Sneak Peek of the Week
Running across 14ers and tearing down the stigma of mental illness in the mountains
1,384
Number of Coloradans who took their lives in 2022
BRECKENRIDGE — Pro skier Drew Petersen was back home in Summit County as the pandemic stalled the world in the spring of 2020.
In a three-week span that spring, two students from Summit High School took their own lives and two others attempted suicide. The deaths rattled Petersen, a skiing luminary who has been haunted by depression and thoughts of suicide since he was a student at Summit High School, where he graduated No. 2 in his class in 2012.
“I saw myself as those kids. I saw myself when I was walking these halls when I felt so low despite my academic success, my success on skis. I saw how that so easily could have been my outcome,” Petersen said with a sob. “And I knew, in that moment — 100% hard stop, no questions asked — I was going to get myself to a place where I can help those kids. The reality is that this happens in mountain towns all across the West.”
The Summit High auditorium is dark when these words pop up on the screen: “While you are watching this film, three people will be die by suicide in the U.S. alone. This film will help change that.”
“Feel It All” — Petersen’s new film — aims big, with the goal of exposing the dark corners of mental illness that haunt mountain communities. Last week the Colorado-born athlete debuted the movie at Summit High School.
Using clips of the lifelong skier carving down Sawatch Range peaks and running the grueling Leadville Trail 100 in less than 24 hours, Petersen weaves a story that illuminates what many are calling the paradox of paradise.
“How is it that we can feel so alone when we live in this paradise?” he asks the crowd of about 300 Summit County residents in the packed auditorium.
Petersen knows that isolation. He was around 9, in fourth grade, when he first thought of killing himself. As a teenager, with sponsors paying him to ski, he was winning big-mountain contests and landing on magazine covers. He talks about climbing remote peaks and, at the summit, pondering a leap to his death.
“I had a lot going on in my life. I was hiding a lot from the world,” he said. “I was sure I was the only one in the whole world who felt the way I did.”
In 2022, when more than 48,000 Americans died by suicide, 1,384 Colorado residents ended their lives. Colorado ranks sixth in the nation for suicide deaths, behind Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, New Mexico and South Dakota.
The mountain communities in the Rocky Mountain states have earned the grim moniker of “suicide belt,” with suicide rates far exceeding national numbers.
Petersen clicks over to slide showing him and his brother skiing Silver Couloir off Buffalo Mountain, a short hike from the home they grew up in Silverthorne.
“We grew up with everything so wonderful about being in Summit County and the ski culture. We also grew up with the other realities,” he said. “My story is the story of our community. The reality is we do live in paradise. But we can also have a paradoxical experience that we can struggle. When we only focus on the fact that we live in paradise, it invalidates that experience that can also be stressful.”
So now, for the past three years, Petersen has been on a mission to share his story and tear down the stigma surrounding mental illness.
“The solution starts with talking about it,” he said.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
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In Their Words
Outside Festival draws 18,000 to Denver in inaugural effort to build first-of-its-kind outdoor industry gathering
The goal for the Outside Festival was to create a first-of-its-kind event that blends music, films, gear demos, panel discussions and an outdoor industry trade show into a gathering that becomes a must-attend annual event for consumers and outdoor industry insiders.
With about 18,000 visitors crowding into Denver’s Civic Center park and the Denver Art Museum last weekend, organizers are calling the festival a glowing success and plans are underway for next year’s early-June gathering.
“I’m over the moon. We are ready to keep building on this momentum,” said Conor Hall, the head of Colorado’s outdoor recreation office, which partnered with Outside Inc. to host the Outside Festival. “Colorado is a leader in so many ways in growing all these different components of the outdoor recreation economy and culture and it’s time for us to wholly own that. This is how Colorado becomes a national leader in outdoor recreation.”
Hall had just stepped into the outdoor recreation office when the owners of the Outdoor Retailer trade shows announced they were moving the twice-a-year gatherings back to Utah, dealing a blow to the Colorado outdoor industry that had lured the influential event to the state in 2017.
Hall, displaying the optimism that abounds in outdoor recreation, said the departure of the trade show was an opportunity to create something better, with events and activities that were not just for businesses but consumers as well. In the last few years, he has promised “a South by Southwest for the outdoors,” suggesting a new event could rival the Austin, Texas, gathering that draws more than 350,000 attendees.
