of taking a second to let the song move through me,” she explains. “It could be like just three little notes, there’s no words, it’s just a feeling. Then,” she asks herself, “what does it feel like, how am I reacting to the melody? It probably evokes some emotion in me so then typically it starts with a fraction of a song and then it expands to sound like something. I’ll write a page of notes about it and sometimes lyrics, then a rhythm starts to form, and then melodies sprout from that and usually that first little part that had come to me will be the hook.”

Rachel has written thousands of songs and confesses, “Some will never be shown to the world but that’s the thing about songwriting—you have to let things flow through you without judgment.”

Rachel enjoys her time in Crested Butte, saying, “This is the most incredible community I’ve ever been in and I’m so grateful to return yearly. The sheer support of this town in unmatched by all of the places I travel to. We’re exchanging energy here. We’re not just giving and taking from each other. We’re exchanging and encouraging each other to live this life that we love.”

I am a fan of ideas. Good ideas, bad ideas, off-the-wall ideas, well-thought-out ideas. Just toss out an idea and see where it goes. I’ve had some bad ideas (hitting any jump on skis or a bike, contacting the Nigerian prince for my lottery winnings) and I’ve had some really good ideas (marrying my wife, having kids, buying a house near Crested Butte in the 1990s). Ideas are the early part of any creative process and right now the valley needs ideas. Luckily it seems to me the community is smart enough to filter out the bad ideas and also courageous enough to try new, weird interesting ideas. Changes are coming and ideas on how we evolve are flying.

A couple of people this week emailed the paper to suggest their ideas for the Crested Butte News. They included things like having a pothole of the week column and a regular feature on local landmarks. I kind of like the most annoying pothole of the week—especially at the end of the winter season when some of the local potholes are absolutely epic. Thank you.

I appreciate the fact that elected officials and staff members in all of the local government entities are batting around all sorts of ideas. There are ideas on how to address big things like sustainability, workforce housing and transportation, and small things like how to deal with overflowing trashcans (see the Eco Tip of the Week on page 51 for the trashcan ideas).

New Crested Butte Town Council member Mallika Magner said Monday that she was “intrigued” by the idea in a recent Norton’s Notions column. I was, too. Norton wrote about a new bike-share program in Aspen where people could grab a bike at one of many stations located throughout the town and ride them anywhere. If the time on the bike was less than 30 minutes, the bike rental was free.

He suggested it could be done in Crested Butte with two or three stations, including one at the school parking lot that would entice people to park there and ride to the main business district of Elk Avenue. He explained to me that in Aspen a young local woman had gone to the town council with a plan and expenditure model. The town subsidized the cost of the bikes, the racks and the app needed to use them. The young woman services the bikes and the stations and it seems to be a success over in Fat City.

I am “intrigued” at the possibility that something like that could work here as well if it was targeted to using the school lot as intercept lot. Of course not everyone would park and hop on a three-speed klunker with a basket to get to Kochevar’s or Milky Way but some would—and that could help decrease congestion in the middle of town. It is worth exploring for sure.

Giving developer Joel Wisian of Bywater Development LLC a couple of weeks to see if he can manifest a miracle and find a way to obtain the needed bond the town wants for its Paradise Park affordable housing project is a good idea. It may have the realistic chance of a last-second Hail Mary pass from the 50-yard line but every once in a while that pass is completed and the game is changed.

I am a fan of the idea of businesses stepping up to purchase affordable housing in town for their workers. I agree with town staff’s concern that the council could bend over too much in the next couple of weeks with emotional arguments from local businesses and citizens that the town doesn’t need that guarantee—but it does. If Joel pulls off a miracle with the help of the business community—great. If he doesn’t, then start over and continue to get creative with the business community. The original idea is a good one and it can lead to something really interesting.

I like the idea of the community coming together to realistically deal with any number of issues. One good recent idea was the voluntary no-float period on the upper Slate River that went until July 15. The idea was to protect the great blue heron rookery we are so lucky to have. Word is it worked with only a half dozen people floating there this last week but like everything, the chicks are about a week later than last year. So given the fact the river will be flowing a lot longer this summer, the latest idea is to hold off on that section of the river where the great blue heron nests are for another week. The floating will be there for a long time this summer. Give those blessings of nature another week to grow.

