Friends of Pete Van De Carr placed flowers, hockey sticks, skis and heartfelt notes near the entrance of Backdoor Sports on Wednesday, paying tribute to a man who embraced and helped define the culture of Steamboat Springs.

“He just embodied the Steamboat spirit,” said longtime friend and outdoors writer Eugene Buchanan. “He was always helping other people out, bringing that positive energy and always encouraging others to get outside and pursue their adventures.”

The news that Van De Carr, 70, had died from trauma-related injuries after a skiing accident Tuesday morning at Steamboat Resort has left a hole in the heart of Steamboat Springs as friends and loved ones search for a way to pay tribute to a man who has been part of our community since he first drove over Rabbit Ears Pass in 1978.

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“He lifted everybody up,” said Gretchen Van De Carr, who married Pete at the Yampa River Botanic Park in 1998. “Everyone was like his best friend, and for him it was important to care for, support and respect everybody because that was what he did. It didn’t matter who it was.”

A Celebration of Life to honor Pete’s legacy will be held from 3-6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27 at the Howelsen Ice Arena.

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Earlier this week, Gretchen shared stories about how she met Pete and how they first became friends.

The two met shortly after Gretchen moved to Steamboat Springs in 1990 and stopped by Pete’s business, Backdoor Sports, looking to rent a pair of Telemark skis — only to learn that he didn’t have any available at the time. Instead of sending her away empty-handed he arranged a loan from a friend who lived nearby. Even though the skis were way too long for Gretchen, it sparked a friendship.

“I borrowed those skis, and I got to know Pete because of that,” Gretchen said. “When I started the Teen Center in Steamboat, I would go down to Backdoor to get prizes for parties, hoping to keep the kids off the streets and to keep them from drinking. We would have these cool prizes at the dances, hoping to encourage the kids to come.”

The friendship grew over the next couple of years before Gretchen invited Pete to a party. The two hit it off and the friendship grew into a relationship that grew stronger over the years.

On one of the couple’s many adventures, the two traveled to Steamboat Springs’ sister city, Martín de los Andes in Neuquén, Argentina, where Pete took a job working in a furniture factory while Gretchen worked for the tourism department building trails. It was on Valentine’s Day on an excursion to Niebla, a coastal town in Chile near Valdivia, that Pete asked Gretchen to marry him.

“There was this artisan market, and we’re walking around looking at (stuff), and he kind of loses me,” Gretchen recalled on Thursday.

“I’m thinking he obviously is trying to lose me, so I’m like, ‘You go do your thing, and I’ll do mine.’ Then we went back and took a nap and when I woke up he was not there, but there’s a water bottle with some flowers in it and a note in really bad Spanish, saying, ‘Will you marry me?’ — along with a ring that Pete had found at the artisan market. I still have it. It’s this little ring that was heart-shaped, not even a real gem or anything. So I went out and found him and said ‘Si.'”

In the months leading up to the wedding, Gretchen said there were two instances that best revealed Pete’s nature. The first moment came when the couple was deciding who would stand next to them on their wedding day.

“I had my best friend growing up as my maid of honor and my niece and goddaughter for my matron,” Gretchen recalled. “I said, ‘Who do you want as your best man?'”

Pete immediately chose his brother, Richie Van De Carr. But after that, the decision became difficult for Pete, and there was a lengthy silence as he tried to come up with another name.

“I asked, ‘Who’s your best friend?'” Gretchen recalled. “He’s like, ‘They’re all my best friends. I can’t choose.'”

The next tricky wedding-planning moment came when it was time to make a guest list. Gretchen asked her future husband who he wanted to invite. He responded by picking up a Steamboat phone book and reading off the names of friend after friend as he flipped through the pages.

The couple hosted one of the very first weddings at the Botanic Park 27 years ago. The location was extra special for Gretchen because crews from the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps — an organization she was instrumental in creating — had helped build the park.

“I finally told him, ‘I’ll give you a stack of 150 invitations, and you give them to who you want.’ That stack was gone in two days, so I gave him another stack,” Gretchen said. “I think there had to be 400 or 500 people at our wedding and our reception. We roasted three pigs, something like 10 turkeys and had 10 kegs of beer, 100 bottles of wine … it was just crazy. We traded a kayak for a cake, and then we needed more cake, so we had friends who brought cakes …”

That day marked the start of a new chapter as Pete and Gretchen shifted to a new life that included adopting sons Otis in 2003 and Oliver in 2005.

“He was so proud of his boys,” Gretchen said. “When we couldn’t have our own kids, he was like, ‘No problem’ … He loved his boys and he was so psyched to have kids and take them skiing on the mountain with him and just taking them on the river.”

Pete, the oldest of nine kids, grew up in Orchard Park, New York — where families in the neighborhood were more like one big family than neighbors.

“Back then, neighborhoods were big,” said Jay Metzger, a lifelong friend who went to high school with Pete. “They would come to our neighborhood, or we would all go over to their neighborhood and play football, and on weekends in the winter we would either ski all day or play hockey on the pond that was right in town.”

Metzger said he stayed connected with Pete: “We went to high school together and then to different colleges, but then we just kept in touch over the years. We kept in touch over the years because of our parents. His mom’s still around, so we went to her 90th birthday, and I just kept in touch with him because he would occasionally come back for reunions, and I’ve been out to Steamboat skiing several times.”

