Hi, Colorado Sunday friends!
If the magazines on my bedside table are any evidence at all, I do love a good personality profile. But I found this week’s cover story by Jason Blevins especially appealing. It’s a ride-along with Wolf Creek Ski Area owner Davey Pitcher, the great-grandson of Otto Mears, the (apparently) fearless engineer who gave us the Million Dollar Highway over Red Mountain Pass and had the bright idea to convert the gilding on the state Capitol dome to gold from copper.
But don’t compare Davey to his forebears. While his work at the family-owned hill high in the San Juans may reflect some of the derring-do of Mears, he is his own man, getting his hands dirty every day to build and maintain one of Colorado’s most unique ski areas.
Editor
The Cover Story
Skiing designed — and priced — for everybody
While the titans of the ski resort industry grapple with striking workers, increased wages, share prices, new acquisitions, irked locals and jittery investors, Davey Pitcher is thinking about first-time skiers.
They used to go through ski school. Now they just wing it. And that is troubling for Pitcher, whose family has owned Wolf Creek Ski Area for about 50 of its 85 years. So he recycled an old lift from a California ski hill and strung it with new chairs over a stretch of easy terrain. He pays ski instructors to spend the day on the Tumbler lift, teaching the never-evers how to load chairs and control their speed.
Pitcher has helmed Wolf Creek for more than 20 years, taking the reins from his dad, Kingsbury “Pitch” Pitcher, whose grandfather was Otto Mears, whose work carving railroad tracks and roads across southern Colorado made him the “Pathfinder of the San Juans.”
Davey Pitcher is keeping the pioneering flame of his predecessors aglow at Wolf Creek. If there is a rulebook for modern-day resort operations, Pitcher has not seen it.
He doesn’t advertise. He doesn’t have pass partnership deals. His lift tickets are around $100. He eschews the modern-day movement of selling ski passes in summer and savaging skiers who dare stroll up to a resort to buy a lift ticket.
“I believe that’s a fair price,” Pitcher says. “One of the other mantras my father had was that it is public land and that it’s, you know, meant to be for the use and enjoyment of the public. And to create an exclusionist pricing pushes out people that may not have the financial ability of paying some of these big prices, that just doesn’t sit right. We still make money. We still can afford to do new upgrades and infrastructure and pay everyone.”
Pitcher doesn’t measure success by growth. He’s not aiming to impress investors. He’s never pondered the acquisition of another ski area. He says the best model for the industry is individually owned ski areas run by people “who are making the most out of what they have.”
“There is really an idea here that we don’t really have to grow as long as we can continue to operate as we always have,” he says. “You know, my father told me 35 years ago, he said if you start thinking you’re competing with another ski area, you’re really just competing against yourself. If you look at what you got and what you don’t have, and make the most of it, then you can be independent, sustainable and create a good vibe.”
► READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE
🎧 LISTEN TO THE OUTSIDER PODCAST INTERVIEW
Jason Blevins | Outdoors/Business Reporter
The Colorado Lens
Coloradans had a lot to say in the past few days. Here are some of our favorite shots of people making their voices heard or paying close attention to what was being said.
Eric Lubbers | CTO & Newsletter Wrangler
Flavor of the Week
Nacho average dog treat
It’s crunch time for game time, with one week to plan how we’ll all gobble and guzzle thousands of calories during Super Bowl Sunday. The options, and calories, are limitless.
But while you’re deciding whether to anchor your meal with pizza and wings or beef up your countertop buffet with a taco bar, charcuterie board and tray of sliders, don’t forget that your dog also deserves a savory Super Bowl snack.
Cue a build-your-own nachos kit designed specially for dogs, complete with Fido-friendly toppings ranging from ground turkey to black beans to plain Greek yogurt subbing for sour cream and a sprinkle of cheese.
Denver’s Three Dog Bakery is whipping up game-day appetizers for dogs so they, too, have something to scarf down during Sunday’s Team Fluff vs. Team Ruff Puppy Bowl XXI and the Chiefs-Eagles showdown.
The Super Bowl nachos are the latest addition to the bakery’s growing list of seasonal treats. Along with cases full of brightly decorated cookies, cakes and other dog-safe desserts, the bakery prepares full holiday meals. That includes turkey meatloaf with a cranberry and squash glaze, honey roasted sweet “pawtatoes” and carrots, and stuffing for Thanksgiving; beef pot pie, mashed “pawtatoes” and green beans for Christmas; and hearty turkey and veggie “pawsta” along with a glass of “Zinfantail” wine for Valentine’s Day.
