Tim Altic, A Legend In His Own Time
© August-September, 2007 by Christina Callicott. Photo by M. Kale Casey. From Inside/Outside Magazine.

1957 was a good year for cars, atom bombs and Tim Altic. That’s the year the roller skater, skier, skate park designer, hang-glider, homesteader and hippie was born. And even though Altic turns 50 this year, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who can keep up with him.

“ If you know Tim, you see him sitting down on Main Street in Telluride, hanging out. Then you see him up on the mountain and he’s skiing laps around you, and you wonder how he does it,” says M. Kale Casey, skier and friend of Altic’s. “It’s because when he’s not hanging, he’s working as hard as three guys, whether it’s building a skate park or whatever. And when he’s not working, he’s hiking constantly.”

Altic has been a fixture in Telluride since 1979. Even if he never skied, flew or skated again, he’s racked up enough airtime, ground miles and grass-roots legitimacy to earn his spot in the Telluride Hall of Fame. As if that weren’t enough, he’s a cult hero in Europe, and he’s built an international reputation and business out of building top-quality skate parks everywhere from Telluride to Indonesia to his current project in Israel.

“ Cavey Pete” Dahle came to Telluride for the Grateful Dead shows in 1987 and never left. “When I first came here, Tim was everything I thought Telluride was about. I thought ‘Man, this guy is a freak!’ He was in lace-ups and skinny skis, he kicked hacky sack, he lived in the woods.”

Altic was one of the first skiers in Telluride to ski free heel, and he did it with the intensity and focus that he uses for everything.

“ Back then there was no one out there rippin’ it on tele skis with the aggression and the speed that he had,” Dahle said.

Altic claims to have been the first person to ski Bear Creek Canyon, the avalanche-prone off-piste zone adjacent to the Telluride ski area. The area is characterized by steep, wind-loaded slopes and a non-negotiable death-trap cliffband that bars passage for much of the length of the canyon. Skiers traverse above the cliff until they reach a break where they can continue down.

“ Ski patrol had checked out the route in the springtime when it was safe, in case they everhad to rescue anyone. But no one was ‘skiing Bear Creek,’” Altic claims. “There was this big fear around the avalanche danger there.”

According to Altic, Hugh Sawyer, long-time local and ski instructor, talked to patrol about the route, then he and Altic hiked up there in the summertime to reconnoiter. When Altic accidentally found himself on the wrong side of the tree-covered ridge that forms the ski-area boundary, he decided to just keep going.

“ I decided to continue and go to the traverse, and find my way through the cliffband. I was down there looking for the traverse when I heard voices. Some people had followed me. So I called out to them and showed them the traverse.”

Altic was unsure what year he made his pioneering run, but he notes that it was before Lift 9 existed, when the ski runs Mammoth and Bushwhacker were accessible only by hiking from the top of Lift 6. Today, a hike-to gate exists that allows for access to the upper runs in Bear Creek Canyon, but the terrain that Altic pioneered remains off limits due to dangerous cliffbands and avalanche hazard.

Terrain isn’t the only thing Altic pioneered. He is locally famous for developing a fusion ski turn that combines the dropped knee of a telemark turn with the speed of an alpine turn. His style influenced a generation of Telluride skiers.

“ That’s why, in fact, Telluride has a whole bunch of extreme telemarkers, is because these alpine skiers started going ‘Well, he’s skiing faster than I do. I could telemark ski that fast, and then I wouldn’t have to mountaineer up anything, I could just ski up it.’ And so all of a sudden they weren’t mountaineering up anything anymore, they were tele-skiing up it,” Altic says.

Not only was Altic’s style revolutionary, but so was his equipment.

It was in Montana, where he attended high school at a Seventh Day Adventist boarding school, that Altic learned to substitute wide alpine skis for the traditional skinny Nordic skis. “And these guys in Utah were skiing these skis in powder.” When Altic saw that, he immediately went out and got a pair of Olin Mark IV double-tipped skis. “That was back in the ’70s, so I was on double-tipped skis 20 years before anyone else was.”

Perhaps one of Altic’s best-known innovations is his ski boot.

“ He was always coming from the Free Box with plastic alpine touring boots or ice climbing boots and trying to make telemark boots. As far as backcountry ski gear, he was totally visionary,” Dahle says.

Long before Scarpa had come out with a plastic telemark boot, and other free-heelers were still in lace-up leathers, Altic experimented with creating a plastic ski boot with a flexible toe.

