'A gift and a curse'
Founders of Nederland's "Frozen Dead Guy Days" reflect on festival's move to Estes Park

For the last two decades, Frozen Dead Guy Days has been a staple event for the town of Nederland. But three years ago, the festival moved to Estes Park, and Nederland continues to figure out its identity following the departure of its most famous tradition.

The weekend-long festival – which took place March 14-16 complete with a polar plunge, parade of hearses, costume contests, live music and its famous coffin races – helped put tiny Nederland on the map.

“You can be anywhere in the world and some people will know when you say ‘Nederland,’” Stephanie Andelman, a longtime festival worker and enthusiast, said.

While on the surface, the festival is about a 120-year-old frozen dead guy – Bredo Morstøl, colloquially known as “Grandpa Bredo,” who died in 1989 and has since been frozen in a cryogenic storage shed –  the festival was actually started as a way to boost tourism. The now-disbanded Nederland Chamber of Commerce developed the idea in 2002 to bring more revenue into town during the slow winter months.

Initially, the plan worked. According to Andelman, who has been involved with the festival shortly after its founding, in just a few years, the festival began attracting national media attention.

“I don’t want to say it exploded, but it grew from a couple hundred people to a couple thousand,” she said.

Despite the quirky festival bringing media, visitors and some extra revenue into the town, many locals grew less and less fond of the attention. “I spent a lot of time instead of working on the actual festival … fighting with the town, which was really interesting,” Amanda MacDonald, former longtime owner and organizer of the festival, said. 

MacDonald bought the festival from the Nederland Chamber of Commerce after the chamber dissolved in 2011. Running the festival not only became a huge passion – it took over her life.

“It was extremely stressful, and I literally sold my house to pay off debt,” MacDonald said. “My father said, ‘That f****** festival ruined your life.’ I couldn’t sleep, and I had to lean on people a lot. But that’s what made it kind of special – we just made it up as we went along.”

But between the inebriated visitors showing up by the busloads, local restaurants struggling to keep up with suddenly high demand and mud-splattered coffin race competitors, Nederland decided it had had enough. 

“You either attended, worked it or you hid … It’s a gift and a curse in and of itself,” Tim Dillon, a longtime worker at the festival and Nederland local, said. 

Between the overall growing discontentment and MacDonald and her festival co-owner running out of money, the festival was sold to Estes Park.

“I call it my ‘bad divorce’ or a little bit of a custody battle,” MacDonald said.

And with it, so went Grandpa Bredo.

For the last three decades, the Norwegian man who died from a heart condition in 1989 rested in Nederland. After his passing, his daughter and grandson – both proponents of cryonics, the practice of deep-freezing the deceased in hopes that scientific advances will allow for future resurrection – shipped his body from Norway to a facility in Oakland, Calif. A few years later, Grandpa Bredo’s grandson, Trygve Bauge, moved his grandfather to his backyard in Nederland, where his remains were stored in a cryogenic storage shed.

That’s how Brad Wickham became involved.

Wickham was Grandpa Bredo’s caretaker for the last 11 years and every other week would haul thousands of pounds of ice from Denver to keep Bredo’s remains frozen. It was also his responsibility to move the remains from Nederland to the Stanley Hotel in 2023. 

“It was long and tumultuous,” Wickham said of the decade spent caring for the body. “And the day that I didn’t have to do it anymore was the best day of my life.”

Despite being one of the most heavily involved individuals in Frozen Dead Guy Days, Wickham says he “couldn’t wait” for the festival to leave town. 

“The festival never embraced me,” Wickham said. “They wanted me to spend my entire day taking dignitaries up to see Grandpa and not even be a part of the festival. After a while, that got contentious.”

Wickham said when he moved to Nederland, he struggled to find work. “The last (Grandpa Bredo) caretaker was fired. And long story short, someone suggested I take it, and at the time, I thought the money sounded good until I realized all that it entailed,” he said. “It was $150 for each delivery. It took three hours, over 120 miles of driving … I was stuck with it and couldn’t find anybody to take it over. I tried and tried and tried and tried.”

Wickham never directly worked for the festival, but rather Grandpa Bredo’s grandson, Trygve Bauge. After the Stanley Hotel took over the caretaking, for the first time in more than a decade he was able to “live life.” He’s now semi-retired and occasionally works at a gas station. 

“When I went back to the shed and saw it empty, I rejoiced,” Wickham said. “The Stanley rescued the festival, and if it weren’t for them, it would be a memory.”

Today, Grandpa Bredo rests in a 12-foot-tall steel tank filled with liquid nitrogen and set to -320 degrees in the Stanley Hotel’s historic ice house, which has since become the “International Cryonics Museum.” Visitors can take a tour for $20. 

Despite some Nederland locals saying they’re “relieved” that the festival moved, there are still a few who say they miss it. “We never had any trouble from it or anything,” Mike Parker, a worker at Nature’s Own, a crystal shop, said. “I know something’s missing.”

Longtime festival worker Andelman said she plans to continue to help Estes Park with the festival. “I have experience, and I was like, ‘I am here if you need me, we need to figure out a way to work together,’” Andelman said. “I don’t know if they wanted to accept me, but I’m not just Nederland; I am Frozen Dead Guy Day. It is an event that came from years and years of effort, so let’s figure out how it can continue.”

This story was edited for length. To read it in its entirety or for more from Colorado Public Radio, go to: www.cpr.org.?