“It was crazy to say that two years ago,” Hall said. “It’s not crazy anymore.”
For years outdoor gear brands have been grousing about the cost of the Outdoor Retailer trade shows. The venerable event has evolved from an essential business-to-business, or B2B, trade show — where brands and retailers inked merchandise deals on the show floor — into a gathering with speakers, panels, education and events. The Outside Festival wanted to accelerate that evolution, with an industry gathering and business trade show joining a consumer-oriented music and film festival.
“It was not just about music or films. It was not just B2B. It was not just about consumers. It was all of it wrapped into one. It felt like we were putting on six festivals at the same time,” said Jon Dorn, the chief entertainment officer at Boulder-based Outside Inc.. “For me, this is a high-water moment and maybe the best thing I’ve been involved in. As someone who has been in this industry for a long time, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Outside’s early projections — presented to the Colorado Economic Development Commission in 2023 in a plea for funds initially set to support Outdoor Retailer trade shows in Denver — estimated 10,000 attendees in the first year of the festival would generate an economic impact around $4.7 million. By 2027, Outside and the outdoor recreation office estimated 70,000 Outside Festival attendees would generate a $54 million impact.
Early attendance counts show about 18,000 people passed through Civic Center park over the two-day Outside Festival. When snowboarding legend Shaun White spoke at the Denver Art Museum, more than 750 people packed the auditorium, missing a performance by musician Andrew Bird at the festival across the street.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
The Guide
First drownings of the Colorado whitewater season as rivers swell with snowmelt
The 2024 whitewater season is barely a couple weeks old as the spring snowmelt swells rivers. And the drownings have begun.
One man drowned and another is missing after their raft capsized near Yarmony Rapid on the Upper Colorado River last weekend, a few days after a woman on a commercial rafting trip drowned on the Poudre River. Rescuers say the two men on the Colorado River were not wearing PFDs.
And this week, accomplished kayaker Dylan Wallace died in the Pine Creek stretch of the Arkansas River downstream of Granite. The Class V stretch of whitewater — the steepest section of the Arkansas River in the state — was roiling with high flows around 1,550 cubic-feet-per-second. Wallace, a 27-year-old from Steamboat Springs who was living in Salida, was an avid and accomplished whitewater kayaker. His death marks the first drowning of an expert whitewater kayaker in Colorado since the death of mountain guide Chason Russell in the Crystal River’s Class V Meatgrinder rapid in June 2021.
Last year there were at least 23 deaths in Colorado’s rivers, streams and creeks.
Birds of Prey races extends to two weekends in December with first races for women since 2015
In December, after two days of bluebird training, snowy weather forced the cancellation of three days of ski racing at the Beaver Creek Birds of Prey World Cup, a first in the history of the storied races that debuted in 1997.
The cancellation was a huge setback for the Vail Valley Foundation, the nonprofit that shepherds the Birds of Prey races that draw nearly 300 athletes and coaches from 14 nations to kick off the ski season with an early-December weekend festival that stirs a $14 million economic impact.
This year, the foundation is doubling down, with a 10-day festival that will include, for the first time since the 2015, Alpine Ski World Championship, women’s World Cup ski racing.
The International Federation of Skiing, or FIS, released its race calendar for the 2024-25 ski season Tuesday, with men and women racing over two weekends — Dec. 6-15 — on Beaver Creek’s steep Birds of Prey course. The Vail Valley Foundation is planning a multiday festival with concerts, beer tastings and events in Beaver Creek and Avon around the downhill, super G and, for the men for the first time since 2019, giant slalom races.
The winningest skier of all time, Mikaela Shiffrin, will get to race a few miles from her home in the Vail Valley.
“It’s been inspiring to watch the men ski on one the best speed tracks on the World Cup tour, and I’m excited the women will get a chance to ski on it this year too,” Shiffrin said in a statement. “Plus, we’re on the road for more than half the year, so it’s going to be a treat to be racing so close to home and be able to sleep in my own bed. Can’t wait to see all of the fans out there cheering!”
And Edwards phenom River Radamus, who earned his first World Cup podium last February at Palisades Tahoe, also will race his specialty, giant slalom, in his hometown. In a statement he called the giant slalom racecourse at Beaver Creek “one of the best giant slalom tracks on the circuit.”
— j
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