Author of Craig Kelly book to give talk alongside exhibit dedicated to the snowboarding legend at Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail
Courtesy photo
Author Eric Blehm has been all over North America promoting his new book, “The Darkest White, A Mountain Legend and the Avalanche That Took Him,” but Friday’s event at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail will be one of his most unique so far.
That’s because while he’s talking about the book’s subject, snowboarding legend Craig Kelly, he will be standing next to a museum exhibit dedicated to Kelly.
Blehm moved to Breckenridge in the late 1980s in an attempt to make it as a pro snowboarder. After an injury set him back to the point where he realized that would not happen, he pivoted to becoming a snowboarding writer, eventually working his way up to become the editor of TransWorld Snowboarding.
“Craig Kelly was the Shaun White of our era,” Blehm said. “There was nobody more synonmous with snowboarding.”
The two became friends, traveling the world together, before Kelly was killed in an avalanche near Revelstoke, British Columbia, in 2003.
There was a lot of questions about what happened,” Blehm said.
Blehm moved on to writing books in the 2000s, publishing books like “The Last Season,” which Outside Magazine called one of the “greatest adventure biographies ever written.” But the idea to write about Craig Kelly’s story was always with him, he said.
“It was returning to my roots, in snowboard journalism, to tell Craig’s story,” he said. “I feel like all these other books were training to tell Craig’s story, which is kind of a mix between biography, history of snowboarding and journalistic look at a tragic event, answering some of the questions that were never answered.”
More than a snowboarding book, it’s a book about mountaineering and the outdoors, which is why it’s appealing to a wider audience, Blehm said, getting reviews in the New York Times and other large publications.
But amid all that attention, Blehm says he’s particularly excited about his Vail event on Friday.
“I’m really looking forward to talking about Craig, teaching the current generation about him and allowing the old schoolers to pay tribute to their hero,” he said. “To come there and stand beside his boards and speak the gospel of this icon will be a true honor.”
Museum director Jen Mason said she’s excited to welcome Blehm and his audience, who might find themselves impressed to see the museum’s snowboard artifacts.
“There are a lot of private collectors who have amazing historical snowboard collections, but what’s different about ours is some of the one-of-a-kind pieces we have, which were pivotal to the evolution of snowboarding,” she said. “Where else can you find a board Tom Sims made in his woodworking class in high school, or the splitboard that Craig Kelly was riding the day he died?”
The event is set for Friday at 5:30 p.m. at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail. Tickets are $25 for non-museum members.
Tonight was one of the few games remaining on the Colorado Avalanche schedule that would be considered a legitimate test of their rising status as a true Stanley Cup-contending team. They hosted the Los Angeles Kings, winners of nine of their last 10 games and one of the few teams feeling as good about their play lately as the Avalanche.
This Kings team is viewed as a defensive juggernaut because they allowed the second-fewest goals and shots on goal per game. They struggle to score and their road record coming into tonight was a mess with only 14 wins in 37 games, but the Kings have been exceptional so this was a meaningful test of Colorado’s new-look lineup.
How would the Avs hold up against a team that puts a vice grip on clubs through the neutral zone and doesn’t allow them to play with speed?
