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970 Grand County
970 Grand County
Holding Space for Change: The Continuing Legacy of Shadowcliff
Shadowcliff, a mountain lodge and retreat center in Grand Lake, Colorado, was built by 650 volunteers from 42 countries over 25 years and continues its mission of transformation through artist residencies, workshops, and community events. Alexander Thompson, grandson of the founders, shares the remarkable story of how his grandparents' vision expanded from a family cabin to creating a place where everyone could experience the magic of Grand Lake.
• Founded in 1954 when a Kansas campus minister and nurse visited Grand Lake and fell in love with the area
• Built on a cliff overlooking Grand Lake and Shadow Mountain Lake with volunteer labor and minimal professional help
• Hosts 12-20 group retreats each summer including HIV wellness weekends, Tai Chi intensives, and writing workshops
• Launching new artist residency programs bringing nationally recognized creative professionals to engage with the community
• Borders Rocky Mountain National Park with immediate access to trails and stunning natural features
• Offers affordable accommodations in two lodges and three cabins with rates ranging from $100-465 per night
• Operates as a nonprofit organization with intentionally communal spaces designed to foster connection
• Open from Memorial Day through Labor Day with special events like a Fourth of July celebration
Visit our website to learn more about upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, or to make a reservation. Join us on July 4th for dinner, music, and the best fireworks viewing in Grand County from our cliff-top bonfire!
Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Alexander Thompson. Alexander is with Shadow Cliff, located in Grand Lake. It truly is one of Grand County gems and I learned so much from this interview with Alexander, things that I didn't know about Grand Lake and Shadow Cliff. So sit back and enjoy my interview with Alexander. Good morning, alexander. How are you?
Speaker 3:Good morning, Gaylene. I am feeling really good this morning. It's a pleasure to be with you on this beautiful day here in Granby.
Speaker 1:It's perfect, like the wind isn't blowing and it's in the 70s. It's one of those, one of the great Colorado days.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, no, it's a great day. I'm grateful to be here most days, even when it's rainy and windy, but today especially.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, today especially. Oh yes. Well, you know, I had the delight of being up in shadow cliff what a couple weeks ago. And listen to your mom talk about the story of shadow cliff. And I knew your grandmother back in the day.
Speaker 3:Yes, such a gift to have that deep history here. I mean, I've been coming up to chat to grand lake and shadow cliff, you know, for 38 years, the entire 38 years I've been alive on this planet, and so, yeah, and it is wonderful, especially because I, you know, I spent 12 years living in New York and I wasn't able to make it out to Grand Lake so much. And so having the opportunity to really spend time here again and and having my memories be activated, but also connecting with other people who have that relationship with my grandparents, is really beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was Well. And then having your mom talk about the history, there was so much that I had forgotten or didn't know, and so let's talk about the history of Shadowcliff.
Speaker 3:I would love to do that. Yeah, because it amazes me every time just thinking about what that journey has been like. So, as I understand it and this history is on our website and there's a booklet actually I revisited in advance of this conversation because there were bits and pieces that I'd forgotten too or just had actually never been told. So I've been learning things as I've been going. But in 1954, my grandparents came up with their family from Manhattan, kansas, to Grand Lake, colorado, by invitation of a friend who had a cabin up here, and at that time they were just camping on this little plot of land and, like just about everyone who comes to Grand Lake, they fell in love with the place, and my grandfather was a campus minister at K-State University. My grandmother was a nurse in Manhattan, so you know they took that journey from I-70, like many people have done, across Kansas, up the mountains, and their initial plan or dream was to build a summer cabin for their family to come up and enjoy the mountains. And the location of their friend's cabin was this cliff, overlooking the town of Grand Lake and Grand Lake. You could see Grand Lake and Shadow Mountain Lake from this cliff Grand Lake and Grand Lake. You could see Grand Lake and Shadow Mountain Lake from this cliff, shadow Mountain, baldy, like just the glorious vistas that exist here in Grand Lake and Grand County. And in these morning meditations on this cliff, you know, looking at the majesty of the mountains and seeing, you know those early morning, the mists as it rises, the magic. Their vision expanded, their dream expanded from building a cabin for their family to building a place where everyone could come and enjoy the beauty of Grand Lake and Grand County. And then over the next 25 years and this amazes me every time that I say these numbers over the next 25 years they built Shadowcliff with the help of over 650 volunteers from 42 different countries, came up from different parts of the world to build two lodges, three cabins and this historic chapel. That is also just a sort of multi-purpose, multi-use space.
