Barbara Lawlor, Nederland.  Once again, the Frozen Dead Guy Days Festival has broken its own record. More events every year. More people every year. More cars every year. More money every year.

In 2001, the Nederland Chamber of Commerce decided to capitalize on the brief spattering of fame that the town received after Norwegian Bredo Morstol was found, cryogenically frozen, in a Tuff Shed on the property of his daughter Aud and his grandson Trygve, on Doe Trail in Big Springs.

Once the international media circus returned home to find other weird news events, Grandpa dozed peacefully in his now legal setting, legal because there had been no law on the town books banning him or other corpses. Finally, a group of business leaders in town organized a festival celebrating Bredo. The fact that Nederland is located in the Front Range Foothills makes March a dismal time of year needing an event. The first festival had mixed reviews, but obviously, it was popular enough to return in 2002, and then it just kept snowballing. As the festival grew, so did traffic and parking woes, and every year another solution is sought.

Now, in its 17th year, the FDGD administrators and director Amanda McDonald have developed the logistics to include a large team of traffic control, security, law enforcement and a construction crew who know how to get the job done. Parking barricades and roadside barriers kept the highway from turning into a waterfall of pedestrians cascading across the asphalt.

Colorado Mounted Rangers were a huge presence at the weekend-long event, supporting the Nederland Police Department, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office and the Nederland Fire Protection District. These volunteers were on duty, assisting both the public and the law enforcement agencies that helped manage the crowd of over 20,000 people who showed up for frozen fun, feasts and frivolity.

The Royal Blue Ball

The weekend began on Friday evening, when the bands began tuning their instruments and checking the sound system in the ReAnimate Yourself Tent next to the Teen Center. By 8 p.m. the tent was packed like a tin of sardines, costumed people maneuvering sideways to squeeze through the crowd, carrying their drinks above their heads, hoping to part the masses enough to find their friends.

Electric Toast and Buttery Friends, a local Ned band, played to the amped up crowd that bounced to the beat with the whole night ahead of them.

The annual Royal Blue Ball welcomes revelers from all over the country, each showing up in their own dead-guy-spiffy style, some ghoulish, some dazzling. The Cold- as-Ice-Queen and The Grandpa- Lookalike Contest featured a judged fashion show which included interviews of contestants that often reached the range of raunchy.

During the queen contest, one participant stood out above them all. Dressed in a shimmering ballroom dress that took up about six people’s worth of space, laced with dazzling icicles and a sparkling bouffant hairdo, “Marie Antoinette,” was the winner, hands down. Traci Hunnewell, a costumier with Red Rose Regalia, is a pro at creating one of a kind, sensational character portrayals.

Her counterpart, the Grandpa Bredo impersonator, had ice, or something that looked like it, dripping from his nose and cheeks.

The chosen couple received the honor of leading the Coffin Parade through downtown on Saturday.

Throughout Friday’s band performances, circles of neon color danced on the ceiling, sprays of lightning, triangles that morphed into myriad shapes and colors, turned the top of the tent into a wiggling laser show that reflected in the faces of the dancers.

Bars and dispensary booths were set up in the back of the tent, just a short distance from the ATM machines at the entrance.

Outside, a dark storm loomed in the clouds along the Divide, deciding that it would arrive during the peak outdoor event the next day.

The Nederland Area Senior Pancake Breakfast

At 6:30 a.m. Saturday, senior Jim Elder arrived at the Nederland Community Center kitchen to light the oven burners, to get his pancake batter beaters going, to throw handfuls of sausages onto the grill and most importantly, to start brewing gallons of coffee.

The annual breakfast participation can never be predicted. Everything depends on destiny. Saturday’s destiny was an all food sell out on Saturday and the biggest crowd ever on Sunday, bringing in over 600 hungry people who devoured almost 1,000 eggs. Senior Mealsite Director Serene Karplus was happy with the turnout and with the funds that were brought in, that pay to keep the local senior citizens fed, fit and entertained over the year.

The Parade of Hearses and Coffin Race Teams

Previously, the annual FDGD parade would go around town twice, or sometimes even three times. On Saturday, at Noon, with announcer Little Foot at the microphone, the parade marched up First Street past the deck in front of the James Peak Brewery, where they paused while being introduced to the crowd.

One of the local celebrities to be introduced to the crowd was the 2018 Parade Marshal Brent Warren, one of the instigators of the event back in 2001, and the original creator of the FDGD logo, posters and hat and t-shirt designs. He is well-known for his strange menagerie of pets, either attached to his hand or at the end of a stiff rope.

The hearses have attended the parade just about every year since its birth, driving vintage limos with strange and stranger creatures crawling inside and about them. The hearses were followed by the coffin teams, hoisting their passengers high and stopping to do a Chinese Fire Drill until local law officers asked the parade officials to move along a bit faster as highway traffic was stopped, backing up for about a mile at town entrances. There were no repeat trips through town.