I also like councilman Will Dujardin’s idea of having a public work session with the Gatesco Development team to see where they really are with The Corner at Brush Creek preliminary plan. They have asked the county for a year-long extension to submit a preliminary plan. There are doubts among many that any work at all has been done by the developers to address the concerns and conditions raised by the county and towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte. But Dujardin pointed out that in their letter to the county, Gatesco attorney Kendall Burgemeister said the team has spent a lot of time “analyzing various alternatives for moving the project forward.” Like Dujardin, I like the idea of hearing what they have discovered in their analysis and evaluations and feel a meeting is a fair way to see if those bonds of trust that remain weak between some players in the process, can be repaired. Why not hold that meeting in a special work session before the county commissioners determine whether to grant the extension on August 6?

As noted by Crested Butte town manager Dara MacDonald, this community has done pretty well by being creative. Creative starts with the nugget of an idea and while I’ve mentioned only a couple of current ideas floating around, there are plenty more. Keep them coming and let’s all continue to get creative to shape how this community evolves. In the meantime, check out the pothole of the week in the alley between the Majestic and Clark’s. It’s a good one.

—Mark Reaman

By Dawne Belloise

“Into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” — John Muir

In the reckoning that can occur when walking deep into the surrounding aspen and pine forests, touching the sky from the top of a mountain or coming into a high alpine meadow filled with wildflowers, one can come to know the joy of peace and freedom we sense here in our valley. Colorado native Ivy Walker recognizes this aspect of nature and has endeavored to share it with others as nature-based therapy.

Ivy was born and raised in Wheat Ridge, where her father was a road construction worker, Vietnam veteran and she was the middle child with two brothers. Throughout her childhood, Ivy learned the love of the outdoors from her dad, who showed her how to fish, garden and grow her own food and flowers. She was part of the garden and even her name is derived from it, but that was because, she says, it was the only name her parents could agree on.

“I spent a large portion of my childhood weeding and gardening,” on what, Ivy recalls, were two city lots that her paternal grandparents’ home was on. And she observed nature from a child’s point of view, such as, “when the various flowers and plants emerged from winter slumber. It’s important to be in touch with that connection, that sense of nature when you grow up in the city,” she says although she feels that she grew up in a small town within Denver. “There’s so much nature to see in the city.”

After her parents separated, her dad would take her camping. “Mom was my primary caretaker and my parents only lived a block apart after they divorced.”

“Art,” Ivy smiles, “was my first language. I was more of an artsy kid so it was big in my world early on. Going camping and noticing things in the garden is a decent snapshot of who I was,” she says and very much who she still is.

Ivy graduated from high school in 1990 and attended Colorado State University (CSU) to study art. “College life was great. It was wonderful to get to make art and to learn and read—those are my nerdy tendencies,” she laughs. “That’s what I like to do.” She signed up for classes in poetry, painting, drawing, ballet, “everything I always wanted to take,” and earned a BFA in printmaking in 1994.

After graduation, Ivy felt, “I just wanted to continue to create, work and exhibit art and build a life in that direction. One of the ways to be an artist and exhibit work is to become a professor. The colleges, in some ways, have replaced the patrons.”

Ivy explains, “Back in the old days, there’d be patrons for the artists and then they’d have a way to live and produce art and a way to put food in their belly and survive. In essence, they’d have someone to appreciate their work and support them. I feel like the university system has taken up the call to support artists. So, I figured I needed to get my master’s to become a professor to continue to create and exhibit at the level that I wanted to.” It was excellent logic and Ivy received an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder in 1999.

Ivy met Todd Walker, a pro mountain bike racer, while she was an undergrad at CSU. The two had married in 1994 and having visited Crested Butte numerous times for camping and biking, moved up in late 2000. “It’s beautiful here and we were just going to wing it. I was going to apply for teaching jobs and exhibit. My very first job was at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and also, simultaneously, at the Western Slope Music Festival, which became the Crested Butte Music Festival. The life of an artist is about piecemealing it all together.”

The following year, 2001, they moved to Gunnison, had their daughter, Lia, in 2004, and relocated back to Crested Butte from Gunnison in January 2007.

When Ivy was hired to teach art at CU Boulder in 2000, she began commuting back to her Crested Butte home on weekends for the three years she taught on the Front Range. She also worked various jobs in town during her summer breaks. “I loved helping people have that light bulb moment,” she says of teaching, “especially in the arts, when they’ve been struggling to figure something out.”