Speaker 3:And most of these volunteers were unskilled. There were a couple of instances where they did have to bring in contractors, but in many cases there was an electrician who came up for many years, laid miles of electrical cable, completely unpaid, just because he believed in the vision of the place. And then I have to name. There's a plaque in Shadowcliff that says the house that Chet built. Chet was a friend of theirs from Manhattan who was a superintendent and principal teacher, who was also a carpenter, a blacksmith, a stonemason, who over a lot of that labor. So he was the one person who, when someone came, you know, taught them how to use a hammer, taught them how to use a saw, taught them how to measure all this, all this you know, necessary skills that that many of these people just didn't have when they came up here and they were literally drawing blueprints on napkins and redesigning, you know, as they encountered they're building on a cliff. It's not a hospitable building environment, right? So they both, miraculously, didn't sustain any significant injuries. So that's crazy.
Speaker 1:What year was that again?
Speaker 3:So construction. So they came up for the first time in 1954, 1956 is when the sort of dream of Shadowcliff was born. And then 1959 was when they actually broke ground, when they actually started their construction project, because they had to spend some time obviously raising money or saving money. In some cases they had a little bit of a delay. This was one of the details that I didn't know. They engaged a log contractor who absconded with $13,000 and didn't provide them with any logs. So that was a setback. So there were a few kind of initial hiccups but they persisted 25 years to make this place what it is now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then dozens of years, more obviously, of additional time, labor, energy, care from hundreds of more volunteers to keep the place alive and vibrant.
Speaker 1:So let's go moving. Well, I have one question Do you know what the first group was that they had?
Speaker 3:I believe we actually have up at Shadowcliff right now Terry Woodbury, who's been coming up to Shadowcliff since, I think, the 1980s, and I believe that he was actually part of the first group, which was a group of Mennonites that came from Kansas.
Speaker 3:And there's this sort of orbit of people who were all connected to each other, not necessarily through Shadowcliff, but had these connections to Shadowcliff and in some cases. Terry was telling me a story this week about how he came up and saw a friend of his from Kansas that he didn't know had a relationship to my grandfather and they saw each other on Shadow Cliff Grounds and were like what are you doing here? So I believe it was a Mennonite group from Kansas. That was the first group that came up.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's move fast forward then to today. So, what you know, what do you feel like you guys specialize in today, following that beginning mission, and maybe how it's evolved and changed throughout the years?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I described Shadowcliff as a place for seekers and you know the official description is that we're a mountain lodge and retreat center with a mission to hold space for individual and collective transformation, which is obviously an aspirational and very kind of broad and expansive vision. We have values of healing, community growth and hospitality and we host a pretty wide range of programs and guests throughout the summer. So we're a retreat center, so we have retreat lodging and, like I mentioned before, they built two lodges and three cabins and then we have this historic chapel that also serves as a multipurpose space. We have a projector and a screen in there where people can have. Right now the Rocky Mountain Conservancy is holding their board meeting actually as we speak, and our entire campus can very comfortably accommodate 15 to 30 guests, can accommodate up to 50. If we're looking at both lod and our lodging is intentionally communal, so they're private rooms with communal bathrooms. So it's really designed for connection. Some people are looking for more luxury. We're really pretty rustic and communal and that's actually by design. We want people to be able to connect, to encounter each other. Unexpectedly in these communal spaces we have a beautiful lounge that you saw just a couple weeks ago, yes lounge and that you saw just a couple of weeks ago, yes Fireplace, the fire pit. We had s'mores there last night.
