ACCORDING TO JIM
By Cara McDonald / Photos by Carter Photographics & Courtesy of Jim Peterson

Jim Peterson helps local thrill seekers like himself find the right equipment at Christy Sports in Winter Park.

Thirty years ago, a midwestern boy chose the mountains and never looked back. Musician, skier, cyclist, and all-around Winter Park dude Jim Peterson dishes on music, staying fit, and how high-country living saved his life.

Behind walls of shelves stacked to the ceiling with ski boots, past the workbench filling the air with the sweet, heavy smell of hot wax, is the tiny office in Christy Sports where Jim Peterson sits folded, all lanky limbs, into a swiveling leatherette chair. His office is the kind of place that suggests he tries to spend as little time in it as possible. It’s beige, and windowless, with no discernible decor, unless you count the bunch of Beatles posters and a package of magnets shaped like Fender guitars that are tacked to the wall above his desk.

Peterson’s a mellow guy – quiet, thoughtful. His eyes are sleepy under a mop of curls sprouting off the top of his head. At first glance, you’d think “relaxed.” It’s more like “at ease”; he’s been at the helm of the town’s go-to ski spot for 18 years, and he knows the drill. But to be truly relaxed, it seems that this is not where Jim would be. He’d be, you know, OUT – outside, out on the bike, out in front of a crowd with his guitar, out there – which is how he came to be in Winter Park. A move that, he claims, saved his life.

“Guy Comes to Ski for a Year, Guy Ends Up Sticking Around” is not a new story here in the high country. The lure of a year off, a yen for waking up early to carve turns and then working hard playing late night gigs, or tuning skis, or slinging hash. It’s the bass line in the tune of a mountain town, it sets the beat for the lives of so many locals in so many valleys.

But what is it that makes a guy bend, suddenly, toward something different from anything he’s known, to become, for lack of a better label, a Mountain Man? For Jim Peterson, it was the skiing that led him here.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Jim poses with his riding partner for the day (1985). Photo courtesy of Jim Peterson.

Skiing –
As a kid growing up in Minnesota, he knew how to play in winter and had grown up ski racing. At age 20, he figured that maybe the slopes were calling again. His family had brought him to Winter Park a few times as a child; it was enough to lure him from the city for what he thought would be a year or two.

“It wasn’t an instantaneous decision, ‘I’m going to live the rest of my life here.’ You take it one step at a time. For me, it evolved. Everything felt good up here.” He’d come to Winter Park for the snow, but it was in summer that he fell in love with the valley life. “Summers were fantastic,” he says. “I got my first job as a fishing guide. I hiked all the fourteeners within two years.”

Soon after, the ’84 Olympics turned him on to cycling, and within the year Peterson was logging hours a day on the road. “I just got bit; I was so into competing, and being super fit.”

He became “one of those guys,” the ones with arms like ropes and legs like woven steel who can bust it up 40 to the top of Berthoud without really getting their jerseys sweaty, working his way up to become a Category 2 road racer, relishing the endless hours on the bike. But in shaping his body, he was also shaping his life up here to find the balance he craved, and that meant returning to music.

Jim performed at the Winter Park Jazz Festival in 2008. Photo by Zita Podgurskis.

Music Inspiration –
Like most kids in the 60s, Peterson was a Beatles fan; and any teenage guy with a record player had an itch for a guitar. Peterson was no exception. His parents humored him, thinking in three weeks the guitar would be in the corner and Peterson would be back outside in the woods jumping stumps on his Stingray bike. But he had a knack. Within just four years, the self-taught kid went from piecing together tunes in his bedroom to playing for money. “My first paid gig was when I was 15, with our band Stonehead, playing for the hearing impaired at the Minneapolis Hearing Institute.” His delivery is dry – his eyes smile slightly. “Their only requirement was that the music be loud.” By the time he was 18, he was playing professionally, earning nightly gigs at some of the best rock venues in the city.

“It was a dream come true,” he says. “It definitely didn’t feel like a job.” He had an agent, a band, but after three years pulling late night gigs in smoky bars, the lifestyle began to get to him, and his health deteriorated. Tired, fighting bouts of bronchitis, Peterson eventually discovered he had celiac disease. “I got really sick, and decided that I valued being healthy and needed to be out in the forest.” Grand County seemed like a natural fit.

Music Today –
On a winter’s night in Granby, as the wind whips thick veils of snow across Highway 40, The Inn at SilverCreek bustles with skiers returning home, kids poking down to the pool, and cars pulling in to the lot to head in for a drink and some tunes. Peterson and his jazz-rock-fusion band, Mango Chutney, have been playing together for 18 years, becoming one of the most beloved acts in the valley. Sure, it’s gigs like this, at bars, and then weddings and the odd festival in summer. But music now isn’t about making the rent and traveling the Midwest and chasing nightly jobs, it’s for the joy of it. “These guys are really, really great guys,” Peterson says. “That’s a big part of it now; being good friends, getting along well.”

Jim and his jazz-rock-fusion band, Mango Chutney, have been playing together for 18 years, becoming one of the most beloved acts in the valley. This performance is from 2001.

This self-confessed thrill seeker has dropped some of his competitive edge of late, and seems to relish the camaraderie, the chance to hop on a bike with friends instead of inflicting pain on a pack of racers, the chance to ski with his boys, Jamie, 12, and Jeremy, 9. Through his sons, he’s watching a new Grand County story unfold. “I think it’s wonderful for us here, as a family.” His wife, Zita, whom Peterson married in 2005, is from Lithuania, teaching him “to see life through a whole new lens.” The Winter Park hardcore has softened, too, when it comes to sharing the sports he once chased so hard with his kids. “I love turning them on to things I love. I grew up in suburbia; I found myself always going to the woods, building forts, and riding bikes. My kids have no lawn up here and they don’t miss it.”

He’s quick to clarify, though, that mountain living isn’t always a walk in the park. “It isn’t for everyone, you know? A lot of people don’t last. To be happy here, you have to be willing to entertain yourself.” As he says this, his eyes wander to the red Trek Madone that hangs on two hooks from the ceiling of his office. Soon the bike’s flawless finish will be happily splattered with mud, welcoming another change in seasons, another year of a grand life.

Jim loves to be outside, out on the bike, out in front of a crowd with his guitar, out skiing, out there. Photo by Zita Podgurskis.

Peterson’s Picks: Grand County Favorites

Long Road Ride: “We start from Winter park, go up the pass, to Empire, Idaho Springs, and back.”

Killer Climb: “We’ll drive to Grand Lake and hit Trail Ridge Road.”

Steady Climb: “I like to head to Rand and back on highway 125.”

Single-track: “If I had to pick, Ho Chi Minh and Pinball Alley [off of Vasquez Road in the National Forest] are favorites. Close, easy to get to, lots of little variations and off shoots that aren’t named.”

Hike with Out-of-Towners: “Up to Columbine Lake off of Meadow Creek Road (CR 84). Or up to Indian Peaks from Corona. If they’re fit, we take ‘em up James Peak.”

Quickie Hike: “I’ll head up on Berthoud, to the creek drainages.”

Hike with Kids: “We’ve got three go-to's: Vasquez Lake and Pass; James Peak; the lakes up in the Union Peaks area.”

Favorite Local Haunt: “Well, my new favorite? Star of India restaurant, over in Cooper Creek Square.”