Grandpa Bredo, Frozen Dead Guy Days 2026,

and This Week in Estes Park

OPENING FROM BUCK

Moe Pass has been a park ranger for a long time. He has seen things. Bears in dumpsters, tourists trying to pet elk, a man who once asked him whether the deer were animatronic. He is not easy to surprise.

He called me Tuesday and said, "Buck. Did you know there is a dead Norwegian in the Stanley Hotel's ice house?"

I told him I had heard something about that.

"He has been frozen since 1989," Moe said. "He is over a hundred and twenty years old. He is kept in liquid nitrogen. And there is an annual festival in his honor."

I told him to come over. The coffee was on and the story was going to take a while.

PULL UP A CHAIR. THIS ONE'S GOOD.

Who Is Grandpa Bredo?

Bredo Morstoel was born in Norway around 1900. He lived a quiet life. Retired parks director. Liked painting and fishing and walking in the mountains. Died of a heart condition in Oslo in 1989 at the age of eighty-nine.

Most stories end there. This one was just getting started.

Bredo had a grandson named Trygve Bauge who had moved from Norway to Colorado in 1980 carrying a deep conviction that frozen bodies could one day be reanimated by future science. When Bredo died, Trygve did not arrange a funeral. He shipped the body to a cryonics facility in San Leandro, California, where it stayed for nearly four years while the family figured out the next step.

The next step turned out to be Nederland, Colorado.

How Did a Frozen Norwegian End Up in a Tuff Shed Above a Mountain Town?

Trygve had a vision. He wanted to build a private cryonics headquarters in Nederland, forty miles south of Estes Park, and bring his grandfather there permanently. He bought land. He started building what he described as an earthquake-proof, fireproof, bombproof cryonics facility made of cement, steel beams, and nearly fifty percent rebar. The structure is still standing today above the neighborhood, described by locals as an unmitigated eyesore in an otherwise quaint mountain town.

In 1993, Trygve moved Grandpa Bredo from California to Nederland. He placed him in a blue sleeping bag, inside a stainless steel sarcophagus, inside a handmade plywood-and-styrofoam crypt the size of a large hot tub, all stored in a flimsy tin shed on a windy hillside above town.

Then everything fell apart.

Trygve got deported back to Norway. Not because of the frozen grandfather. Because his visa had expired, triggered when authorities caught up with him over a poorly conceived joke about hijacking an airplane he had made back in 1986. A few days after he was put on a plane to Oslo, his mother Aud came down from the unfinished cement bunker and told a local reporter she was worried Grandpa would melt.

That is how the world found out.

What Did the Nederland City Council Do?

The reporter called the Nederland city council.

The council passed an ordinance making it illegal to store frozen bodies in residential homes.

Then they grandfathered Bredo in. He had been there before the law existed, so he got to stay.

Only in Colorado.

Who Kept Him Frozen for Thirty Years?

Grandpa Bredo spent thirty years in a Tuff Shed in Nederland before his 2023 upgrade. What was the name of the organization that moved him to Estes Park, and where exactly is he now stored?

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FROZEN DEAD GUY DAYS 2026 March 27 through 29, Estes Park

Friday, March 27

• Royal Blue Ball at The Stanley Hotel. Live music, immersive entertainment, and ice king and queen costumes. Fancy attire. No excuses.
• Frozen Dead Bar Crawl. Themed cocktails at participating bars around town. Runs 2:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Pace yourself accordingly.

Saturday, March 28

• Cryogenic Cannibal Chase 8K. A morning run through Estes Park in costume. Undead attire strongly encouraged. Personal dignity optional.
• Legendary Coffin Races. Teams race handmade coffins around an obstacle course while shooting hoops through a giant skull. This is a real event. Buck Timber did not make that up.
• Live music all day at the Estes Park Events Complex. Andy Frasco and the U.N., Rick Lewis Project, Polkanauts, Gasoline Lollipops, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, and Estes Park's own Buster and the Boomers.

Sunday, March 29

• Polar Plunge at The Stanley Hotel. Jump into freezing water. Grandpa Bredo would respect it.
• Bands and Bloodys Brunch at locations around town. Bloody Marys and live music. The civilized end to an uncivilized weekend.

Getting There Free parking at 691 N. St. Vrain Avenue. Shuttle service through Explore Estes. Details at visitestespark.com.

Tickets and full schedule at frozendeadguydays.com. Save 15% with code COFFIN15 through March 21.

DID YOU KNOW? 

• Grandpa Bredo was born around 1900, making him approximately 125 years old, which makes him both the oldest and the coldest resident of Estes Park by a significant margin.
• The Nederland city council passed an ordinance in 1993 making it illegal to store frozen human bodies in residential homes. They then immediately grandfathered Bredo in because he had been there before the law existed. The ordinance is still on the books in Nederland.
• When Alcor's team opened the casket in 2023, Bredo's skin reportedly had a healthy pink hue from three decades on ice. The only visible damage was a slightly flattened nose from the casket having been stored face-down in the early years.
• The Stanley Hotel inspired Stephen King's The Shining. Jack Nicholson's character freezes to death at the end of the film. The Stanley is now home to both fiction's and Colorado's most famous frozen dead guy. John Cullen, the hotel's owner, loves pointing this out.

Buck's Joke Of The Day

A Norwegian man died in 1989. He is now frozen in liquid nitrogen in The Stanley Hotel's ice house. Every March, thousands of people throw him a party.

He has not RSVPed yet.

LOCAL HIGHLIGHT

The Stanley Hotel sits at 333 East Wonderview Avenue, and this weekend it is the center of everything. The Royal Blue Ball kicks off there Friday night. The Polar Plunge happens there Sunday morning. And somewhere in the original 1909 ice house on the property, Grandpa Bredo is resting at minus 196 degrees Celsius, monitored remotely by scientists in Arizona, completely unbothered by the coffin races happening forty feet away.

If you have never taken a proper tour of the Stanley, this weekend is the time.

Alcor Life Extension Foundation moved Grandpa Bredo from his longtime Tuff Shed in Nederland in August 2023. He now rests head-down inside a ten-foot-tall silver steel dewar filled with liquid nitrogen inside The Stanley Hotel's original 1909 ice house at 333 East Wonderview Avenue, Estes Park.

 Alcor scientists monitor him remotely. He is kept head-down to ensure his brain stays in the coldest part of the chamber.

CLOSING FROM BUCK

A Norwegian man who liked painting and fishing and walking in the mountains has been frozen for thirty-seven years, survived a deportation, a city council vote, two caretakers, and a cross-country move in the middle of the night, and ended up in the ice house of the most famous hotel in Colorado.

His family is still paying the bill.

Moe put on his jacket at the door and said, "You think he would have liked Estes Park?"

I told him most people do.

Stay smart, stay safe, and leave the mountains colder than the story that brought you here.

- Buck Timber Estes Park, Colorado

This above story of Bredo Morstoel and the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival is documented across multiple sources including the Boulder Daily Camera, the Denver Post, the official Frozen Dead Guy Days website at frozendeadguydays.com, Alcor Life Extension Foundation records, and Stanley Hotel owner John Cullen's public statements. The broad facts are verified and well documented. A few moments have been shaped for the telling. Grandpa Bredo's own opinions on any of this remain unavailable for comment. - Buck

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