Expanded Frozen Dead Guy Days to kick off Friday in Nederland

NEDERLAND — Things will be pretty dead around Nederland this weekend — and that should be great news for businesses in the mountain town at the top of Boulder Canyon. With a new venue, a new transportation option and an expanded list of activities, the 15th annual edition of Frozen Dead Guy Days is expected again to bring about 17,000 visitors and nearly $1.5 million in sales to Nederland.

“It kicks off our tourist season and helps us show off what’s here instead of just having people pass through on their way to Eldora (ski and snowboard area) or Black Hawk and Central City,” said Amanda MacDonald, the dauntless single mom who liked Frozen Dead Guy Days so much that she bought the festival from the local Chamber of Commerce in 2012 to keep it running and keep it local.

Born in 2002, the festival celebrates one of the quirkier chapters in Colorado history — and that’s saying something in a state that introduced the world to cannibal Alferd Packer, Mike the Headless Chicken and Blucifer, the demonic-eyed horse statue that fell on and killed its sculptor at Denver International Airport.

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Trygve Bauge, an advocate of cryonics and an original driving force behind an annual New Year’s Day Polar Bear Plunge at Boulder Reservoir, hoped to preserve the body of his grandfather, Bredo Morstoel, in dry ice until technological advances could be invented someday that might bring the man back to life. Morstoel died in Norway in 1989, and his body was first shipped to Oakland, Calif., where it was preserved in liquid nitrogen for four years, then to Nederland in 1993 — and packed in dry ice in a Tuff-Shed in the hills outside of town.

Bauge’s dream of opening a cryonics facility melted away when he was deported in the mid-1990s after his visa expired. Soon thereafter, Morstoel’s daughter Aud was evicted for living in a house with no plumbing or electricity. But starting in 1995 with Bo Shaffer of Longmont and a team of volunteers, tons of dry ice have been delivered and packed around Morstoel’s sarcophagus, surrounded by foam padding, a tarp and blankets, keeping the body at a steady 60 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

The town does have a law against such things, but according to the festival’s website, Morstoel was “grandfathered in.” Fueled by similar wordplay, the media attention the story drew gave birth to Frozen Dead Guy Days and its schedule of coffin races, a polar plunge, frozen turkey bowling, frozen T-shirt contests, a parade of hearses, snowy beach volleyball, a frozen salmon toss and dancing to live music at Grandpa’s Blue Ball.

Running the festival has been nothing if not interesting for MacDonald.

“The first year we had 90-mile-an-hour winds and had to postpone it for a day,” she said, “and in 2013 a massive snowstorm closed all roads to Nederland for a couple hours.” The catastrophic September 2013 deluge and flood closed Colorado Highway 119 between Nederland and Boulder, but by March 2014, MacDonald said, “the canyon was back open by then and everything was OK. And then last year was the biggest and one of the best ever.”

Planning for this year’s event brought more intrigue, however, when town leaders insisted that the festival be moved out of Chipeta Park. “That’s a really nice park, and the town was very sensitive about its sprinkler system and possible damage. Logistically it was getting pretty tight as the crowds grew,” MacDonald said. “It’s a little sad, but we had to move to Guercio Park.”

That move presented a host of challenges, but MacDonald saw them as opportunities.

“We added a third tent — the Bacon, Bourbon and Brew tent — with six smaller breweries from around the area and local Colorado whiskey as well. Moving the Polar Plunge presented a quandary, but we created the Blue Pearl, an above-ground pool with a plank people will have to walk, and we’ll keep the water cold with dry ice. And we’ve moved the coffin races to an old holding pond they’ve emptied.

“We also have some artistic additions,” she said. “We’ve added a Dead Poetry Slam, three ice carvers, and painters that can paint ‘sugar skulls’ on people. We’re growing the music aspect too; we’ve increased it by 12 bands this year. So it’s become a nice combination of art and music.”

The Blue Ball will have an Oscars-like theme, with a blue carpet instead of a red one, a blue-light rope instead of a velvet one, attendees posing in front of a backdrop emblazoned with names and logos of festival sponsors, Ice Bredo awards, an Ice Queen and a grandpa look-alike contest.

A complete schedule of events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday is online at frozendeadguydays.org.

Because there’s not a lot of parking space in Nederland, organizers have arranged transit to the festival from Ninth and Walnut streets in Boulder through a Boulder-based nonprofit organization called Bus to Show Inc. According to its website, it’s “dedicated to reducing intoxicated driving by organizing eco-friendly, community-integrated and financially-accessible party bus transportation to concerts and other events.”

Between hiring the bus and forking over about $10,000 in permit and police fees, “historically I’ve broken even,” said MacDonald. “It’s kind of an expensive party.” She recoups some of her costs through charging for some of the events as well as vendor space rentals and VIP passes. However, she added, “the town makes nothing but money.”

MacDonald said she’s thinking about developing a new festival for Nederland that would be held in late summer, but wouldn’t divulge the details quite yet.

“Planning for this one really is a year-round job,” she said. But that planning can wait awhile. At least for a few days after this weekend’s festival, she expects to be fairly tired. Dead tired, in fact.