Speaker 3:So there's group retreats and workshops that come up. Most of these are organized outside of Shadow Cliff and then they come to Grand Lake and hold the retreats on our grounds. There are 12 to 20 group retreats each summer, everything from HIV wellness weekends and Tai Chi intenses to writing workshops. We've hosted the denver lighthouse writers workshop every year for I think the past maybe 30 years. Environment and environmental field schools and we also hold community events. So there are two things this summer that we're hosting a fourth of july celebration. We also are doing an end of year, end of season social for, you know, members of grand grand lake to come together at the end of the high season of July and August just to sort of unwind a little bit and connect.
Speaker 3:And then I'm running these two residency programs, which are brand new and something that I'm very excited about.
Speaker 3:So they're designed to support creative work but also cultivate meaningful relationships between folks that we're bringing in from outside of the county with folks here inside of the county. So right now we have on our campus Queens Legacy Foundation, which is a community nonprofit based in Fort Collins, colorado, and they focus on food justice, housing access, public health, economic empowerment in their community in Fort Collins they're spending a week on campus with various members of their community and then actually tomorrow which I know this is going to come out later than people will have a chance to hear about this and come to it but we're hosting a community dialogue on how some of the issues that they focus on in Fort Collins show up here in Grand County. So we've connected with partners in the county like Mountain Family Center and Grandy Grand County Rural Health Network. Grand County Advocates for Violence-Free Community to be a part of that discussion and just create an opportunity for people in Grand County who are interested in care about these issues to connect with each other and then in September I know I'm talking a lot, but I'm just-.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's great.
Speaker 3:In September we're bringing up six nationally recognized artists from around the country to spend two weeks on campus here in Grand Lake, and they're multidisciplinary. So we've got poets, We've got musicians, We've got performance artists, visual artists. Just a little bit about these artists that are coming up. Holland Andrews is a Brooklyn-based composer, clarinetist. They're Creative Capital United States artist and Guggenheim Fellow. Their work explores themes of vulnerability, healing and transformation, which is obviously very aligned with Shadow Quest mission.
Speaker 3:Nina Elder is a Gardner, Colorado-based sculptor whose work investigates ecological change, land use, cultural memory. Her work has been supported by the Warhol Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Rauschenberg Foundation. We're bringing Jamil Casaco, who's a Philadelphia-based dance artist. Doris Duke, supported performance artist and poet. Their work examines Black and queer identities through ritual grief and ideas of futurity. Yunia Eddie-Kwan is a Brooklyn-based creative capital United States artist. Guggenheim Fellow, whose work draws from Korean folk traditions. Butoh dance, experimental sound. Cedar Saigo is from Washington. He's a poet from the Suquamish Reservation. And Nick Wiley is a Chicago-based artist, organizer and educator. So lots of just really exciting people who are going to be up and at the end of that time we're holding an event on September 26th at the community house in town. It's free, it's open to everybody, where they'll be sharing their various practices with the Grand Lake community. So it's a really special opportunity to bring these folks in and give people an opportunity to experience this world-class artistry right here in Grand Lake in the intimate setting of a treasured historical building.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, alexander, how did you like make these connections and how you know, did you? What was your love, I guess, of doing this that made you bring this, these foundations, to Shadowcliff and to Grand Lake?
Speaker 3:organizations there. Six and a half of those years I was at an organization called the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, which was founded in the 1960s by Jasper Johns, john Cage, merce Cunningham, robert Rauschenberg all these artists who are part of American artistic canon who came together to found this organization to support other artists. And it's a national grant-making organization and they make grants to individual artists. So through that work I was able to build relationships with artists from across the country, both in urban, metropolitan environments as well as doing work in rural environments. Privilege to learn about all of the exciting and interesting and generative artistic work that's happening in all different parts of our large, expansive, beautiful country. You know, and Shadowcliff has been a partner with the Grand Lake Creative District since its founding. And just a little bit more history we actually incubated the first iteration of the Rocky Mountain Repertory Theater.
