JUST LIKE THE HAZE OF YORE

SUMMIT COUNTY - A man, a hippie by the tie-dyed, long-haired look of
it, stood on the corner on Main Street in Breckenridge. The streets
were dirt then, a time when hippies were really hippies.

The man lit a marijuana cigarette and took a drag. A police car rolled
down the street. The hippie waved. The policeman waved back.

Shamus O'Toole, friend to bikers everywhere, former owner of the
often-raucous Breckenridge watering hole that bore his name, who came
to the mountain town to visit a friend more than 30 years ago, saw
this and decided to stay.

Summit County - and the other Colorado ski towns like it - has long
had a history of vice.

Long before ski towns became known as party towns, the miners who
settled this area made brothels and saloons more profitable than the
placers that supplied their customers' pay.

To one ski town fixture, it's simply a matter of the nature of our
species.

"Human beings have been changing their consciousness since Homo
erectus," said Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis. "We like to get high."

Then came the 1960s, and as the popularity of ski resorts grew, so,
too, was the culture of consciousness-expanding recreation. And
somewhere along the dilated, flashback-laden timeline, the two became
connected. Ski town became synonymous, in reputation at least, with
party town.

O'Toole arrived in Breckenridge in 1972. He said the town was always a
party place.

"I could never figure out who the buyers were, because everybody was a
dealer," he said.

O'Toole, now a Florida restaurateur in semi-retirement (old bikers
never die, their memories just get a little hazy) can tell plenty of
stories to those who ask, the kind of stories that would make
sensational tabloid headlines today.

But the way O'Toole describes it, it wasn't all that shocking in the
1970s: attorneys, elected officials and other notables in the shady
corners of bars, discussing business of an underground sort.

The stories include all of the drugs - the "recreational" ones to
those who partake, the "controlled substances" to law enforcement and
the courts - including LSD, marijuana, cocaine and more. O'Toole can
name names, because he was right there with them.

"When I first moved here, people would lay out a line of coke right on
the bar," he said. "They'd smoke a joint right there."

Locals who were here to see it can recall the appellations the party
antics created: The Ridge Street Rowdies, the Devil's Triangle and
other nicknames for celebration central.

And it wasn't just a "'70s thing" you'd find elsewhere in the country:
"There's a higher than average level of hedonism in all resort
communities," Sheriff Braudis said.

But how did it get that way? Those illegal drugs were never pictured
in ski town marketing.

Alcohol certainly was, and the social atmosphere of aprés-ski
cocktails certainly drew its fair share to the slopes and the towns
nestled beneath. It's the sexy appeal, the Playboy play, if you will.

Sixteen-year Steamboat Springs resident and resort employee Kathy
Wiedemer said she remembers it well. Wiedemer worked in restaurants
when she first came to the mountains.

She remembers, in the years before moving to Steamboat, how all the
vintage ski publications featured ads from liquor companies.

"When you think of skiing, you think of having a good time," Wiedemer
said. "It's aprés ski, it's hot tubs. Then you move here, and to feed
your ski habit, people work all night. A lot of them have to unwind,
and some of them overdo it, of course. But I think a lot of it got
taken out of context, blown out of proportion."

But the people, and the parties, kept on coming. As Summit County's
ski towns grew through the decades, the drugs never left, they just
became more discreet.

To be sure, cocaine isn't something its users show off. Marijuana is
still popular - who hasn't heard a tramway referred to as a ganja-la?
- - but no one is lighting up joints on Main Street.

Part of what has changed - to be sure, things have changed - is
society's perception of drugs, both Summit County and the country as a
whole.

O'Toole, and others, describe how cocaine was a social drug in the
70s, before people realized all the problems it could cause.

Drugs became an issue of liability. Resorts began testing employees
for drug use - not just after an accident occurred on a lift or a
backhoe, but to get the job in the first place.

And the marketing changed, too. Enter the 1990s, and the leisure
industry's focus on "family-friendly" vacations. Out went the Jell-O
shots, or at least the shot was taken out of the Jell-O for junior.

Roll over a new leaf

Things changed, too, as those '60s and '70s ski bums grew up, had kids
and settled down.

"I believe that in the '70s there was a greater prevalence of drug use
per capita because you didn't have the same depth of community
structure and involvement that you have now," says Chief District
Court Judge Terry Ruckriegle, a Breckenridge resident for 20 years.

Ruckriegle notes that even the attitude towards alcohol has changed.
In his younger days as a prosecutor, Ruckriegle says, it wasn't
uncommon for someone the police pulled over for drunken driving to get
a ride home. These days, though, with DUI arrests having peaked at
just under 1,000 three years ago, no one's getting a ride home;
they're going to jail.

Possibly the greatest change comes from the county's demographic
trends: Along with those ski bums growing older and starting families,
more and more families are settling in Summit County. Seniors and
other second-homeowners are retiring to the mountains in greater
numbers. And plenty of others that don't fit in those population
groups are escaping suburbs and metropolitan areas to get away from
urban stressors like traffic and crime.

In that light, one might see hope for a change in the hedonistic
culture of ski towns - a population growing with a demographic that
dilutes the party scene, maybe even making it a minority.

But that trend cuts both ways. Summit County Sheriff John Minor is
careful to point out that criminals go on vacation, and some of them
even move to the mountains. Along with families and seniors looking
for rural relocation, some criminals are doing the same thing.

"I'll tell you what concerns me now," Minor said. "We have recently
executed a couple different search warrants where drug dealers have
video surveillance outside their units."

"There's a reason," Undersheriff Derek Woodman, head of the county's
drug task force adds, "and they're protecting their investment. The
bad part is we have no idea how far they'll go to protect it."

Minor said he sees this as drug purveyors bringing their metropolitan
mentality with them to the mountains. Unfortunately, that might mean
more of the scary stories people see on the Denver news making
headlines in Summit County. Minor pointed out two stand-offs with a
methamphetamine addict in Summit Cove this summer and said that,
without skillful negotiations, the incidents could have turned into
SWAT team raids into the house and possible violence.

In another twist, a recent marijuana bust indicated Summit County
could be more of a distribution point for supply lines to the Front
Range. Drug task force agents seized more than 50 pounds of pot that
originated from a Dillon apartment. The buyers were from Denver.

And some of those ski bums with kids? They haven't settled down
completely, the sheriff points out. There are those still having a
good time, and some of their children are following the same path.

"We talk to parents, and they'll say 'if they're going to smoke dope,
we'd rather they do it with us,'" Minor said.

But the top cops in charge of busting up the drug trade say Summit
County's best hope is to focus on prevention. If the party atmosphere
is to become one of responsibility, the change will begin with
Summit's children.

"We have very involved parents here," Minor said. "I'd tell them to
pay attention - let's start there. Find out what's going on in their
world, if their friends are changing, if their attitudes are changing.
They don't have to call the cops. Call a counselor."

Woodman added that residents need to do the same for their friends and
neighbors. In a recent bust in a Silverthorne apartment complex, where
the resident is suspected of concocting small batches of
methamphetamines in the kitchen, a neighbor interviewed later told
officers she had noticed strange chemical smells from the unit.

"If the neighbor is starting to go down the wrong road, they need to
intervene," Woodman said.