The great state of Colorado is known for a number of things: the Rocky Mountains, great skiing, beautiful vistas, the mile-high city of Denver. Every state has its own unique culture and flavor, and many people have a general sense of what Colorado has to offer.
However, there are a number of lesser-known destinations and events of which the average tourist may be unaware. A visitor may enjoy any number of music, art, or cultural festivals throughout the year, but could easily miss out on a weekend festival centered around a cryogenically-frozen Norwegian grandpa in a Tuff Shed.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story of Frozen Dead Guy Days begins with the story of Trygve Bauge and his family in the quirky but quaint mountain town of Nederland. In the 1980’s Trygve moved to Colorado from Norway with his mother Aud (pronounced “Odd”) and built a disaster-proof castle with a small storage shed overlooking the town. The home was built to withstand bombing, flooding, fire, and earthquake.
Trygve believed that swimming in cold water will prolong one’s life. He founded the Polar Bear Club in which members would jump into Boulder’s frozen Wonderland Lake every New Year’s Day. Mother and son lived in relative anonymity until Trygve decided to break the world record for ice bathing. Inviting all of the local newspapers, he immersed himself in a 1500-gallon tank of ice water in February, 1994. Submerged in the freezing water for one hour and four minutes, he did in fact, break the world record.
Aside from being a bit strange and scoffing at authuority (Trygve was arrested at Stapleton Airport more than once for joking that he would hijack a plane), the Bauges lived in relative normalcy until Trygve’s visa expired in 1994 and INS issued a deportation warrant for him. Declaring himself a fugitive from justice, he managed to evade authorities for a little while but was eventually deported.
Aud soon was facing eviction from the castle/home. She pleaded at a town hall meeting “You can’t evict me, the bodies will melt!” At that statement, the nature of the meeting took a sudden dramatic and sinister turn. The Mayor, police and press raced to the property, lights flashing. The shed was opened and two bodies on dry ice were discovered, those of Aud’s father Bredo Morstoel, who died in 1989 and was cryogenically frozen, and of their cryogenic client Al Campbell from Chicago.
An emergency town meeting was held but no one could find an ordinance stating why Aud couldn’t have frozen dead bodies on her property. An emergency ordinance was passed stating that it is illegal to have “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 on one’s property.” The ordinance, however, did not cover the frozen bodies in the shed behind the disaster proof house. In effect, grandpa Morstoel was “grandfathered in.”
Aud was soon deported back to Norway. Al Campbell was reclaimed by his family, sent back to Chicago, and cremated. A man by the name of Bo “The Iceman” Shaffer was hired to take care of Grandpa’s body for the Bauges.
The town of Nederland stepped in to help out grandpa by updating the shed with better cryogenics and holding an annual winter festival in his honor. Grandson Tyrgve is in favor of the festival, as a portion of the proceeds are directed towards Morstoel’s maintenance. The festival includes a tour of “Grandpa’s Shed,” a “Grandpa Look-Alike contest,” the Polar Plunge, Coffin Races, “Grandpa’s Blue Ball,” and much, much more.
The festival has also been “immortalized” by two international award-winning documentaries, “Grandpa’s In The Tuff Shed” and “Grandpa’s Still In The Tuff Shed” by the Beeck Sisters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Om1KWxyK-w
It should be noted that Nederland’s Frozen Dead Guy Days is not the only festival in Colorado featuring coffin races. Manitou Springs holds a downhill Memorial Coffin Race in October in honor of Emma Crawford, whose remains refused to stay buried on a mountainside following an avalanche.
So if you would like to experience a little local color in a small Colorado mountain town in late winter, come to Nederland. Frozen Dead Guy Days takes place March 2-4, 2012.
