Over the past week Estes Park began waking up from its annual post-holiday winter hibernation.
The season between New Year’s and March is often referred to as the shoulder season, a time when businesses see a contraction in the number of tourists to the Estes Valley.
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Many restaurants and lodges use January and February to take a siesta of sorts, closing for days or even weeks. Some take advantage of the time for a deep dive into cleaning and remodeling work. Notchtop Café got new floors. Newspapers covered the windows at the Rocky Mountain Deli for two months as renovations took place. Hunter’s Chop House took time off in January.
Winter breaks allow owners a chance to travel, something they cannot do during the high tourist season, and cutting back on days and hours of operation also provides a bit of a respite.
As March rolls around, while it is still winter in the mountains for weeks and weeks to come, there are some sneak peaks into Spring. Temperatures rise one day only to fall the next. It is not all that unusual to have a 50-degree swing in temperatures during a 24-hour period.
One day it can be bright and sunny, showcasing the Front Range against a brilliant blue sky. The next day, the mountains can be shrouded in a milky white fog that makes it impossible to see across the road.
We can have six inches of snow in a matter of hours. The next day it melts away, then the cycle repeats itself.
Last year in mid-March, more than three feet of snow fell, bringing the community to a standstill for several days while providing an apropos backdrop to Frozen Dead Guy Days.
For the record, March and April are our snowiest months. But snow in early Spring doesn’t mean we will not have a wildfire risk in the summer and fall. In fact, moisture in the Spring can create grassy more fuels when things dry out later in the year.
And the wind, oh my.
While January is the windiest month, the winds howl through the Estes Valley from early November to mid-April at an average speed of 11 miles per hour, but it is not unheard of for Estes to clock wind gusts of more than 80.
And just as there are cycles to the weather, there are cycles to new businesses opening and others closing or selling.
This past week, while the Historic Park Theater and Village Bagels reopened, the Gaslight Square Shops on Moraine Avenue closed for good. The building, 70 years old this year, was bought about five years ago by Dinesh Shakya, who also owns Café De Pho Thai. Shakya plans to undertake a major renovation of the property and then open a restaurant and event space.
The much celebrated Bird & Jim’s Restaurant and the Bird’s Nest Cafe are listed for sale on LoopNet. The properties are offered for $8,995,000. Bird and Jim’s opened in 2017 and the Bird’s Nest opened in 2022. The restaurant is known for its seasonal, Colorado cuisine.
The businesses that back up to Cleave Street are anxiously hoping that the project, which has been torn up since before Thanksgiving, will be done by the Memorial Day target. Right now the area is nothing short of an ugly, muddy mess.
Living through any kind of a renovation project, whether it is a home remodel or major commercial construction, is just not easy, but the downtown merchants experienced months of painful disruption due to the Loop construction and they are hoping for a break.
Business owners in the Estes Valley are concerned about the possibility of a recession due to tariffs as economic uncertainty could affect vacation spending. The roller coaster of bull and bear markets on Wall Street is felt on Elkhorn and Moraine Avenues and measured by local spending.
It was nothing short of alarming last week when Rachel Maddow erroneously announced on her program that Rocky Mountain National Park would not be open this summer. The Estes Valley Voice jumped on that quickly to get a statement from the National Park Service to correct the error.
The number one economic driver in the Estes Valley is tourism. Our community competes with other locations for tourist dollars, and misinformation like that could cause many people who were planning to come this year to make another choice, and subsequently it could cause many local businesses to struggle.
Celebrating Women in the Estes Valley
This month is Women’s History Month. The Estes Women’s Business Network kicked off with its inaugural dinner meeting last week at the Kissing Moose. The event was attended by 40 women business owners, entrepreneurs, and managers and keynoted by Jana Sanchez who gave a motivational talk that focused, in part, on the importance of collaboration over competition and the networking strength of women.
Two days later, the Estes Chamber recognized 26 women at its third Women of Impact celebration. The event is sponsored by the Bank of Colorado along with Visit Estes Park, The Barrel, and Mueller Pye and Associates, CPA. Julie Abel and Harriet Woodard, who have offered a Ready, Set, Grow grant the past two years, announced that they are going to channel their funding into a business conference for women.
The inductees into the 2025 class include Deena Sveinsson of the Estes Valley Photo Club; Susan Hochstetler of Hochstetler Resorts; Robin Converse of the League of Women Voters of Estes Park; Denise Shank a Volunteer/Philanthropist; Brittany Wild of Estes Cares; Jenny Miles of Bank of Estes Park; Jean Tasker of Bank of Estes Park; Natasha Pleshkova of the Ukraine Fundraiser; Iryna Irkliienko of the Ukraine Fundraiser; Val Thompson of You Need Pie; Connie Leavitt of Village Thrift; Julie Bunton of the Estes Valley Rec Center; Julie Mowat of Estes Valley Crisis Advocate; Sue Yowell of the EP Learning Place; Ashley Silva of EP elementary school; Lisa Williams of Gold Mine Business; Cindy Mackin of Visit Estes Park; Vicki Papineau of the Senior Center; Renee Hodgden of the Senior Center Board; Stephanie Klein of EP High School Counselor; Niki Gassman of Bridge and Bank of Estes Park; Lisa Hohensee of The Bridge, Maureen McCann of The Bridge and Mad Moose; Estee Rivera of Rocky Mountain Conservancy; and Elizabeth Clark of the Kahuna memorial project. I was also included in this amazing group of women, and I appreciate the honor.
Also, the Community Center was the setting for the 2025 Women’s Fair Saturday morning, a showcase of many area businesses and services owned and run by women, including the Estes Valley Voice.
Frozen Dead Guy Days
One of the newest and quirkiest traditions in Estes Park is Frozen Dead Guy Days, which will rise up this weekend.
The event got started in Nederland in 2002 as a kookie Rumspringa kind of spring break festival around the cult of Bredo Morstøl, a cryopreserved man who died in 1989. The festival outgrew Nederland and was moved to Estes Park in 2023.
This is the third year Estes will host the frigid festivities, beginning Friday night with a bar crawl featuring themed drinks, like the Hogback Distillery’s Skull Splitter and The Post Chicken and Beer’s Frozen Hot Chocolate.
The Royal Blue Ball takes place at the Stanley Hotel where people dress in costumes that are usually creepy yet drop dead amazing.
That is followed on Saturday with coffin races, live music, frozen t-shirt contests, ice turkey bowling, and the newly dead game at the Estes Park Events Complex. If you have not seen the coffin races you have not lived. Get tickets and check this off your bucket list.
On Sunday morning, restaurants around town will offer live bands to accompany the Bloodys Brunch, and this year’s organizers are doing something different with the polar plunge, which will take place at the Pavilion at the Stanley Hotel. The crazy event is a fundraiser for local charities via the Estes Nonprofit Network.
The three-day event puts a quirky spin on the tradition of an Irish wake, a funeral custom where people gather for food, drink, and music. Frozen Dead Guy Days is to die for.
I hope you got all your clocks adjusted Sunday. My car clock is still off by an hour and probably will be for a few more days. Welcome to the beginning of spring in Estes Park.
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