Speaker 3:My grandfather brought up acting students from K-State University. They were housed on site at Shadowcliff, they rehearsed at Shadowcliff and then they performed in various places throughout the town before they developed into the beautiful organization they are now, with their multi-million dollar state-of-the-art theater and brand new actors housing. But they got their start at Shadowcliff. But they got their start at Shadowcliff. So there has been historically this connection to the creative fabric of Grand Lake, and I'll also say my great-grandfather, so this is a different side of my family.
Speaker 3:Pat and Warren Rimple were my mother's parents. John Thompson was my father's grandfather, so my great-grandfather. He was a concert pianist who bought a hunting cabin on the lake in the 1930s. He wrote a series of piano books called Teaching Little Fingers to Play that many, many, many people learned to play on. And so there's this beautiful history of, you know, creative people here in the county that Shadowcliff has been a part of. So it felt like a very natural fit for this kind of programming to exist here. It amplifies, I think, the exciting stuff that all these cultural organizations in Grand Lake I mean. For a town of 400 to 500 permanent year-round residents, there's so much cultural activity happening here, it's really wild.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, what you're doing is just amazing, and I actually did learn piano from your great grandfather's books or those books, and I know that it's if you're going to book a group, you guys need to book fast, because we were. I was trying to get our board retreat to be at your facility and I think there is a Tai Chi conference going on, so maybe that's what we all need.
Speaker 3:And they take over the full campus. They're one of those groups that really occupies both lodges, all three cabins. So they you know that's one of the bigger groups that we've again, we've had a long standing relationship with. They book well in advance and they take over the full campus. Yeah, we really. I mean you know June and September, which are some of my favorite times to be here. The wildflowers this past month have been unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:And then September, you get those spills of gold, the aspen down the mountainside, the elk bugling in the park. You know there's such beautiful times to come and there also tend to be times when we have more availability for booking.
Speaker 1:So if folks are wanting to bring a retreat up, they're beautiful times to be here in Grand Lake and there are times when it's much easier to get. Absolutely Well, let's talk a little bit about your location as well. I just hiked to Cascade Fall. I hadn't done that hike in so long, so you guys actually get I mean, you're right there, a lot of people don't know that the Colorado what is it? The Colorado Trail that actually goes through Grand Lake too, but I have seen many coming off that trail. But I would think that you guys would get a fair amount of people that are backpacking and say we need a shower. But let's talk a little bit about the location, because it truly is one of the most magical places in the county.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're right up the road from the North Inlet and Tonahootoo Trailheads, where you know we're walkable. It's easier to drive but we're walkable to the East Inlet Trailhead, like you were mentioning. Yeah, the Continental Divide Trail comes right through Grand Lake and we get a lot. We've historically hosted a lot of CDT hikers and still do, and we offer $10 showers. You know the town has campgrounds and we have a hiker rate for CDT hikers and they're a treasured part of Shadowcliffs history. It's always wonderful to have them sitting around the fireplace or in the lounge. They always have amazing stories. Many of them have hiked a number of these long trails all around the world, so they're wonderful storytellers. They always and are a part of the fabric of you know, the county. Like you said, that trail runs right through.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I said I have to correct myself because I said the Colorado Trail is the continental divide trail, the magical continental divide trail. Well, and the other thing, like you guys too. So you're right there. You border rocky mountain national park but then you have the north inlet, the tanahulu creek. That's not so much of a creek in the spring that, I think, is one of the most. I used to live on the tanahulu creek and I miss that sound of the constant stream going by. It's so relaxing and you have cabins that it's like right there.