The Costume Polar Plunge

The parade crowd dispersed toward the reservoir, as the wind picked up and tiny snowflakes began pelting down on heads and shoulders and down necks. A surge of people pushed down First and Second Streets, pulling on their jackets and hats, scurrying to find a place to watch courageous folks trade their warm bodies for a frozen dunk in an above ground pond tended by local firefighters in wetsuits.

No one ever knows what will show up at the event. This year, eight Nederland Middle High School students entered the event. Dressed in party dresses, a few pairs jumped hand in hand into the icy water and when they came up wigless, it was discovered they were boys. A mighty cheer went up through the spectators.

Three adult men in Speedos brought on a frenzy of whistles; a grandfather, his daughter and her daughter, all dressed in red, white and blue, were crowd-pleasers, and a trio dressed in neon tank suits and waving noodles made a colorful splash.

By this time, the snow was coming down in earnest.

The Annual FDGD Coffin Races

It wasn’t far from the polar plunge to the coffin race course, which had been man-made in a couple of days, with snow hauled in from Eldora Mountain Resort and scraped from the Nederland Ice Rink. Temperatures had been unseasonably warm, in the 50s, and it was hard to keep the snow piles alive, but the frozen weekend doesn’t really need the snow to make it succeed. Once slushy piles had been constructed, the watery ooze turned the rest of the course to mud, which makes for a fun contest. Clean, white snow isn’t anywhere as funny as a pink tutu-ed hairy man struggling to his feet splattered with muck and hay.

This year’s contest was filled with suspense as the CU Nerds, doctorate students, returned to fight savagely for their third win, having overcome the Pink Socks two years ago. This year, Team Fossil, of Manitou Springs, came to challenge the 2018 winners to an after-the-event match for possession of the Coffin Cup, which has been in Manitou Springs for the past 12 years.

The Fossils explained that their coffin was built with a high tech blend of military grade composites, DIY corner-cutting and grade school crafting materials, making it lighter, stronger, and more precious than ever.

“We are the bearers of the Coffin Cup, which has been paraded among our homes and offices to the unending delight and amazement of our families and coworkers. We have been brought together from all over the country for this most worthy of missions: to return the Coffin Cup to the land of its forging and home in Manitou Springs. We expect to bring it back this weekend.”

The Fossils relentlessly pushed through the Nerds to fulfill their expectations.

Although the Harvest House Hot Flashes did not win the race, they gained respect and awe from their Nederland families and neighbors. The Flashes are an all-female, over 40, group of Ned women who had striped onesie costumes with marijuana leaves made for them. The racers included: Beth Martin, Michelle LaPointe, Ali Johnson, Beth Fitzpatrick, Dana Brenick, Hillary Buchanan and Bee Brogan, the corpse in the coffin.

“These blazing hot ladies are all long-time Nederland locals, and have been burning up the town for decades. We are ready to bring the heat and show you what mountain mommas are made of. Watch your back because they will be by you in a red-hot flash,” they said before the race.

Another local group was the Central City Indian Hillians. After meeting their new neighbors, who indulged In parties and were fearless, the group decided to make a coffin using their woodworking skills, including wooden gnomes, with chainsaw techniques. With more locals jumping into the fray, perhaps the Coffin Cup will come back to its rightful place in Nederland.

The Manitou Springs racers, none of whom are part of the original team, danced up and down First Street, in and out of bars and music tents, rubbing it in, congratulating themselves, watching their backs.

The Dead Poets Society spread out through town, climbing onto tables, benches and platforms of any kind to read original and well-known poems. One of the readers even put his own twist on Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go,” adding never before heard layers.

Sunday events included the popular Frozen Salmon Toss, which after 16 years of being a Sundance Cafe and Lodge tradition, was held at the Stage Stop Inn in Rollinsville, in a flat spot next to the creek. By this time, the sun was out, the sky was a deep dark blue and the wind had dwindled to a mere flutter.

First Street was filled with groups of spectators watching the Frozen t-shirt contest in front of the Pioneer Inn; the turkey tossing contest across the street, the brain freeze contest and the ever- popular Rocky Mountain Oyster Eating Contest.

Rocky Mountain Oyster Eating Contest. A group of intense looking young men sat at the long table at the Rocky Mountain Oyster Bar on First Street, contemplating the deep fat fried piles of seasoned, breaded strips of bull testicles. Yup, you read right. Body parts that have been repurposed for dining pleasure. A pound for each competitor who had all come up with their own special strategy, like water dipping.

At the end of the table, in the shadows away from the colored lights, Josh quietly, intently dug into his pile of oysters. Josh has been the winner of the event for three years in a row and it was apparent from the start that he had a handle on the competition.

He said his strategy is always the same, just keep eating. When the time was up, he had consumed one and a half pounds of oysters. He was given a high five by his son and a hug from his wife before they headed out the door, disappearing into the wind.

As the activities waned on Sunday afternoon and ski traffic managed to get through town more smoothly than the previous day, businesses and residents watched the river of cars flow down the canyon. The visitors had shared the town’s odd festival, shared the hilarious nature of the event and had shared their good spirits with a promise to return.

(Originally published in the February 15, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)