ESTES PARK — With the transition of Frozen Dead Guy Days from Nederland to Estes Park, there's now a new spot for coffin racing in northern Colorado.
The wild and whacky event that has drawn thousands of spooky, party-goers to Nederland for decades is now owned and operated by the same folks that run the Stanley Hotel.
The festival,in its own strange way, honors, remembers, or perhaps pays homage to the life and death of Bredo Morstoel, a man who died in 1989, was cryogenically frozen, and has been on ice in a shed in Nederland since the 1990s.
The immense, three-day party (March 17-19) boasted multiple live performances, food vendors, and feats of fun and derring-do; perhaps most notably, the event continued with its traditional coffin racing.
The format for the coffin races at Frozen Dead Guy Days (FDGD) is radically different than what we see at the Emma Crawford Coffin Races.
While the race in Manitou includes attaching a coffin to wheels and pushing it down a road, FDGD's format requires six pallbearers to quickly and dexterously carry a coffin through an obstacle course.
The inaugural racing of the coffins in Estes Park saw 26 teams vying for the top spot and hordes of onlookers cheering them on.
Plans are already churning into motion for next year's festival, for more information, visit the organization's Facebook page.