It was after she returned from Boulder that third year that she became pregnant and for the next five years became a stay-at-home mom. Ivy continued to create and exhibit her art with shows in Denver as well as Crested Butte and Gunnison. In 2008, Todd designed their home, a duplex in the River Neighborhood in Skyland. As an architect, Todd had also designed several other houses in the neighborhood.

Ivy began working at Oh Be Joyful Gallery in 2009. “I was transitioning into doing nature-connected coaching. Art is the thread that runs through the whole story. Nature-connected coaching is taking people out into the land to discover, explore and work on their goals. What happens when we go out into the land is that we engage in a certain process, which I’m tracking as the coach. I’m asking them a certain amount of questions, or engaging nature in a particular way to help illuminate what’s important to them, what they feel their soul-directed purpose is.

“When we’re out there,” Ivy continues, “we’re listening and aware of what’s happening in nature because a lot of times, where we end up in nature is a direct reflection of where they are in their internal process. We get really playful with that possibility. The land becomes this incredible mirror and teacher, an affirming teacher, reconnecting yourself with who you are.

“This isn’t news to everyone who lives up here,” she explains, “They are coming for that nature connection. Things just feel right when they’re out in nature.”

The artwork Ivy creates is about her relationship with the land, with nature. The connection between the coaching and her art began when people saw her “art photos” and they’d want to come see how she worked. “When people are curious they want to understand how to engage the art or that dialog with the land more. That’s what brought me to the nature-connected coaching—it was a container to give people that sort of experience in the land, with the art, in some ways.”

Ivy was getting her own healing through the land as well. “I realized that I could bring that kind of process through a combination of nature-connected coaching and making art with the land. Ultimately, what I do with people, through my coaching process, is to take them out into the wilderness and engage nature. We listen to the wisdom of nature as part of their coaching process. Sometimes we make art as a part of that process, other times we might do more somatic activities.” Ivy began her Creative Earth Coaching in 2015.

“Even though it sounds really woo-woo, it’s a real process,” Ivy says of the coaching and the school she attended, Earth Based Institute in Boulder, to further her knowledge in the field.

The course was a one-and-a-half-year program, one weekend a month, for the nature-connected coaching program with a certification. She’s gone on to become an associate certified coach through the International Coaching Federation. “When people come for coaching, they want something to shift in their lives. It’s about change. There’s a process that I’m taking them through by asking questions and sometimes we visit their history to understand how that thing that they want to change came into being. From that background information, we focus on where they want to go, what they want in their lives and what that change looks like. Coaching is a process that moves you forward, and to have someone partner with you to make that happen can be very transformational.”

Ivy still works with Earth Based Institute in Boulder, but remotely from Crested Butte. “The creativity, the listening and the collaboration, that’s what I’m doing, in so many areas, with the coaching and my art,” she smiles. “I’ve got all these collaborations, all my projects feel integrated. I get to do all these interesting things with all these interesting people. I get to make art, do coaching and collaborate with the creatives in my community and beyond, and I get to exhibit my work, so life is super exciting.”

Her work shows at Oh Be Joyful Gallery. In January, Ivy will be returning to Boulder, commuting once again, to the Naropa Institute to earn a master’s degree in eco-psychology, which is a two-year program that studies how the earth is a part of, and influences, the human psyche.

“I just want to read more about the intersections of how the land is part of us and we are part of the land and how that manifests,” Ivy says.

This week as the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival kicks into high gear, Ivy has teamed up to co-teach a class with writer Molly Murfee called Regenerations (see Molly’s weekly column in the Crested Butte News, Earth Muffin Memos). “We put together a series of five classes investigating how to connect with nature individually. Over the course of the classes, you bring the classes into the public sphere, moving into a statement around protecting nature and ultimately, dropping into a state of awareness in nature and a mindfulness, also, an awareness into creativity and expression.”

Ivy seems perfectly aligned and in the most conducive place to continue both her art and her nature coaching. “I love the land here. I really love this place and its community.” She says, “How does nature affect and inform human imagination and how do we bring that forward? It’s a piece of my thesis—but everything will change once I get in there,” she laughs as she thinks of heading back to school. “I just know what I’m curious about.”

For more information about Ivy’s nature coaching online creativeearthcoaching.com, or to experience Ivy’s art online, go to Ivywalker.com.

