Prater Cup competitors with Stephanie Prater standing center.
I was in Crested Buttesdouble-black-diamond Extreme Limits with my son and his ski team this February. Accessed off the North Face T-Bar, the area is like a giant rumpled sheet, with steep cirques, ledges, benches, cliffs, and chutes that plunge through the trees. I was urging prudence, given the fact that my son was in the middle of quite possibly the most important ski race of the year. If you cant see over it, dont ski over it, I told him.
In the last week of February, the speediest 12- and 13-year-old ski racers in the state of Colorado descend on Crested Butte for the annual Dan Prater Memorial Cup. It also happens to be the most fun race on the schedule and one of the best opportunities for parents to get in some white-knuckle skiing of their own in between watching race runs. The event also has an intriguing backstory thats wrapped up in Crested Butte history.
CB’s Teo Bowl. Photo by Nathan Bilow courtesy of Crested Butte.
So, while I was advocating a cautious approach to the precipitous cliff-riddled slopes, my sons coach was pointing his pole toward a very large hunk of granite. He and my son made a beeline to the top of it, and the coach jumped off. My son stood at the top, peering over the edge. It was about an 8-foot drop onto a steep apron of snow.
If this ends badly, Im going to kill that coach, I said to myself. Across the slope, the coach called up to Aidan, Your moms going to kill me if you dont land this.
He dropped it and stuck the landing like a pro. I breathed out. The coach lived to ski another day.
The race is a memorial for Dan Prater, whose daughters, Stephanie and Criss Prater, now spearhead, bringing an element of whimsy that is otherwise absent at ski races. Stephanie does all the work, says Criss during the parent mixer, held at the base-area bar Route 66. I just design the T-shirts.
Aiden representing Luxembourg.
Kids are assigned a country (Austria, Poland, Japan) and a Prater Passport. Throughout the weekend, teams are tasked with amassing Prater Points, which they can get for affixing country flags to their jackets, for spraying country flags on the snow with watered-down food coloring, for skiing to all ends of the resort on a scavenger hunt, and for picking up dirty paper plates at the barbecue.
Some kids turn white pillowcases into flags that are worn like capes; others wear bathrobes with country flags drawn on the back. Helmets, shin guards, and pole guards are duct taped with flags. How anybody cuts the Canadian maple leaf out of red duct tape, Ill never know.
In the late 1960s, Dan Prater brought his family on ski trips to Crested Butte from Wichita, Kansas. Dans childhood babysitter happened to be Dick Elfin, who co-founded (with Fred Rice) Crested Butte Mountain Resort in 1961. Weve been a part of this valley for a long, long time, says Stephanie.
Dan was instantly smitten with the remote Colorado outpost. He bought a house off Elk Avenue, where Stephanie has since raised her daughter, Raven, and still lives today. The whole family didnt move out permanently until later, as Stephanie and Criss wanted to finish high school in Kansas. Once my dad moved out, he stayed, she says.
In his heyday, Dan was known to frequent the towns watering holes and, wearing his signature horse-hair coat, jump up on stage with local bands, playing his bumbassa drum of sorts with tambourine, wood block and a cowbell on a stringed stick. Its a crazy instrument, says Stephanie. He sure loved his scotch. Dan Prater soon became an institution in Crested Butte.
Casey Pucket, Stephanie Prater and Chris Puckett.
Then, in October 1979, Dan choked on a hunk of steak at Slogars. The community was devastated. He was only 42. His motto was to live every day like its the last, says Stephanie. He lived every minute like that, without a doubt. To honor his memory, the Dan Prater Memorial race was established in 1980, and its been going strong ever since.
In a neat twist, this years top racer in the mens division was a young teen named Cooper Puckettand bear with me on thiswhose dad is former U.S. Ski Teamer and Winter Olympian Chris Puckett, whose dad is Paul Puckett, who was Dan Praters attorney in Crested Butte in the 1970s. Paul and my dad were close mates, says Stephanie. Not coincidentally, Pauls wife is Peggy Puckett, who was an Olympic hopeful for the 1968 Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble.
Dan Prater.
Dan had always supported the mountains burgeoning race teamincluding Chris Puckett and his brother, Casey (also an Olympian). My dad had a 32-foot Winnebago that he would drive around as a support vehicle for the racers, says Stephanie. The CB ski club kids would come in, get warm and hed give them hot chocolate.
The Prater sisters have carried on the tradition of supporting ski racing with the Prater Cup. Over the course of the four-day competition, they dole out milk and cookies at the opening ceremony, pizza at the mini-golf party, and hot dogs at the barbecue. Stephanie mans the grill herself. At awards time, Stephanie hands out gear from the sponsors shes been hound-dogging all year. Goggles from Oakley, Giro and Bolle, back packs from Dakine, gloves from Hestra, helmets from POC, and jackets from Spyder. Its not a ski race, she says. Its a snow festival.
