In the 50s the family took a vacation at Aspen. One evening we went to Toklat for dinner. In this recording from around 1968 Mal and Jo remember Stuart Mace the owner of Toklat at Aspen, now part of the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. Mal always had an admiration for mountaineers and fondly remembered meeting Stuart. Back then Stuart kept a dog sled team and took tourists out for day trips.
Toklat has been preserved and is now part of the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. Their mission statement is:
ACES’ mission is to inspire a life-long commitment to the earth by educating for environmental responsibility, conserving and restoring the balance of natural communities, and advancing the ethic that the earth must be respected and nurtured.
The Aspen Times has an article that describes some of the history of Toklat. Stuart Mace was invited as one of the founding attractions at Aspen. As Mal and Jo recall, Mace was Sgt. Preston of the Yukon when dog team footage was needed. Mace got a start with dogs in WW II doing mountain rescue.
From the web site, more about Toklat:
About Toklat
The Catto Center at Toklat was once the family home of one of ACES’ most influential founders, Stuart Mace, and holds great meaning for the Aspen community.Toklat, an Inuit word meaning “headwaters,” was built by Stuart and and his wife Isabel in 1948 as a wilderness lodge and family home.The early dog sledding trips, the pristine sub-alpine environment, and tall tales told around the hearth in the evening drew both locals and visitors from all over the world.
In 2004, with the help of long-time ACES supporters Jessica Hobby Catto and her husband Henr y, ACES bought Toklat to preserve Stuart’s legacy and this community touchstone. Toklat is located near the headwaters of Castle Creek in a dramatic landscape and serves as a gathering place for cultural and ecological discourse. Environmental leadership, tempered with the courage of conviction, is a central goal of Toklat programs.