Rumors 10 Year Anniversary Party

Rumors Coffee and Tea House is celebrating its 10-year anniversary and is holding a party on Thursday, June 20 from 5-8 p.m. The evening will feature snacks and desserts as well as wonderful music provided by Fox and Bones. Fox and Bones, from Portland, Oregon, are the modern day Bonnie and Clyde, if Bonnie and Clyde had driven a Volvo and played folk-pop music. Rather than simply documenting their experiences in song, Sarah Vitort and Scott Gilmore write from the perspective of quasi-fictional characters.

Creative Carnival to benefit See Trees

Creative Carnival, an art fundraising party for See Trees, will be held at the Red Room on Saturday, June 15. Adorn yourselves with awe-inspiring attire and join the fun at the Red Room. Doors open at 9 p.m. for a sensational art party featuring live performers, interactive installation and a loaded raffle. Proceeds directly support local, independent artists and their work to produce and tour an immersive aspen grove to venues such as Bridges of the Butte, Crested Butte Arts Festival and Burning Man.

Yeah you right!

KBUT is hosting the 17th annual Fish Fry on Friday, June 14 at Crank’s Plaza in front of the KBUT studio from 4-9 p.m. There will be a raffle with great prizes and live music by the New Orleans Suspects. The band will then lead a  parade up Elk Avenue to their gig at the Public House. Tickets and information available at kbutradio.org.

Butte Kickers

For the 25th year in a row, Crested Butte plays host to the annual Crested Butte Soccer Invitational. West Elk Soccer Association is putting on the coed adult soccer tournament this year with 12 teams playing all weekend at Rainbow Park and the CBCS field. Games start Saturday at 8 a.m. and finish with the championship game on Sunday at 1 p.m. at Rainbow. The Crested Butte Kickers play at 8 a.m. Saturday at Rainbow and then 11 a.m. at the CBCS field. Sunday’s game based on Saturday’s results.

Street Vault

Western Colorado University track and field is hosting a Street Vault on Saturday, June 15 on the 100 block of Elk Avenue. What is Street Vault? It’s pole vaulting on the street and the event starts with the open class at High Noon, then they raise the bar to 15 feet for the collegiate and elite athletes. For more information check out go mountaineers.com.

Community Weed Pull Day

Put on your work gloves and help protect native plants at the community weed pull day at Big Mine Park Friday, June 21 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Learn about noxious and invasive weeds, and win prizes from local shops including CB Sports, Dragonfly Anglers, Third Bowl Ice Cream and The Fly Fishing Show. Food, drinks and fun will be provided! For more information contact Jason at jevanko@gunnisoncounty.org.

Birthdays

June 13- Bruce Cozadd, Buddy Ramstetter, Isaac Huxley Sorock, Aaron Tomcak

June 14- Anna Fenerty, Justin Feder, Loki Hastings, Tess Fenerty, Joe de Compiegne

June 15- Chris Garren, Laura Hilton, William Holes, Jason Fries

June 16- Hilde Nachtigall, Hope Wheeler, Sam Lumb, Susan Marrion, Jay Barton

June 17- Tamara Ayraud, Nan Lumb, Margo Covelli, Chris Zeiter

June 18- Mark Phwah, Ava Lypps, Chuck Cerio, John Banker, Heather Paul Featherman, Dave Penney, David Baxter, Cooper Fabbre

June 19- Polly Huck, Nolan Probst, Jimmy Faust

Cameos: In honor of Father’s Day, what’s your best dad joke?

Father, son and daughter riding and fundraising for those affected by Parkinson’s

By Katherine Nettles

If the old saying is true that a family who plays together stays together, then the Murray family is ample proof. Rick Murray has recently recruited both of his children, Chad and Chelsea, ages 30 and 33 respectively, to join him for this year’s Ride the Rockies event, while his wife, Ingrid, and his mother follow along in the adventure by car.

Rick first did Ride the Rockies in 2000 alongside his son Chad. In the time since, he participated in the 2003 and 2007 tours, being joined again by Chad in 2007. This year, since the event is beginning and ending in Crested Butte, Murray was able to get both his kids to come along with him and make it a family affair.

With Chad in the Air Force based out of Sacramento, Calif. and Chelsea an international mountain bike guide based in Bend, Oregon, that’s not something Rick is taking for granted.

