- August 31, 2021
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A resident of Pitkin County’s Safe Outdoor Space encampment cooks breakfast on a cloudy summer morning with Snowmass Village’s ski runs in the background. The camp, which opened in April 2020 at the Brush Creek Park and Ride lot as a response to COVID-19, is scheduled to close Nov. 1.
Tents line the interior of the homeless encampment between Aspen and Snowmass Village. While some occupants sleep in their RVs, others camp out in small tents even in the dead of winter.
Capt. Ronald Gross, a U.S. Navy veteran and resident of Pitkin County’s Safe Outdoor Space, converses with his neighbors at the camp. The 62-year-old intends to return to the U.S. Virgin Islands if the camp shuts down on Nov. 1.
Derich Hantel holds out the parking violation he received the previous night. Hantel said he moved his van to a nearby paved lot to avoid mice in the camp but was once again ticketed.
Nonperishable food items are stored in the homeless camp’s pantry. Local residents and organizations occasionally drop off pizza and home-cooked meals for the site’s occupants.
Residents plug in their devices and a few small appliances at the fenced-in camp area. Currently, 19 people call the gravel lot home.
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A resident of Pitkin County’s Safe Outdoor Space encampment cooks breakfast on a cloudy summer morning with Snowmass Village’s ski runs in the background. The camp, which opened in April 2020 at the Brush Creek Park and Ride lot as a response to COVID-19, is scheduled to close Nov. 1.
Tents line the interior of the homeless encampment between Aspen and Snowmass Village. While some occupants sleep in their RVs, others camp out in small tents even in the dead of winter.
Capt. Ronald Gross, a U.S. Navy veteran and resident of Pitkin County’s Safe Outdoor Space, converses with his neighbors at the camp. The 62-year-old intends to return to the U.S. Virgin Islands if the camp shuts down on Nov. 1.
Derich Hantel holds out the parking violation he received the previous night. Hantel said he moved his van to a nearby paved lot to avoid mice in the camp but was once again ticketed.
Nonperishable food items are stored in the homeless camp’s pantry. Local residents and organizations occasionally drop off pizza and home-cooked meals for the site’s occupants.
Residents plug in their devices and a few small appliances at the fenced-in camp area. Currently, 19 people call the gravel lot home.
The high temperature was still below freezing outside of the homeless encampment next to the Brush Creek Park and Ride lot on Feb. 16.
Thirty degrees by day and into the low teens come nightfall. Wayne Fairless felt every ounce of those lethal Rocky Mountain temperatures the night after his 54th birthday.
“He got too drunk and it’s like he went outside to use the bathroom … and didn’t make it,” said Derich Hantel, a resident of the camp just northwest of Aspen, a place Pitkin County officially calls its “Safe Outdoor Space.” The county created it in April 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[Fairless] made it back in, but he didn’t close the door and cover underneath his blankets,” Hantel said.
Fairless was found unresponsive the following morning, lying in the doorway of his trailer, where a heater had run out of propane.
Hantel, who lives out of a faded-blue Econoline van just footsteps away from where Fairless’ unoccupied trailer remains to this day, called his late neighbor’s death a big bummer.
“We woke up in the morning and he was … just frozen and blue,” Hantel recalled.
A toxicology report listed methamphetamine, amphetamine and THC as having been in Fairless’ system when he died. According to the coroner’s autopsy report, he died of hypothermia.
“He was in a homeless camp at that time and was described as intoxicated and shoeless,” the report says. “He was just inside the doorway of the trailer with his left foot partially sticking outside and frozen. The body was rigid from the cold.”
On a chilly and rainy August morning, Hantel and others at the homeless camp attempted to stay dry underneath a large white tent similar to those often seen at wedding receptions and outdoor festivals.
“Sometimes we get mice out here,” Hantel said as he unrolled a cigarette to empty what was left of its tobacco into a small silicone pipe.
Not wanting the small rodents crawling into his home on wheels, Hantel occasionally drives over to the paved portion of the park-and-ride lot nearby.
“They totally, like, just get at me,” he said. “I wake up every other morning with a $100 ticket on my van.”
Although the West Coast transplant argued he wasn’t hurting anybody, the city of Aspen alleged he parked illegally in a handicapped zone, according to the written violation.
The 35-year-old and others sit in a semblance of a circle and talk about everything from the hearty chicken and dumplings that were recently provided to them for dinner by a wealthy Snowmass resident to Pitkin County possibly shutting down the camp — their home — right around the time when winter temperatures roll in on Nov. 1.
Hantel, who grew up in Washington, Oregon and California, has called the site home since the county opened it.
“I was working doing concrete in North Dakota. I had to get out of there cause I had a bad, bad girlfriend,” Hantel said. “I wanted to go on a road trip and do some experiencing.”
After a brief stint on the West Coast, Hantel got in touch with an old buddy named Jeff, who was living in the lot where locals and tourists alike can catch the bus between Aspen and Snowmass Village.
A fan of funky-bass jazz, hard rock and especially the van life, Hantel hit the road in search of the Roaring Fork Valley and didn’t look back.
Upon his arrival, Hantel got a job cutting wood at a local hardware store but was laid off shortly thereafter due to the emergence of COVID-19.
“I was bummed, but then I ended up getting on unemployment,” he said. “By the time everything was said and done, I ended up with like $9,000 on a … card.”
