Letter from Timothy J. Kregel
Monarch – May 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
From your April edition: “On March 3, the Monarch Ski and Snowboard Area opened Mirkwood Basin….”
I’ll bet Rich Moorhead had a lot to do with that name being used. In the early seventies, when we were all about 20 years old, there was a stand of aspen in Garfield that had the nickname Lower Mirkwood, an appellation appropriated by Ned Stock (I think) from the Rings trilogy.
I’ll bet you a donut (or a Berliner if I am wrong and have to pay up) that’s where Rich got the name.
You wrote that “Ed and I suspect that we were not the clientele that Monarch’s marketers had in mind when they came up with that name.”
All of us former 20-year-olds, at least those that survived the intervening years, are now 50. Prior knowledge of Mirkwood is likely a manifestation of misspent youth, not age!
Timothy J. Kregel
Mackenbach, Germany
