The accident occurred just after 3 p.m. at the main access portal to Prospect Bowl, and Green was pronounced dead at 3:21 p.m. The sun may have been in his eyes, or he may have tried to duck the rope, the coroner reported.
He died while skiing. But he also lived while skiing. Green pioneered a cobweb of chutes across the toothy San Juans and paved the way for many skiers to come after him. He and two others would ski the first descent of the San Joaquin Chute in the early 1980s. He picked his way all over Upper Bear Creek, on the front of a skiing movement that defined Telluride in the 1980s.
 Kevin Green COURTESY/BRET SNYDER VIA THE TELLURIDE DAILY PLANET Advertisement |
Once green found the mountains of Telluride, he seemed to become one with them. He made them his playground riding his long, green 200-cm Kastles. Friends and brothers a day later still can’t pin down only one Kevin Green story. “It would take a book,” said his brother Steve.
That book’s pages would be tattered and ragged. Broken in and authentic. Green was one of Telluride’s originals. A “classic ski bum,” one friend said.
He moved here in 1979 from Colorado Springs. He and his brothers were looking for a ski town in which to hang their hats. They had considered Telluride and Steamboat Springs but found the latter too big. They wanted something more rustic.
So in the summer of ‘79, Kevin saddled his Land Cruiser with a teepee and, with his girlfriend and his dog, checked out of Colorado Springs. His brothers would trickle in later, and for a few years they lived in teepees at the Alta Flats. “We loved it,” said Dennis. “It was a great time.”
While many people find this recession rough, Telluride’s nascent years as a ski town were much harder, Steve recalled.
“There was no work here,” he said. “We set up teepees to live in.” They scraped together enough money for ski passes and went about forging a reputation. They were known as “the Out-of-Bounds Outlaws” or “The OB Brothers.”
“We followed the spirit of the outlaws,” Steve said.
Something about Kevin was drawn to that - a wild and ungoverned spirit. “We got out the topo maps and figured out routes,” Steve said. “We definitely forged a lot of first descents.” In the Bear Creek lowers. In the Bear Creek uppers. Kevin Green was everywhere. Neither he nor his brothers would stray far from the box canyon. Lately, Green had been spending more time in Dolores, though he always remained close.
“We just watched it develop, and the three of us stayed. We loved it, instantaneously,” Dennis said.
Green had worked a ton of trades here and had his hands in nearly everything. He tended the bar at the Buck, laid stone masonry, did carpenter work. He owned a fly fishing company Down Valley at one point. He was a volunteer fireman for 15 years and, at the time of his death, was a hockey coach for the Squirts.
Behind the bar, he had many an encounter. He met Bobby Keys, saxophone player for his beloved Rolling Stones.
Once, a famous musician signed a napkin and pushed it toward Kevin as he was slinging drinks. He flipped it over and signed the other side. “That’s my name,” he said. “I’m Kevin Green.”
“That’s the kind of man he was,” Steve said. “Confident.”
For all the first descents now covered in snow and history, for all the turns he inked over these mountains, his greatest legacy and what he put first and foremost was his son, Chase.
His brothers said he was “the best” as a father. “They were very close, Steve said. “They did everything together.”
He took Chase skiing. Taught him to fly fish. Turned him loose in the outdoors. “The weekends were him and Chase,” said Gary Broderick, who worked with Green as a volunteer firefighter and had known him for 30 years.
“Everything Kevin did, he was very passionate about,” Broderick said. “He was Kevin. He was a guy who, if you told him to do something, he was Johnny on the spot. ... I’ve been thinking about it, but you’re at a loss for words when this kind of tragedy happens. He’ll be sorely missed.”
He was a bit set in his ways, too. Longtime friend Peter Chapman said Green avoided shaped skis like the plague. “He took one run and threw them at me,” Chapman said. “We were all kind of happy that he never got on short skis. He was such a good skier, he’d have buried us.” He preferred the long, stiff racing skis to anything new, no matter what. Now those long skis are strapped to the gate of his house. “And he knew how to turn them as well as anybody,” Chapman said.
A day after Green’s death, the brothers and kids were out skiing. What else would they have done? “We thought it would be good to feel the wind in our faces today,” Dennis said. “The boys are skiing fast... they’re making big GS turns. That’s the way Kevin skied - big, fast GSers.
“He was born an outlaw and died an outlaw. I don’t know ... anyone who walks out the gate to ski, you’re certainly walking in his footsteps. He broke through that waist-deep powder. God bless him for that.”
This story is printed with the permission of the Telluride Daily Planet.
skier wrote on Feb 5, 2010 6:39 AM:
THEY NEED TO LOOK AT SAFETY STANDARDS AT TELLURIDE BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE IS KILLED. "