“ I wanted to ski the fall line and do big jumps and carve turns, and I thought leather boots were too flimsy,” Altic said. He modified a plastic roller skate boot and added an articulated toe, Vibram soles, and plastic cuffs. He used glue, screws, and rivets to hold his invention together, and he also used shaping techniques, “so that it fits together like a puzzle and holds.” The boot had an integrated gaiter to keep the snow out, and flexed just like a tele boot should.

Once he had the design perfected, Altic headed to Europe to sell the idea to boot manufacturers. It was a drought year, and since there was no skiing to be had, Altic turned to his first love, roller skating.

Altic’s parents were dance skaters in northern California in the 1940s and ’50s, and he grew up roller skating. He turned to skateboarding in 1975, and used his college grant money to buy a partnership in The Smoothhill Skate Board Shop in Santa Rosa, Calif., in 1977.

“ One day I looked out of the window of the shop and this guy was roller skating past on outdoor skates, so I followed him to the college. He was lucky he brought his shoes with him. I bought his skates off him right then and there,” said Altic in an interview with Tobias Reif of Pinkjuice.com.

The purchase immediately boosted Altic’s skating. On a skateboard, Altic had been afraid to go airborne, “but when I got my roller skates out, I caught air the first time I dropped in the vert bowl,” he said. “I was ecstatic and haven’t stopped catching air since.”

Shortly afterward, a trip to Europe launched Altic’s career as a pro skater. He moved to Venice Beach and spent the next three years traveling and skating professionally as one of the world’s best vertical and pool roller skaters. He was featured in the movie “Skateboard Madness,” in London’s Skateboard Magazine and was the subject of a documentary film, “Tim the Roller Skater,” made by renowned German filmmaker Percy Adlon. The movie was filmed on location in Venice Beach. According to Altic’s website, the movie established him as the father of inverted aerial maneuvers.

Fast forward a dozen years, and there’s Altic toting a pair of plastic telemark boots around Europe with no snow to ski on. He connected with the skate scene instead, and had such a good time he came back for more the next year.

“ I’d heard about this competition in Lausanne, Switzerland. I’d passed through there on my ski trip and even met a roller skater kid there who’d shown me around town. So I made it my goal to get back there,” Altic said. “When I got to the competition, I walked up and saw that obviously it was a festival, just like in Telluride.” The best way for an itinerant skater to get into a festival in Telluride is to volunteer, and that’s what Altic did.

As he was making arrangements to join the volunteer crew, the organizer began to question Altic.

“ The guy started to ask me something in German that I didn’t understand,” said Altic. “I finally realized he was asking me if I’d ever been in a movie. ‘Who are you?’ he’s asking me.”

“ Well, my name’s Tim,” Altic answered.

“ Yeah, Tim the roller skater.”

“ Well, yeah, I roller skate, but you know . . .” Altic shrugged.

“ But are you Tim the roller skater?” the organizer demanded to know.

“ As he’s pressing me for my identification,” says Altic, “I remembered that I had been in this documentary, and that it had shown on German-speaking television in Europe back in the ’80s. So I realized that I was being recognized for this film. So I said yes, I am Tim the Roller Skater. And he immediately stopped everything that he was doing and yelled it out to everyone in the whole place. After that I wasn’t even allowed to help. I was taken out to dinner that night. I was told where I could stay. I was taken care of from that moment on.”

I saw Altic at his regular hangout, Between the Covers Bookstore and Coffeeshop, as soon as he got back from that trip. It was as close to ecstatic as I‘ve ever seen him. In a town like Telluride where everyone knows everyone, and local legends are a dime a dozen, it’s easy to dismiss one of the greats as “the guy who talks politics at the coffeeshop,” or “the guy who kicks hacky sack on Main Street.” True pioneers often don’t get the credit they deserve, and for Altic, his trip to Europe was a well-deserved and welcome triumph. It wasn’t the sort of thing that he lorded over anyone, but it was obvious that he was grateful for the admiration he had found abroad.

And well-deserved it was. Altic has worked and played hard all his life, and without a great deal of outer reward.

“ I’m poor. I have nothing. I don’t even have a schedule,” says Altic. “I have to go to court to get paid for work that I’ve done. But when I decide to do something, like go to Europe, I do it. I’m open, and things happen, boom, boom, boom. It all falls into place. Then I come home and I need a job, so I go sit on Main Street and my job walks up to me. You can’t teach that. You can’t tell someone how to do that. I am blessed. I love it.”

