GUDRUN "GUDY" GASKILL PAPERS

Gudrun “Gudy” Gaskill (1927-2016), an avid athlete and nature enthusiast, was the driving force behind the creation of the 567-mile Colorado Trail. Over a twenty-five year period, Gaskill worked with the Colorado Trail Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and private property owners to cobble together sections of this public trail. Intended for hikers, bikers, horseback riders, and cross-country skiers, the trail spans from Durango to Denver. Gaskill helped to raise funds and plan the trail’s route, and then coordinated and led numerous teams of volunteers to clear and build trails and support structures, one trail segment at a time.

Born Gudrun E. Timmerhaus to Elsa and Paul Timmerhaus in Palatine, Illinois, on February 28, 1927, “Gudy,” as she became known, grew up with a brother and sister in Palatine. Throughout her childhood, she competed in local downhill and cross country ski races, which sparked a lifetime love of the outdoors, mountaineering, and adventure. In her early teen years, her interest was solidified over several summers when her father served as a volunteer ranger naturalist at Rocky Mountain National Park. Gaskill’s father brought the family along for the season, and each day young Gudy and her siblings would have free rein of the park’s trails.

Gaskill would eventually come to climb all fifty-four of Colorado’s Fourteeners, many international high peaks, and she continued ski racing into her seventies and hiking into her eighties. In a 2008 interview recorded by the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame, Gaskill proudly stated she had adventure packing down to an art, managing to successfully pack only eighteen pounds for a week-long hiking trip.

In 1944, Gaskill chose to attend Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. Her choice of school was largely influenced by the college’s famed ski run, known for being lit up at night to allow for evening skiing. She earned a degree in Education, and also there met her future husband, David L. Gaskill. Their 1948 marriage was somewhat unusual for the time, as indicated in a 1989 “Up the Creek” interview with Gudy, where she stated “When we were married, before women’s lib, I was already mountain climbing, and he [Dave] gave me a written contract that I could do anything I wanted to do.”

Together, David and Gudy Gaskill raised four children–Steven, Robin, Polly, and Craig–while moving around for education and job prospects. Their relocations took them to Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and California, before they finally settled in Golden, Colorado. Dave became a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and Gudy completed a Master’s in Industrial Recreation at the University of New Mexico. She eventually worked in real estate, founding her own real estate business, Mountain Associates, in 1974.

The Gaskills joined the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC) in 1952, and Gudy quickly became an active leader of CMC’s local hikes, eventually leading many of their international treks. She served on the Outings, and Huts and Trails committees in the 1970s, and in 1977 became the first woman president of the CMC.

In the early 1970s, Bill Lucas of the U.S. Forest Service called together a group of environmental organizations to discuss a new idea: building a public recreation trail spanning across central Colorado. Gaskill attended as a representative of the CMC. While some organizations were against the idea of increasing public backcountry access, with concerns about the potential environmental impacts, Gaskill was intrigued. Her interest in this “Colorado Trail” became the life’s breath that kept the construction project alive over thirty years, with Gaskill helping shepherd the project from idea to reality. Until 2000, she ran the entire enterprise of the Colorado Trail Foundation organization from her house.

In 1974, the Colorado Mountain Trails Foundation was created. The organization obtained a grant from the Gates Foundation to support their plans to build the proposed 500-mile trail in time for the state’s Centennial celebration in 1976. The foundation members assumed they would be able to stitch together old trails shown on historic maps, but soon discovered that after decades of neglect many trails were now entirely grown in. Gaskill participated in drawing a new detailed route through Forest Service districts, stitching together existing, inactive, and nascent park trails with neglected mining and logging roads. Needless to say, the Trail was not completed in time for the 1976 state Centennial, nor for many years to come, leading critics at the time to call it the “Trail to Nowhere.” The Trail construction work itself would take nearly two decades of hard work to complete.

Over the years, Gaskill negotiated with federal agencies to gain support for the Trail, including attempting to persuade reluctant district forest managers to facilitate the projects. She recruited, trained, and led thousands of volunteers in the work, with each crew building about one mile of trail. The Colorado Mountain Club and Colorado Trail Foundation usually provided funding for food, and for many years tools were borrowed from various sources, or provided by volunteers themselves. Summer after summer, Gaskill recruited new crews largely by word of mouth, for week-long projects camping and working in remote areas. Project crews ranged from a low of three crews per summer, to a height of forty-five in the summer of 1987. These volunteers contributed their time and sweat-equity to clearing and building trails, and in 1984 even included then Governor Dick Lamm on a crew working in the Twin Lakes area.

Many volunteers built life-long friendships through these weeklong “vacation” projects, and as is documented in the collection, many continued to correspond with Gaskill for years after their crew experiences. Trail crews each fostered their own culture, with poems, stories, jokes, and even a Colorado Trail song being shared over the years.

Coming together segment by segment, the first 480 miles of the Colorado Trail (approximately 80% of the final distance) were finally dedicated on July 23, 1988. At the time of the dedication the trail was linked from Denver to Durango, including many miles on old roads. Following this success, Gaskill and volunteers continued to build additional sections of trail, routing the remaining road-based sections off-road through more wild and scenic areas. She also turned to recruiting volunteers on an ongoing basis to maintain the trails, bridges, and shelters along the route, and she continued to serve on the Colorado Trail Foundation board.

In approximately 1992, Gaskill located and orchestrated purchase of a cabin located four miles off-trail between Silverton and Lake City, to serve as an educational cabin for the Trail Foundation. She proceeded to plan, coordinate, hire instructors, and even cook meals for attendees for a variety of educational and art programs hosted at the cabin.

While the Colorado Trail continued to grow in pieces and be refined over the years, Gaskill herself considered the Trail finally completed in 2000. All trail signage was finally in place that year, thus preventing hikers from winding up lost off-trail.

Among her many lifelong service commitments, Gaskill served on the board of the American Hiking Society, as President and a board member of the Colorado Mountain Club, as Executive Director of the Colorado Trail Foundation, and as Chair of the Colorado Recreational Trails Committee of the Colorado State Parks and Recreation department.

Gaskill’s dedication was acknowledged by a variety of community, nature education, and volunteerism organizations, and by several government entities. She was recognized by President Ronald Reagan in his “Take Pride in America” Campaign (1987; Gudy was one of 37 people honored). She was later honored by President George Bush in his “One Thousand Points of Light” program (1991; Gaskill was Light #204). In 1989, the City and County of Denver declared February 28, 1989 as “Gudy Gaskill Day”; and in 2002, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. Posthumously, the Colorado legislature and Governor John Hickenlooper declared March 20, 2017 as “Gudy Gaskill Day” in Colorado.

In addition to this formal recognition, Gaskill has been covered by many media outlets for her contributions to outdoor recreation in Colorado. Much of this recognition and coverage is documented throughout the collection.

Perhaps most durable were the Colorado Trail features named in her honor: the Gudy Gaskill Bridge over the South Platte River, Gudy’s Rest in the San Juans near Durango, and the Gudy Gaskill Loop trail near Golden, Colorado. Gudy Gaskill Elementary School, not far from the northern terminus of the Colorado Trail in Littleton, Colorado, was dedicated in 2022.

In addition to her family, career, Colorado Trail work, and outdoors education and mountaineering pursuits, Gaskill was also an avid painter and sculptor, and a world traveler who visited more than thirty different countries in Europe, Central and Southeast Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa. Many of these trips involved mountaineering, and a number were as a CMC trek leader.

Gudrun Gaskill died following a stroke on July 14, 2016.