Restless Adventurer

Frozen Dead Guy Days, Nederland, CO

Wikipedia has a good write up, better in fact than the official site, about Frozen Dead Guy Days.

In 1989, a Norwegian citizen named Trygve Bauge brought the corpse of his recently deceased grandfather, Bredo Morstøl, to the United States. The body was preserved on dry ice for the trip, and stored in liquid nitrogen at the Trans Time cryonics facility from 1990 to 1993.

In 1993, Bredo was returned to dry ice and transported to the town of Nederland, where Trygve and his mother Aud planned to create a cryonics facility of their own. When Trygve was deported from the United States for overstaying his visa, his mother, Aud, continued keeping her father's body cryogenically frozen in a shack behind her unfinished house.

Aud was eventually evicted from her home for living in a house with no electricity or plumbing, in violation of local ordinances. At that time, she told a local reporter about her father's body, and the reporter went to the local city hall in order to let them know about Aud's fears that her eviction would cause her father's body to thaw out.

The story caused a sensation. In response, the city added a broad new provision to Section 7-34 of its Municipal Code, "Keeping of bodies", outlawing the keeping of "the whole or any part of the person, body or carcass of a human being or animal or other biological species which is not alive upon any property". However, because of the publicity that had arisen, they made an exception for Bredo, a grandfather clause. Trygve secured the services of Delta Tech, a local Environmental company, to keep the cryonic facility running. Bo Shaffer, CEO of Delta Tech, is known as The Iceman for transporting the dry ice necssary for cryonic preservation to the IC Institute for over 12 years. About 10 years ago, the local Tuff Shed supplier built a new shed to keep him in. In honor of the town's unique resident, Nederland holds an annual celebration, first started in 2002.

So I went and will try to go again next year. I didn't get to party it up this time around but I did go on the Frozen Dead Guy Tour and was even able to load some more dry ice onto the coffin. They keep him frozen with 1500 lbs of dry ice a month.

28 Feb: Skiing around Brainard Lake

Wow! What a great area. I can see why it is so popular year-round. Sorry I forgot the camera but I'll be back. I did maybe a 7 or 8 mile loop including Left Hand Reservoir before dipping down to visit Brainard Lake and returning to the truck. This time out had purpose built xc ski trails. There were some challenges! I've gotten a lot better!

21 Feb: Skiing to Chicago Creek Reservoir

We went back to that familiar area around Mt. Evans for this little XC ski trip. This time we went up a snowed-in road to Chicago Creek Reservoir. The photo is Bernie cresting the earth dam. The weather was better earlier in the day. By the time we hit the dam it was cold and snowy. Good thing a fair bit of the trip was steep enough to ski proper.

14 Feb: Cherry Creek State Park - skiing the lake

Bernie and I were going to go ski around Brainard Lake today but he got roped into some sort of school thing and there was a winter weather advisory so I just stayed in the neighborhood. It's pretty cool that 5 minutes away I have a great state park. With the couple inches of snow that came down overnight I opted to stay close to home and try cross country skiing there. In truth the little bit of snow on the ground was already melting off the paths so I ended up doing a shoreline loop on the lake. The trip was about two and a half hours. I considered writing a big "G" in the snow for people on Dam Road to see but couldn't be bothered by the time I got to that part of the lake.