Speaker 3:Right there on the North, it is the white noise that puts you to sleep at night. Yes, and you know so. We have three cabins. They're very charmingly named. There's Overlook Fireside and Riverbend, and Riverbend is aptly named because it sits at this sort of elbow of the North Inlet where water kind of calms and pools before you know rushing down into the lake, and so it's a perfect place. You know, you go out on that, you drink your coffee on the porch in the morning and you see all sorts of wildlife coming down to drink from this little pool Because, like you said, we're right on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park and so you'll also see deer, just you know, traipsing around the canyon.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Marmot, love to send themselves on the rock next to fireside. But all three cabins, yeah, are right there on the North inlet and have beautiful views of both the lake as well as the inlet. Um and again, like you said, you hear that, you hear that rushing water, I hear the bird song. It's really, it's magical, it really is magic. I'm biased.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know it's, no, it's, it's I. When we were up there, like I think, everybody just wanted to stay up there and, yeah, enjoy the afternoon up there. What you talked about it being a communal aspect with the kitchen, but with groups you guys will, for certain groups will provide a meal or meals, but then, if it works the other way, people can bring in their own food and use the facility. So you kind of offer something for everyone.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah, so we have. Like you said, we have the communal dining area and the commercial kitchen, which is a staff only kitchen. But in Rimple Lodge we do have a guest kitchen. That's pretty modest, it's small, but you can use it. It has a microwave, hot plate. There's a refrigerator and freezer for folks to store their food, a place to make coffee, etc. And then Cliffside Lodge, which is one of the places that groups like to rent because it's pretty self-contained. So you have three stories. On the first floor it has its own kitchen which is fully equipped. There's two refrigerators and freezers, you know, all sorts of kitchen implements and a large dining room area. There's also two rooms and two bathrooms on that first floor. Second story is all rooms and then the third story is a lounge, also has a fireplace. Up there there's a telescope, a stunning view of the lake.
Speaker 1:Oh, I bet.
Speaker 3:So it's really self-contained and it's again. It's a good place for family reunions. It's a good place for retreats. That tends to be where we put groups that come in to rent and then RIMPLE tends to be the place that we put more kind of overnight guests or continental divide hikers. But again, if you're a larger group you can rent out both lodges and cabins, like all of that is available. But we do try to accommodate different kinds of groups, different kinds of needs. The founding intention was for Shadowcliff to be an accessible place for anyone and everybody to come and enjoy Grand Lake and we're walkable to town. It's remote, it feels like a retreat, but right down the road and you're right there in town.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's the perfect location. It truly is, so you can actually just park your car or hike and you don't really need anything else. So, alexander, give me some idea of some rates and then the dates that you guys are open for the season.
Speaker 3:Absolutely yes. We have a volunteer weekend every summer over Memorial Day weekend. So that's when people come from all over the country. All of them have some sort of connection to Shadowcliff. Some of them are board members, but most of them are people who stayed at Shadowcliff, had a connection to it, and then come back to give their time and energy to help us get open for the season, to do maintenance et cetera. So Memorial Day weekend is when we do all that sort of opening work and then basically, it's Memorial Day through Labor Day. Unfortunately, right now we're not winterized. It was built in the 1950s. All of the water runs up the cliff, it's above ground, so we have to worry about breathing and we're trying to.
Speaker 3:we've been having a lot of conversations about how to mitigate that, so we can extend to the season a little bit more, because May this month and then again october are gorgeous times to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, october's actually become more. It's warmer up there, we're not. We don't risk the chance of snow as much, and there's so many fun little activities pumpkin patches and everything like that that are popping up throughout the county, so it's so fun absolutely, and if we could get, if we get things winterized, there's also exciting stuff happening through the winter here you know yes.
Speaker 3:Fjording, like those that I saw the pictures from that last season, I was like why am I not up there for this?
Speaker 1:You need to come next year. It was pretty. I had been up the week before and you know the streets. They try not to always plow them for the snowmobilers, but I, you know, so it was. It was pretty, I mean, but they had a little bit of snow on them. I come back and they had, it was all covered and they'd made courses and I guess they'd been stockpiling snow and it was. It was incredible.
Speaker 3:It was incredible yeah, it was above its way. It really it really does and I really appreciate the work that the town board is doing and the way that the community has really come together around some of these events to make it possible. But right now our season runs again essentially Memorial Day through Labor Day and then in terms of rates, there's some variability throughout the season. So early season and late season, June and August, and these are rough dates. You can look at our website to get kind of more clarity around this. But it's about $100 a night for a room in one of the lodges. That goes up to $135 in high seas in July and August.
