On a bluebird afternoon last March, Rachael Miller found herself trudging uphill on skis she had never worn before — telemark skis of a bygone era — while dressed in an ode to Axl Rose. There on the North Face of Mount Crested Butte, other costumed racers in matching, clunky skis surrounded her.

“You’re passing a group of 15 circus members and Ken and Barbie in a Barbie Mobile, and (athletes) in skin suits are flying by you,” Miller recalls. “And then you get to the top.”

It was time for her first turn in telemark skis. In an Axl Rose costume, of all things. And in all places: down the treacherous face of the mountain famed for its fast, harsh terrain. It was time for the Last Steep.

“You can hear people screaming and heckling and hooting,” Miller says, thinking back.

She descended wobbly but safely to the bottom. She looked back at the pandemonium, back at those costumed racers making their perilous way down.

“It was like a video game,” Miller remembers. “You’re looking at a car out of control flying down with like four people in it. You’re looking at a dragon stumbling down.”

It was her welcome to what might just be Colorado’s craziest, quirkiest, cultish ski race: the Al Johnson Memorial Telemark Race.

More shuttle stops, increased prices coming to Pikes Peak Highway

After living in Crested Butte since 1995, Miller finally joined the annual tradition that celebrated 50 years last March. Meanwhile, Pat O’Neill raced his 37th AJ, as locals call it — a record number.

O’Neill is eyeing his 38th race Sunday, when the Al Johnson is set to return to continue an end-of-season rite unlike anything across this state’s party-filled ski scene come spring.

“This is very unique,” O’Neill says. “I mean, it’s bucket-list unique. It’s complete madness.”

The required telemark skis are one thing — those free-heel skis widely unrecognized by this generation benefiting from more sturdy alpine touring gear. The costumes are another thing.

The ones over the years that have stood out in Michele Zembal’s mind: “Anything that requires, you know, a box or two-by-fours.”

Representing the local Alpineer ski shop, Zembal helped organize the race for the better part of the past two decades. She had a front-row seat at the ceremony awarding the fastest skiers and, maybe more importantly, the best dressed.

Groups in cardboard cars have been common. As has the dragon. Another longtime organizer, Than Acuff, remembers another group mimicking a spawning salmon. Another group dressed as Tetris pieces and came together at the end. An elephant on all fours was seen skiing last year. 

The race awards — traditionally gear from the Alpineer and gift cards from local businesses — have been no laughing matter for those making decisions. Those like Acuff.

“It’s so much pressure,” he says, “because people will come up to me after like, ‘Dude! I was Chewbacca! I could barely see!’”

Between the untrained telemark types, the expert terrain and the unwieldy costumes, there are obvious hazards to the Al Johnson. One skins 600-plus feet up before the notorious, 1,200-foot descent.

“It’s just full-on survival skiing,” Acuff says. “It ain’t pretty.”

A prize is given to the best crash as well. The prize has typically been a bottle of whiskey, which has typically been passed around the party at Butte 66, the bar and grill at Crested Butte Mountain Resort.

The resort has proudly hosted the festivities. Said a spokesperson: “In my opinion, there are few events that speak better to CBMR’s wild, rowdy and fun nature than the AJ.”

The AJ speaks to the whole town, O’Neill says — to the gritty past of mining and ranching and to the fun-loving present.

“It’s really a celebration of community and history,” he says.

It’s a celebration of a legendary postman.

Mikaela Shiffrin’s ‘MIK100: Reset the Sport’ campaign aims to raise $100,000 for youth initiatives | Whiteout

In the late 19th century, Al Johnson hauled mail to miners across the mountains. Come winter, he traveled on skis. He traveled through the fearsome likes of Crystal Canyon, according to a history posted by Crested Butte Mountain Resort, which recounts danger he evaded: “(H)e declared that in order to avoid avalanches, he would ‘turn his skis loose’ and shoot through the canyon as quickly as possible.”

The account also recalls him skiing in the Great Race of 1886. This served as inspiration for the first Al Johnson Memorial Telemark Race in 1974.

The origin story, according to Acuff: “Just a bunch of kooks in 1974 that were like, ‘Oh, that sounds like a fun time in the mountains.’”

More and more people were coming to Crested Butte for such a time back then. The 1970s “laid the framework for the community we know today,” according to a post by the Crested Butte Museum, recalling “a riotous time” and “an explosion of creativity, proliferation of new activities and sports, and a political takeover.”

The hippies had won.

“A lot of the original skiers were telemarking hippies,” O’Neill says.

They were fun-loving but serious; the Al Johnson that O’Neill knew back in the ‘80s was almost all about speed. The sponsoring United States Postal Service would offer serious loot before the race became more about costumes in the ‘90s and operations shifted.

The AJ would be organized by local nonprofits, such as Crested Butte Avalanche Center. Acuff represented the nonprofit while organizing the race for years leading up to the 50th anniversary last March.

“When I first raced (in 1994), it was just on everybody’s calendar, it was always there,” he says. “There was no question it was gonna happen.”

There are questions now.

Questions start with telemark. “It’s going out like the typewriter,” O’Neill says.

But he is among many who insist the AJ must stick with the gear. Some go so far as saying the AJ must remain a telemark race or perish — that the soul would be lost with the conversion to modern gear.

‘It’s just astounding:’ 4,200-plus acres conserved in Colorado’s mountains

“We realize this event may die because of the gear,” Miller says. “But we’re gonna keep it going as long as we can.”

By “we,” she means Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team Boosters. After her first race for the 50th anniversary, Miller and the group are taking the reins from the local avalanche center and the Alpineer.

“A little sad,” Zembal calls herself at the shop. “But I’m also kind of relieved to be honest.”

There was always a cost and risk to running a niche race, in which paying participation — maybe anywhere between 100 and 200 — depended not only on people having telemark skis but also on a day’s weather and snow conditions.

For the Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team Boosters, “I hope it’s worth their time and energy as an organization to see it continue,” Zembal says.

That, she says, has been a struggle for other organizations. It was time for the avalanche center to step away, as hard as it was for Acuff, a deep believer in tradition.

“As traditions disappear, so does a community’s soul to a certain extent,” he says.

The goal was getting the AJ to 50 years, he says.

As for another 50 years, “I can’t tell you, man,” he says. “It all comes down to this year.”

Miller sounds emboldened. She was emboldened by what she was hearing around the after-party last year — that her first year racing might have been the last year for the Al Johnson Memorial Telemark Race.

That could not be, Miller felt.

“I think, in a nutshell, it encompasses what this community is,” she says. “We are a community of unique, fun, creative, hysterical, wildly athletic people. And it’s a moment for us all to get together and celebrate.”