As easy as he makes it sound, Altic has earned his turns. Name a sport, a job or a skill, and he has excelled in it.
Mountain biking?

“ I bought my first mountain bike in the spring of 1980,” Altic says. “It was a Mongoose, a stiff-tail BMX frame with mountain-bike equipment on it.” He bought the bike from a skateshop owner in Marin, Calif. Altic then proceeded to sew his own panniers, pack a light pack and ride the bike home to Colorado.

“ I rode the Rubicon Run across the Sierras to Tahoe,” Altic said. One of the continent’s hardest four-wheel drive trails, Altic reports that it was great for a bike, even one as heavy as the one he was pedaling.

Hang-gliding?

Altic chose his high school based on his desire to learn to hang glide.

“ I’d had problems at my high school in California because of an April Fool’s joke,” Altic admits, “so my dad told me I could pick any school I wanted to go to. I wanted to learn to hang glide, and I’d seen a picture of a student hang gliding in Montana, so I chose Mt. Ellis Academy in Bozeman, Mont.”

In 1972, when Altic was 15 years old, he made his first hang glider out of bamboo and plastic. And he flew it. In 1975, he bought and flew his first pre-manufactured hang glider.

“ Around Telluride it’s too radical,” Altic said. “You have to fly all the time to stay in practice, and the weather won’t even let you do that. So not only was I flying without enough practice, I was flying above my head. And I crashed.” It was a full-on crash in Telluride’s Town Park, but Altic, impervious as always, walked away uninjured.

Because of the crash, Altic was blacklisted by the Telluride Hang Gliders’ Association, so he turned to paragliding. Along with Eric Trommer and the late T.R. Youngstrom, Altic was one of the first three paragliders in a town that’s now thick with them. Flying eventually fell by the wayside.

“ I wasn’t getting enough practice, I didn’t have hot enough equipment, I had a different life. I was skiing and skating and making skate parks, and that’s where I am now.”

Altic’s athleticism, perfectionism and engineering prowess have found their outlet in his company, Alltec Skateparks Inc., which designs and builds skate parks around the world. He’s been involved in building parks and ramps since his first trip to Europe as a pro skater, but his business really took off after his trips to Europe in the early ’90s as Tim the Roller Skater. Alltec Skateparks has built municipal parks and ramps all over Colorado’s Western Slope as well as the Front Range. This spring, Altic finished a project in Kuala Lumpur, Indonesia, and he is now in Israel working on a skate park there.

“ I make my parks for the kids, not just for the rad dudes,” says Altic. “The kids are the ones who want to skate. But they don’t want to skate something that’s big, massive, three times over their head. Yes, they can learn to skate that, but they can’t start on that. One of the complaints I hear is that my parks are too crowded. That’s because I make a park that people want to use, that they’re not afraid of.”

Like so many Telluriders, Altic may travel the world, but he always comes back to the San Juan Mountains. And the place he calls home is a monument to his free spirit and his creativity. He is the last of a dying breed of people known in these parts as ,” or those who live in the woods, often year round. But, in classic Altic fashion, he lives the woodsy lifestyle with aplomb.

Tucked back in the forest across the creek from the main road, Altic’s home is solar-powered, heated by woodstove. He built the house himself, and laid the stone floor. He carried the wood and windows and cement across the creek on a downed log that he uses for a bridge. He collected all the stone.

“ I built my own house. I’m off the grid, off the road. I live in a cool place with a creek running by and eagles nesting in the cliffs above. And that’s the country, and we love it,” said Altic.

When Pinkjuice.com asked Altic why he lives in Telluride, he summed it up this way: “You mean, do I live in the mountains because of the beauty and the quiet and the river running by and high peaks with snow blowing off the tops or yellow aspens in the fall? I have a beaver living in the river at my front door and a bear that lives up in the canyon behind my cabin. I just found a huge mountain lion skull just a hundred yards up behind the place when I was cutting fire wood. I use a small solar system and kerosene lamps during storm systems that last soooo long. I guess I’m dreaming now. Because I really like to ski. I like to catch air, and that’s why I skate or ski.”

Back in 1992, Tim took Christina Callicott to see an eagle’s nest built in the cliffs above his house. She collected pieces of bone from the birds’ midden; she keeps those bones in her treasure box to this day.