Speaker 3:And then in terms of our cabins there's a little bit of a range. So Overlook and Riverbend are $295 a night and then Fireside is actually separated into upper and lower, so you can rent the whole thing, which can comfortably sleep six adults, but you can sleep more if you have couples or you have kids that can stay in the bunk beds, et cetera. You can rent the whole thing for $465 a night, or Upper Fireside, which is more of like a complete cabin is that $295 a night rate? Or you can just rent Lower Fireside, which is just for two adults it's really like a complete cabin. Is that $295 a night rate? Or you can just rent lower fireside, which is just, you know, just for two adults. It's really like a sweet little apartment, studio apartment for $180 a night. So there's a little bit of a range on those cabinets, yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is still reasonable for what you get, the view itself. You can't put a price tag on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're a nonprofit so we try like that is actually part of our mission is to try to keep those prices affordable while still covering our operational costs.
Speaker 1:And which you guys do also take volunteer, or you do. You host volunteers as well, and we'll always take donations as well. How can people find out more information on volunteering and how to leave a donation?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. The easiest way to find out about volunteer opportunities is to sign up for our newsletter. We again the big volunteer efforts are kind of opening, getting us open for the season. There are some closing, you know volunteer opportunities and then also you know we can always use help throughout the season. So especially folks that are located here in the county want to give a little bit of extra time.
Speaker 3:There's things like we have a nature trail that goes through. It's a four acre campus so there's a sweet nature trail that it's called the laws of nature trail. There are little benches and chairs placed at different points where you have these sweet little vistas. So there's always trail maintenance work that we can use help with. There's always maintenance activities. So folks who are skilled with different things Dave, our facilities person, who's amazing, he's been coming up for four years started as a volunteer. We forced him to take a little bit of money. We're like we do so much work here, we've got to pay you something. So he finally acquiesced and let us give him a little something for his efforts. But he works so hard and you know it is a large campus and historic buildings that take some maintenance and need a little bit of love. So there's always opportunities throughout the season.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that newsletter is the best way to find out about volunteer opportunities. And then there's a donate link on our website. And, again, we are a nonprofit so we have, you know, our rates are all subsidized and so the donations that folks give make it possible for us to keep this space accessible. Also offer, you know, programs for the community that are free of charge, and that includes partnering with local organizations providing space. We try to make our space, which is an asset, you know, available to other nonprofits and community organizations, to the extent that we can, free of charge. And you know, if there's food, you know obviously there's food costs, but in terms of the actual space itself, we try to make it available to partners. And then this residency programming, which, again, I'm really excited about and is a new endeavor for us. We have a residency fundraising campaign that's ongoing right now, so you can give to the organization to just support our operations or you can also, if you, like me, are excited about the residency programming, you can give specifically to that program as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's great and, alexander, it's amazing. It is one of my favorite places in Grand County. It is truly a hidden secret and a hidden gem.
Speaker 3:We're trying to make it less, but I still appreciate that and it was, and it was really lovely to have you up there. And and what I'll say also to residents of Grand County you don't have to stay at Shadow Cliff to come up and visit. You know, you can come visit us in the lounge anytime. You can sit around the fire with us, you can share your story. It is uh, we are. Yes, we host guests from all over the country and all over the world, but we also are, we want to build connections with our local community too. We want to be an asset to our local community too, and so we want you to come spend time with us.
Speaker 1:So oh, that's such a. That's so nice and I would encourage everybody to go up there. Yeah, I think we need to have more people know about the special place that's in Grand Lake.
Speaker 3:And the next opportunity to really do that with community is July 4th. We're holding. We have a dinner Again. I'm biased, but I think it's the best place to watch fireworks in the county, oh, no doubt. You've got that. We're on the cliff, we're overlooking the lake we can put, we have a bonfire up on the cliff, so there will be dinner, there'll be music, there'll be a bonfire on the cliff. There's a on our events link on our Web site. You can find out more about that and book tickets.
Speaker 1:All right. Oh, Alexander, this was great. Thank you for the history and the update of all the great things that you guys are doing and again, I would encourage, encourage, get up there.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Such a pleasure to talk to you.