The kids have a long history of biking with their dad and each other in Crested Butte and Gunnison County. Rick and Ingrid moved to Crested Butte in 2006 to retire after raising their kids in Michigan, and Chelsea attended Western Colorado University, running track and riding on the mountain bike team there. Her brother Chad attended the Air Force Academy and also raced on the mountain bike team. The two overlapped in their collegiate pursuits of biking.

“We actually got to compete together at Hartman’s one year,” recalls Chelsea.

“We’re really a mountain biking family,” says Rick of their choice to do the road-based tour. And he has the pictures to prove it, beginning with young Chelsea and Chad posing with their bikes and their parents in front of a sign for Paradise Divide more than 20 years ago. Rick has another version of them in the very same place from only a few years ago as well.

Although the family considers that “Mountain biking is for fun, and road biking is for work,” as Chelsea puts it, RTR presented a great opportunity to get together and “see who is in the worst shape.”

“With [the tour] starting and ending here, it’s just great… I’m looking forward to spending the time with these kids,” says Rick.

Chelsea says she will be sure to remind him of that sentiment a few days into the tour. She also notes, “Dad will come places to ride with us, too.” She lists recent trips he has made to join her in Spain and Chile.

Chad, who is a major in the Air Force, doesn’t get a lot of time off. “This is really special for him to get a whole week,” says Ingrid. It’s been almost three years since Chad has visited Crested Butte, and he will be arriving just one night ahead of the start this weekend.

“Chelsea can stay for a little longer. Chad will have one quick night to acclimate,” Ingrid says.

“The fact that my brother can come out is pretty cool,” says Chelsea. She says the opportunity of the father-son-daughter trio inspired her to make their tour together a fundraiser. So she contacted the Davis Phinney Foundation and the Murrays will be riding to raise money to help people with Parkinson’s Disease. The family says they chose this cause for several reasons. Ingrid’s dad had Parkinson’s and passed away in 2009. Rick also has a friend in town with Parkinson’s. They hope to raise $2,500 (or more) and have already gotten $1,750 as of publication, many of the donors being bike clients of Chelsea’s.

“We’ve had family and friends affected by this disease and we strongly believe in what the Phinney Foundation does,” write the Murray family team on their fundraising webpage at http://events.dpf.org/goto/murray

“It’s pretty special when the family can ride together like this,” says Ingrid.

She and Rick’s mom, who will be visiting from Michigan, plan to follow along throughout the week as supporters. The whole family will share a hotel stay one night in Aspen, says Rick.

While Ingrid is featured in many of the family bike riding photos, she says she is happier to be in a supportive role than she would be biking the full distance.

With 15 total Crested Butte locals registered in RTR as of press time, the Murray spirit should be in good company, riding in tandem across the Western Slope.

Life Teacher

By Dawne Belloise

Although he taught physical education for decades, Murray Banks never wanted to be called “coach.” It was always Mr. Banks, because first and foremost, he was a teacher, an educator of life and a mentor to the many kids he guided through the various schools at which he taught in the northern New York/Vermont area. He was an avid athlete all through his youth and now, as a septuagenarian, enthusiastically skis, hikes and bikes and then hits a yoga class, sometimes mastering two or three activities from that list in one day.

Born and raised in Cortland in upstate New York, Murray was the eldest of four kids. His father was a mailman and his mother was an English teacher. Murray recalls, “We lived in a neighborhood, and the neighbor kids played outdoors all the time. We’d have a football game, or Whiffleball game, or we’d make a hockey rink in the winter.” He describes a gaggle of kids packing down the snow and maneuvering garden hoses to layer ice, saying, “Then we’d play yard hockey at night, taking the living room lamps and shining them out the window for light.”

All through his high school years, Murray played a variety of sports but found his success in running cross country and track. “It’s not a glamorous sport,” he grins. “The gun goes off and you run off into the woods and 20 minutes later you come back. No cheerleaders, no rallies, none of that stuff.”

He graduated from high school in 1965 with not a clue about what he wanted to do with his life, confessing, “I was not a good student. I couldn’t sit still. My learning style was by seeing and doing.” Nevertheless, he enrolled at Auburn Community College. He needed to get his GPA up and there was a really good coach there. “I wanted to go into forestry or be a game warden because I wanted to be outdoors in the woods,” he remembers. After two years, he transferred to State University of New York (SUNY) Cortland, where he made the dean’s list and won awards as an athlete. He graduated in 1969 with a bachelor of science degree in education.