That way, bakery owner Mandra Ryan said, dogs can bypass the holiday table scraps that could land them in a vet clinic. Plus, your dog will likely be eating better than you — every menu item in Three Dog Bakery contains all-natural ingredients, Ryan said.
It’s part of Ryan’s mission to give dogs “a daily celebration,” the reason the self-described “critter person” opened a Three Dog Bakery franchise in Denver five years ago.
“I thought just doing something to celebrate your dog every day, no matter what’s going on, whether it’s a birthday or just because,” Ryan said, “people love talking about their dogs and it brings a level of joy that can’t really be duplicated in any other way.”
A Super Bowl nachos kit costs $12 and must be ordered by Tuesday. Customers can order online, by calling the bakery at 303-477-0844 or by visiting the store at 1503 Boulder St. in Denver.
Erica Breunlin | Education Reporter
SunLit: Sneak Peek
Trouble tracks twin sisters in opening to “The Killer Without a Face”
EXCERPT: When a cop shows up at Dani Calderwood’s door, she quickly understands that her twin sister is in trouble again. In Helen Starbuck’s thriller “The Killer Without a Face,” Dani inevitably gets sucked into the vortex of her sister’s murder and finds herself pursued by both the police and the killer who thinks she can identify him. That sends her into hiding in a small mountain town, where she finds danger — and maybe a tinge of romance.
THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: The excerpt offers some backstory to the difficult relationship between Dani and her sister, Hannah. As Starbuck explains, that relationship, and how the characters respond to the challenges it presents, form the bedrock of her novel. Here’s one sliver of her Q&A:
SunLit: What’s the most important thing — a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?
Helen Starbuck: I wanted to explore the conflicted, exhausting, love/hate relationship we often have with addicted family members or friends. The need to sacrifice your life for them versus the wish to escape what Dani describes as “the millstone around her neck” is always a struggle.
► READ THE INTERVIEW WITH HELEN STARBUCK
Kevin Simpson | Writer
Sunday Reading List
A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.
🌞 Almost as quickly as the Colorado Springs City Council declared the November vote to allow recreational cannabis sale in their town a mulligan and sent the question to voters again, a pair of outraged citizens sued to stop the measure from appearing on the notoriously low turnout April ballot. Olivia Prentzel has been following the controversy.
🌞 Dems are already lining up to run in 2026 against Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, who was himself just elected in November. The first to officially announce is State Rep. Manny Rutinel, who was appointed to his seat in 2023, Jesse Paul reports.
🌞 The fight over where turf can be grown and how much is OK to plant in residential areas isn’t over. Jesse Paul writes on a bill that would make local governments adopt rules about lawns in order to conserve water.
🌞 Remember when we wrote about that tiny company, based in a home in Highlands Ranch, that controlled a bunch of likely-to-be-abandoned oil and gas wells in northwestern Colorado? Mark Jaffe writes they’re about to be added to the state’s growing orphan well roster, and many of them are on public lands.
🌞 This week’s news influenced by blasts from the White House or adjacent agencies was a bit whiplash-y. One thing we know for sure is that a nonprofit group offering free legal aid to immigrants was ordered to stop work. Jennifer Brown checked in to find out what the implications are. (You can read or share the story in Spanish, too.) Meanwhile, a threatened mass-deportation action in Aurora appears to have been postponed, though Buckley Space Force Base is being readied as a detention center.
🌞 If RTD CEO Debra Johnson wants a raise when her contract is up in November, she’ll have to meet some tough performance measures, including improving reliability and increasing ridership. The transit district’s board set the measures after some said they feel frustrated by the state of the bus and rail system, Parker Yamasaki reports.
🌞 Investors weary of the persistent labor battles between Vail Resorts and lift operators and patrollers at several of its ski areas are calling for the heads of CEO Kirsten Lynch, CFO Angela Korch and board chairman Rob Katz, Jason Blevins reports.
🌞 And workers at some King Soopers stores have voted to strike because of stalled contract negotiations. When, exactly, is unknown, Tamara Chuang reports.
🌞 This story by Lu Snyder is just nice. Meet a group of Summit County kids who are learning to design, build, demo and market their own skis and snowboards.
Dana Coffield | Editor
Thanks for reading on with us today, friends. We appreciate you so much! If you know someone who might enjoy joining the Colorado Sunday brunch bunch, please point them in the direction of coloradosun.com/join. See you back here next week!
— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun
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