Although Hantel doesn’t really talk to his dad — a truck driver based out of California — he does keep in touch with his mom who lives in Washington.
“She’s got her own stuff to worry about,” Hantel said. “She’s retired.”
At the homeless camp, Hantel’s long red beard, neck tattoos and ripped clothing fit in like salons, art galleries and boutiques in Aspen. Having called the camp home for the last 16 months, he doesn’t want to leave anytime soon either.
“We call each other family,” Hantel said. “We share each other’s forks.”
Porta-potties and an upside down “no alcohol beyond this point” sign welcome those entering and exiting the camp near Highway 82. Dark mesh screens attached to a large chain link fence prevent people at the nearby park-and-ride area from seeing too much into the Safe Outdoor Space’s perimeter.
The entire homeless camp takes up a piece of land proportionate to the footprint of many houses in nearby Aspen and Snowmass Village.
“I really don’t consider myself homeless because … that is my home and I have my family,” Hantel said, pointing to his van and the people around him. “We’re like a small tribe.”
Like Hantel, 53-year-old Mandy Broze also traveled to the Roaring Fork Valley to reconnect with old friends.
However, unlike Hantel, the single woman was unable to find them upon arriving and instead found herself living in a west Glenwood Springs motel room where she quickly burned through what little money she had.
“I lost so many things when I got into town,” Broze said. “I tried to call them but I didn’t have the right number I don’t think. I tried to touch base, it didn’t work and I spent all my money on a motel.”
Although able to secure a job in Aspen, the 86-mile round trip to and from Glenwood Springs wasn’t cheap either.
“I ended up having to leave the motel,” she said.
After her office assistant job didn’t work out, Broze found herself sleeping in a park, in Basalt, in the dead of winter — just like that.
“There’s a small little patch of park there with a tree. So, I was sleeping in February outside,” she said. On top of it all, Broze also began experiencing symptoms of menopause.
“Hot flashes and cramping and just couldn’t walk … To haul everything and carry everything and worry about sitting in a chair in the bus and all of that … it’s like a state of shock that you go into,” Broze said. “I put my hands up at that point … I can’t.”
Nineteen people, including Broze, camp out in tents and sleep in RVs within the confines of the Safe Outdoor Space.
A gentleman sitting next to Broze at the site declines to provide his name but claims to have played in the popular rock band Warrant, known for the hit song “Cherry Pie.” On this particular morning, the alleged former guitarist of a band that sold 10 million records wolfs down leftover brisket with a side of macaroni and cheese.
Just one of two women at the camp, Broze said she felt safe at the site but also made clear how that hadn’t always been the case.
“There’s been a lot of people through this camp,” she said. “It’s been a process of struggle. Asking for food, waiting for food to come, waiting for clothes for women to come.
“I look like a girl now but you should’ve seen me a couple months ago.”
Private and commercial jets continually take off and land at the nearby Aspen-Pitkin County Airport, making it difficult for people to hear one another at the camp at times.
Capt. Ronald Gross, a U.S. Navy veteran who has been in and out of the Roaring Fork Valley since 1976, doesn’t mind flying and even has an open-ended plane ticket back to the U.S. Virgin Islands should the camp close a few weeks before Thanksgiving.
“I have a sailboat over there,” he said. “I can’t claim all that. So, I’m off the grid, everything is in everybody else’s name. I just trust the people that I do business with.”
After serving in the Navy, Gross said his “liberty” brought him to the Rocky Mountains where he instantly fell in love with the state’s snow-capped mountains, rolling rivers and open air.
The 62-year-old’s baby blue eyes clash with his sunburned skin, wrinkled forehead and scruffy grey beard. Like his clothing, the brown chair Gross sits in has quite a few holes, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
Like most people, Gross has done plenty to regret, and like some people, he also likes red wine and a cigarette. From his backpack emerges a large bottle of pinot noir which he pours into paper cups for anyone in need of a libation.
“Surf’s up,” Gross said, rattling the beverage in his dirt-covered, calloused hands before taking a sip.
From the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean and the Roaring Fork Valley, Gross has traveled all over the world “and then some.” The cigarette butt Gross takes a drag from was on another person’s lips, but again, he doesn’t seem to mind.
A light traveler, Gross places the wine bottle back into his backpack, zips it up and keeps it within reaching distance as he alternates between drinking, smoking and, every so often, talking.
“Building was just part of my thing,” Gross said, reminiscing over his earlier days. “My biggest thing about it was that you get the visual payoff at the end of the day — what everybody put together. No one man can do it.”
In an email Friday, a Pitkin County official confirmed that the camp is still scheduled to close on Nov. 1.
Earlier this year, health officials went to the campsite and offered shots of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to its occupants. Pitkin County has maintained that the site was always intended to be temporary in order to provide a safe space to people in need amid the global pandemic.
“I love all these folks,” Gross said. “The community receives us very well.”
Gross doesn’t have COVID-19, but does have cancer and heart disease which he considers to be his punishment.
“I’m going through all that bull—t,” Gross said. “I [messed] up so hard in my life, it’s payback time. I’m at the end of my trail.”
Matthew Bennett is a reporter for the Aspen Daily News. He can be reached at: matthew@aspendailynews.com.
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