“Eventually, I became a teacher,” Banks says, and his restlessness in class actually helped him in teaching. “I understood that not all children learn the same way. Most teaching is auditory but we know now that teachers who teach in a variety of ways capture the different learning styles of kids.”

Murray utilized that teaching method and had tremendous success with his innovative and creative style, which won him multiple awards throughout his career as an educator. “I tried to teach each child individually, not collectively.”

Murray left New York to teach a semester in Vermont but when a position opened in his hometown, he moved back to Cortland. “I just wanted to teach little kids. I wanted kids to come into my class and think it was so cool. I began to integrate math and spelling into my PE class,” he says. He’d chat with the other teachers about their curriculum so he could incorporate their week’s studies into his PE class. For example, if the math class was studying division, he’d ask his students to form in groups of 16 divided by four. It was a unique approach and Murray began getting requests to speak at conferences about the integration methods he was incorporating.

Murray met his wife, Janie, in college, both of them PE majors, and both stayed in Cortland, eventually earning their master of science degrees in education. They married in August 1970.

At the time, Murray felt that his hometown of Cortland wasn’t progressive—in fact, it was downright old-fashioned in its inhibitive teaching methods. “I didn’t feel that I had any colleagues I could bounce ideas off of. All the PE teachers had no interest in using progressive or innovative teaching techniques.” Consequently, he resigned. “I felt I’d reached the furthest point I could in that school district. I felt stifled. So Janie and I got out the map and said, where do we want to live?”

They determined they wanted to live in the mountains, and although they initially figured Colorado or Montana would be the place, Murray took a job opportunity in Bethel, Vermont, which wasn’t entirely foreign to them.

“Janie had grown up vacationing on her family’s tiny island on a lake in Vermont, so we were familiar with Vermont. Bethel was a very poor rural school district. I was the only PE teacher for K through 12. I was the head of the department because I was the department,” he smiles. “I thought, if I’m the only one teaching, I can do anything I want. I had to take a huge cut in pay but the community was beautiful. The mountain ridgelines came right down to the valley and the two branches of the White River.”

However, it was a really different community, Murray says, and the transition was difficult. “Cortland, as a university town, at least had a high value for education and teachers were paid really well, and we moved to this blue-collar community of loggers, farmers, contractors, and a little factory. It was 20 miles to Killington ski area. Three or four months in, I felt that I had made the wrong decision. The first six months were brutal and I started sending my résumé out. We had two little kids. Jeff was born in 1974 and Steve came along in ‘76, and through our sons, we began to meet other people our age with kids. We bought a big, drafty New England house with a big barn. We heated that house with about ten cords of wood a year. When the boys started school, we rode our bikes to school every day.”

His success in Cortland led to track meets named for him, (Murray Banks Invitational), but in Vermont, he lamented, “I’m coaching a losing team, they don’t value education, and we ran out of firewood.” And that’s when things began to turn around, he says. “Here’s my basketball team and all their dads delivering five cords of wood, in six pickup trucks.” Having lost 14 out of 17 games, he began offering summer basketball camps. The following two years they took State. “We got a big parade through town and all the fire engines lined up.”

Murray didn’t like being in a gym in the winter, so he set up an elective program where, he laughs, “These redneck kids were doing yoga, canoeing, cross country skiing, and aerobic dance.” He gave them 30 electives to choose from and called it Lifetime Fitness.

“I didn’t want to be the typical jock coach. I didn’t like the dumb jock connotation,” he says of requesting that his students not call him coach. “Teaching was my priority, not coaching. You turn out champions when you’re a really good teacher. Coaching, to me, is a very intimate form of teaching. They don’t dictate, they don’t teach generically, they teach precisely.” They stayed in Bethel for eight years.

The family would spend their summers on Hortonia, Janie’s childhood vacation island home and during that time, in the midst of all the teaching and coaching, Murray got back into running marathons. “Triathlons had just come into awareness. Every day I’d swim a half-mile to shore, run ten miles and swim back. A friend lent me his bike to do a triathlon, which I won and thought, this is a cool sport.”

He went on to win the half-Ironman in 1983 and landed an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii to compete in the full Ironman. His school backed him completely, changing his schedule around his necessary training and even continued to pay him while he was competing. His colleagues chipped in, donating their allotted days off to pay for his two-week absence. “My first goal was to finish and not be last,” he says of the grueling triathlon. “I had eight weeks to prepare.” Murray finished 42nd out of 1,200, and he humbly reflects, “It was the race of my life.”