After graduation, Pete headed West. After a stop in Fort Collins, he made his way to Steamboat Springs, a place he would call home for nearly 50 years.

Miami of Ohio classmate Paul “Hojon” Plvan, who today lives in Durango, described Van De Carr as a catalyst for encouraging many friends to follow him to Colorado and discover a magical place called Steamboat Springs. Pete convinced Plvan to hitchhike across the country to join him on the adventure.

“He always had this wonderful cavalier attitude. He said, ‘We’re going to go to Steamboat Springs, and we’re going to ski our asses off and start a rugby dynasty. I’m not sure about the dynasty part, but we did ski our asses off,” Plvan said. “Pete is one of the people I can count on one hand that I admire most in my life. His love and his happiness and his inner peace just overflows.”

In those early days Pete lived in Steamboat’s Brooklyn neighborhood, worked various part-time jobs that included holding a teaching position in the Steamboat schools and tutoring young athletes training with the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club. When he wasn’t working, he took full advantage of the mountain lifestyle — spending time Telemark skiing on the mountain in the winter, taking up gelande jumping on Alpine skis, playing rugby and enjoying the river in the summer

While recovering from a ruptured achilles suffered while gelande jumping, he partnered with Ken Stone to create a ski gear catalog that would lead to creation of Backdoor Sports in 1986.

Stone would leave to pursue other adventures after a few years, but Van De Carr eventually moved Backdoor’s operations, which had been in a number of different garages around town, to a more permanent location on the banks of the Yampa River at 841 Yampa St.

Backdoor offered Telemark skis, Alpine touring equipment, ice climbing, rock climbing, kayaks, rafts and all the gear needed for almost any backcountry adventure. Pete also partnered with Ross Johnson to operate one of Steamboat’s first tubing businesses. Over the years Backdoor Sports built a reputation of providing top-quality gear, backed by Pete’s passion to make every adventure the “best day ever.”

“There’s people that I’ve run into on river trips that he got started in rock or ice climbing, and he would travel with folks and encourage climbing,” said John St. John, who owns Hog Island Boat Works and has been friends with Van De Carr for 20-plus years. “I’m not a rugby guy, but I know he had deep, deep, deep ties in the rugby community from playing in and helping organize the Cowpie Classic. He was also the first guy that started our Yampa River Festival and that’s a huge part of our culture.”

Pete’s love of the outdoors was matched by his love of the Steamboat Springs community where he often donated gear for auctions, money to different nonprofits and his time to causes important to him.

Pete was a founding member of the Northwest Rivers Alliance, which was established in 1980 and would later became Friends of the Yampa, and he served as president of Friends of the Yampa from 1987 to 2009, the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps board, 1998-2004, Yampa River System Legacy Partnership since 2001, State Water Supply Initiative 2002-04 and the Steamboat Springs Parks and Recreation Commission 1996 to 2004.

He loved playing music as part of a band featuring him on guitar and Gretchen on the drums, with a revolving lineup of friends also joining in. In the past five years, he enjoyed flying planes as part of the Steamboat Springs Flying Club.

Pete coached youth sports including hockey and baseball, and Backdoor Sports was the place for young people in Steamboat Springs to work in the summer. He loved motorcycles, played in the adult hockey league for years as part of the Mad Dogs, and was part of the brotherhood formed from being a member of the Steamboat Springs Men’s Rugby team.

Longtime friend Matt Tredway said Pete was one of the first people to step up and offer a helping hand to support the local school district’s Everything Outdoor Steamboat program.

“He was in a league of his own and he is the epitome of that selfless, outdoor kind of free spirit,” said Tredway, a former middle school teacher, coach, climber and adventurer. “I met him in the ’80s when I came to Steamboat Springs, and we started the outdoor programs in the schools. Of course, immediately he offered his expertise, help, equipment, employees and time.”

Tredway said Pete not only supported everything the schools were attempting to create but also made sure to offer students who were not prepared or could not afford proper clothing and equipment what they needed to take part.

“He worked with us in terms of us building a couple iterations of climbing walls and as we would venture into more and more expensive things where some of the kids, honestly, could potentially be excluded because they didn’t have money,” Tredway said. “He was the first one to say, ‘Oh no, here, take this.'”

His friend and rugby teammate J. Bradley Williams, better known as “Warpig,” joked that Pete was the consummate anti-salesman.

“I would go in there for a pair of skis or a boat, or this or that, and he would say, ‘Why do you want to buy that? Why don’t you just use mine.’ Or he’d say, ‘Here, I’ve got some demos.'”

Friends all cited Pete’s generous, positive spirit and his enthusiasm to introduce others to the joys he found in the backcountry, on the river, between the pipes playing goaltender or on the stage strumming his guitar.

“It was his joy of life. He literally had a zest and a joy and every day he lived it,” said Kerry Shea, former Steamboat Mad Dogs hockey teammate and longtime friend. “Peter is someone who was there every day and there was nothing superficial about it — it was authentic, and it was genuine, and I think people gravitated to that. They wanted to be around him as a result of that. I think that’s what we’re going to miss.”