After finding the Steamboat Yule Log at the Fly Gulch Schoolhouse on Strawberry Park Elementary campus Thursday afternoon, Josh Fowler and Abbey Iberg couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than a night out on the town.

“The log got to sit in on a performance by local musician Jorden Harms at Mythology, then grabbed some ‘za and beer with us at Corner Slice, our favorite pizza place, then we tried to give her some limelight at Schmiggitys karaoke, but the line was out the door, so we ended up at Sunpie’s (Bistro) to round out the evening telling the stories of how we found the log to anyone interested,” Fowler said Friday.

Fowler and Iberg have lived in Steamboat Springs for four years and taken part in the hunt for the Yule Log, a long-held holiday tradition in the valley, for the past three years. Every year the Tread of Pioneers Museum writes eight clues used by the hunters to lead them to the location of where the 3-foot, 25-pound long is hiding.

The log is not placed in its hiding place until the sixth clue has been released so that participants need to solve the riddles. This year the hunt began when the first clue was published in the paper on Dec. 11 and ended shortly after the seventh clue was revealed Thursday.  In 2023, the team of Mirko Erspamer, Lynne Romeo, Kerry Holmquist, Callie Cooper and Dave Grinnell found the Yule Log on Snake Island — where this year’s hunt began.

Each clue acted as a path from Snake Island to where the Yule Log was eventually found at the Fly Gulch Schoolhouse.

“We had actually passed it, and we were getting to the end of the trail and turned around to give up, because Abbey had to go back to work,” Fowler said. “As we gave up and turned around, I saw the log poking out from next to the building.”

Iberg credited the discovery to researching the clues, being involved in the community and reading the historical signs the Tread of Pioneers posts around town.

“The more involved you are in the community the easier this thing gets,” Iberg said. “If you want to find the Yule Log you should just start going to things and when you go on a walk read the plaques, and read the signs because the Tread of Pioneers have information posted all over town that everybody just walks by without thinking about.”

Iberg said it was the couples’ involvement in the community theater that led them to Strawberry Park. “Both me and Josh are part of the community theater, and we knew that P & C stood for Portia Mansfield and Charlotte Perry,” she explained.

“If we hadn’t been involved in something like community theater, we wouldn’t know their first names off the top of our heads because those initials could be hundreds of different people,” Iberg said. “My biggest advice for people that want to find the Yule Log is to interact with your community, start showing up to events and when somebody’s telling you a story, listen to it because we get so much good information just meeting people who have lived here longer than us.”