Murray wanted to advance and get his doctorate in education, so he took a sabbatical for a year. Invitations to give talks about motivation and attitude from all over New England began rolling in. He realized that he could make as much income giving these lectures as he could teaching. During his sabbatical, he was a full-time athlete, intensively training to race triathlons, while giving his motivational talks and taking courses for his Ph.D.

By the end of his sabbatical, he had won the national championship triathlon and qualified to go back to the world championship Ironman in Hawaii, which consisted of a 2.5-mile swim, 112 miles on a bike and a 26-mile marathon to finish. “You stop doing everything else in your life and train twice a day, every day. I had just won teacher of the year in Vermont and the Outstanding Educator award, went to the Ironman in 1982-83 and now, people wanted me to come to their school and present a motivational talk to both the teachers and kids.”

He created a 40-minute presentation on having a positive attitude and a healthy lifestyle. “The story about going to the Ironman was just the vehicle to inspire kids to overcome obstacles and live a healthy lifestyle. Since 1984, my work has been solely giving speeches, flying all over the country, mostly to corporate groups and professional development for teachers.”

Murray and Janie discovered the Gunnison Valley when their youngest son, Steve, started college at Western State (now Western Colorado University). Then, their eldest son, Jeff, came to Crested Butte and never left. Inevitably, Murray and Janie stayed for longer visits each year.

Although they told their sons they’d never leave Vermont, that changed when their granddaughter, Winter, was born in February 2013. The following year, they made the move west with an additional game changer influencing their decision. Murray explains, “I had gotten diagnosed with prostate cancer. The prognosis isn’t very good,” he says, matter-of-factly, but with a smile. “So we bought the house on the corner of Third and Whiterock, and we couldn’t possibly love it more.”

At Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston Murray gets world-class treatment and what he describes as “Crested Butte love.” His attitude about facing both life and death is a powerful and inspirational message, one that he’s utilized in teaching and competing. His outlook exemplifies his beliefs and experiences and is reflected in his talks about motivation and positivity. “I’ve had a really good life. A lot of great things came my way. So I’m not fearful,” he says, and adds encouragingly, “There are treatments in the pipeline, like immunotherapy. It’s all coming, it’s being developed.”

Like his Crested Butte buddies, he’s über-active in outdoor sports but he does get slowed down a bit by the medications. He recalls his friends’ reactions. “Here’s where Crested Butte comes into that—all my friends are super fit and most are younger. Once I went on treatments, I starting declining invitations to go riding or skiing because I couldn’t keep up. These guys are typical Buttians—they really get after it. I was embarrassed, humiliated because after having done Ironman now I couldn’t keep up, but my friends were very insistent. One of my dearest friends said, ‘You waited for us for years, we can wait for you.’ That’s Crested Butte, so Crested Butte.”

“I don’t have cancer when I’m with my buddies, when I’m skiing, or when I’m with Winter. You don’t have to stop living when you have a dire prognosis. When you hear the C word and get a prognosis that isn’t good, you think ‘Oh my God, I’m dying,’ so I wanted my story to be how you can be living fully. If you live in a place like Crested Butte it’s a lot easier to deal with a prognosis like mine because this town is just so full of love. It’s incredibly supportive. It’s just the perfect place to be.”

Murray volunteers with Living Journeys. “I have a skill set I can lend to them, teaching inspiration, helping others.” He also volunteers at the Nordic Center coaching children and a master’s program for adults. “I just do what I do. I coach. You give and you get back. The other day I skied with the children and it knocks 40 years off my chronological age. You immerse yourself in playing games with kids on skis and it makes you feel young and alive.”

Murray and Janie have made Crested Butte home, and say, “We just love this town and the people. We have so many friends and they’re all active, cheerful, positive people. You bike down the street and you have to wave constantly. Even when we’re Nordic skiing on the trails, we have to stop and chat because you see everyone. Working in the yard takes two hours to get one hour of work done because you have to chitchat with everyone who comes by. If you had told me I’d love living in town, after living on a dirt road in the country in Vermont, I would have said you were crazy. Now I can’t imagine not living here.”

Allen Hadley keeps streak alive, 22 finished and counting

by Than Acuff

Nearly 200 teams headed into the midnight air on Friday, March 29 bound for Aspen, and seven hours, 22 minutes and 30 seconds later, local Cam Smith and teammate Rory Kelly crossed the finish line for the title.

