A Tribute to Peter Van De Carr
Stories from the Backdoor Trenches
Who else has a service at the ice rink? Or gets his mug on the front page of the newspaper with a story that jumps to five different pages? Or gets a moment of silence before the main act at WinterWonderGrass concert and has the main stage named after him? Or has the ski resort open the gondola after hours and groom Heavenly Daze for a giant group ski? One person: Pete Van De Carr.
The local river community lost one of its most stalwart supporters Feb. 25 when Van De Carr died in a skiing accident at his hometown Steamboat Ski Resort – whose snow feeds the waterway he so loved. A tireless advocate for his beloved Yampa River and hometown of Steamboat Springs, Peter founded and owned Backdoor Sports on the banks of the Yampa, which offers backcountry skiing gear in the winter and river and other outdoor gear in the summer. Backdoor Sports also offers kayak lessons and raft trips and is the river’s largest tubing outfitter. A tireless advocate for the Yampa, Pete served on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, the Yampa River Fund’s steering committee, and founded Friends of the Yampa.
“Steamboat was the first place where I could find a job and that also had a rugby team,” he once said before passing, adding that he moved here in 1978 after graduating from Miami of Ohio University. “I hightailed it out of Oxford and headed west in a Camaro convertible without any brakes…a typical Ohio car.” First living in a tent off Buffalo Pass and working as a lumberjack on the power lines, he later worked as a math teacher before opening Backdoor Sports as a mail-order ski shop in 1986. He added kayaks and moved to his current riverfront location in 1990. “It wasn’t because I was smart,” he said. “That’s just the only place we could find. It wasn’t that great a spot for a ski shop, but for the river now it’s awesome.”
Backdoor Sports has since become the river’s largest tubing outfitter, some years ushering as many as sixteen thousand people down the river in a summer. And he was adamant that getting people on the river is the key to saving it. “You have to know it to love it and love it to protect it.”
Above all, he was known as a loving father, husband and community member, spreading his positive attitude to everyone he met while helping them get outside and having the “Best Day Ever.” His advice: keep it simple and keep having fun; do something you absolutely love every single day and build a life around it; don’t worry too much; be generous and help people with kindness, encouragement and excitement.
Pete Being Pete
Quotes and Memories
He’d come back from skiing boiler plate in flat light and still say “Best Day Ever.”
He loved the Yampa fourth only behind Gretchen, Otis and Ollie. And maybe his Martin guitar. And his pigs.
He once ran through a golfing party on the Rolling Stone course with blood streaming down his face after swimming from his kayak in Fish Creek.
He staged a red neck costume night on a spring break river trip down the San Juan, giving his kids Ollie and Otis mullets at camp using first aid scissors. With everyone in muscle shirts, bandanas and cranking AC-DC, other parties couldn’t tell it was a costume night.
He paddled the entire Yampa from Yampa to Jensen, Utah, carrying a package of Twinkies in a Pelican box and sold them to an outfitter to prove you can conduct interstate commerce on the river, which qualifies it as a “navigable” waterway, thus protecting it from being dammed.
He was big on trades: he once traded a drytop for a cortizone shot, a kayak for knee surgery, and a pair of skis for a deep clean on his bathroom.
He played goalie on the Turkey Mountain Window Smashers soccer and Mad Dogs hockey teams (one time swinging his stick behind him, only to discover he was standing outside the goal). He had the perfect personality for goalie…just back there sort of spacing out then coming through when you needed him. Kind of like how he ran his store Backdoor Sports.
He was the eye candy in the band El Kabong.
As commissioner of the nascent adult hockey league, he made anyone who was kicked out of a game for fighting write a 250-word letter of apology, which got posted up at the rink. The Steamboat Springs Youth Hockey Association is creating a memorial scholarship in his honor.
He helped a forlorn cowboy herd cows across the river from his kayak in the middle of Yampa Canyon.
A friend brought his tele skis in to get mounted, only to find one binding mounted three inches in front of the other. He tried to complain, but Pete answered, “What do you care? You’re in a tele turn anyway!” And you had to be careful if you left your skis there as he might rent them out.
As his friend Warpig puts it, “He was the consummate anti-salesman. I’d come in to buy something and he’d say why do you want that? Here, take mine. Or if you needed a bale for your ski boot, he’d take it off a new one. You’d have to persuade him to take your money… no matter how much you protested.”