Nikki LaRochelle and Kate Zander from Breckenridge won the women’s title in a time of eight hours, 24 minutes and 14 seconds. Ryan Herr and Kim Seager from Silverthorne took the coed title in a time of seven hours, 57 minutes and 52 seconds.

The winter provided plenty of snow, almost too much snow at times, with a harrowing season of avalanche activity. And with warm temperatures creeping into the valley and a storm forecasted the week before the race, there was concern the race might get turned around.

Fortunately, the storm’s intensity tapered, temperatures dropped and when the teams filed into the Lodge at Mountaineer Square on Friday, March 29 for their pre-race meeting at 1 p.m., race director Andrew Arell shared some good news.

“We’re 98 percent sure the race will go through,” said Arell, and the room erupted with enthusiasm.

Lead forecaster for the Grand Traverse Megan Paden and members Tom Schaefer, Ben Ammon and Zach Kinler of the Star Pass team spent the better part of the three weeks prior to the race gathering information. Excursions included an initial flyover in a plane, several trips on skis and snowmobiles from Crested Butte to Star Pass for two weeks and then heading into the field for the entire week leading up to the race.

“When we got out on course, we saw that a lot of the big paths in the high alpine had run,” says Paden. “The next day though, our comfort level decreased along the lower sections of the course as paths that aren’t typically on our radar soon came into play and were garnering more attention than the high alpine areas.”

As a result of the snowpack and subsequent warm temperatures the week leading up to race day, Paden and the team advised race organizers of the situation, one that was unique in the 22 years of the race.

“Because of the amount of overhead volume still remaining on the lower Brush Creek portion of the race and increased potential for wet slab and wet loose avalanche activity, the reverse was taken off the table,” says Paden. “It was all or nothing to Aspen.”

Overall concerns were soon laid to rest as they continued working in the field and they liked what they were seeing on race day, making the final call to send the race through at 5 p.m. on Friday.

“In the end, it was amazing,” says Paden. “It stayed cold at alpine and we had great stable conditions. Of course, Mother Nature gave us a little storm but it was dealable and actually made conditions better. There was eight inches of fresh for the racers dropping into the basin off Star Pass.”

Teams were met with cold temperatures, but not too cold, a little wind, fresh snow and relatively clear skies with fog shrouding the Gold Hill portion of the race. Racers spoke of great skiing off of the top of Star Pass and relatively smooth sailing for the entire 40 miles, with the exception of blisters, fatigue and everything else associated with a 40-mile ski race.

Smith won the race last year in its reverse format and once placed 88th racing with his sister, so this was his first win in the race in its full format. He and partner Mike Foote had plans to try to break the course record of six hours, 40 minutes this year but Foote got hurt when the two were in Europe for the ski mountaineering world championships. Fortunately, Smith found a familiar replacement in Kelly and plans for a course record were still on the table.

“Rory and I are good buddies from racing and we’ve raced together over in Europe,” says Smith.

They opened the race with a little gamesmanship knowing that fresh snow waited for teams on the course.

“We intended to stay back a little so we wouldn’t be breaking trail,” says Smith.

A bottleneck of 10 teams soon ensued at the Ambush Ranch bonfire in Brush Creek. They bided their time making a move at the first creek crossing and took the lead for good for a relatively smooth night of skiing all the way to the finish.

“It was a beautiful night and we stayed on course and paced ourselves,” says Smith. “We were pretty stoked about it.”

In the end, the only goal they missed was setting a new course record.

“Conditions were fast, but not the fastest,” says Smith. “There was some new snow so we were trail breaking a little and we had some navigation issues in the East River valley. Plus, neither Rory nor I were feeling 100 percent.”

Following the race, Arell was ecstatic with how everything went in its 22nd year.

“This year’s Grand Traverse was an exalted achievement on so many levels,” says Arell. “Every season manifests new sets of challenges in carrying out this event. Nonetheless, every March a devoted group of professionals and an army of volunteers band together to bring the GT to fruition. The Grand Traverse endures each year, standing as a testament to our community commitment in collectively sustaining our most treasured traditions.”

After a successful winter Grand Traverse, Crested Butte Nordic and Arell now look forward to the next two parts of the Grand Traverse Triple Crown series—the North Face Grand Traverse Mountain Run and North Face Grand Traverse Mountain Bike races August 31-September 1.