Veteran skier oversees solitude of Essex trails

Essex’s historic Izaak Walton Inn has been closed this past year, but when the doors are fully open once again people will be glad to see Gumby there to welcome them back. 

Gumby is a well-known presence at the Izaak Walton where he rents out the skis, oversees trail conditions, and always takes a moment to ask visitors what conditions were like up to Marion Lake or Dickey Creek. 

People might have heard Gumby’s voice on the daily snow report for Izaak Walton between 2016 and 2021 describing daily ski conditions in Essex.

The name is definitely familiar. Still, he denies having any fame.

His legal name is Greg Garcelon, but so few people know his legal name that it used to be a trivia question in the Whitefish Winter Carnival.

Gumby traces the origin of his nickname that references the cartoon character who is a green blocky humanoid made of clay to Crested Butte, Colorado. 

“I was going down a pretty mogully hill and I was wearing an old-style zip-up, hooded ski suit, all green,” he said. 

His boss at the time and some fellow “shop rats” had the name ready for him as he finished bouncing and slicing his way down. 

“You need to be pretty flexible, all rubber, on those moguls,” Gumby told me. He added with a  laugh, “I wouldn’t get the name now!”  

Gumby acknowledges that he is easy to track down in his remote neighborhood of Essex but difficult to contact any other way. 

While the Inn undergoes renovation under new management he is providing maintenance and plowing, and maintaining the fleet of large vans on the premises. He doesn’t get into town too often, and enjoys the solitude of dealing only with matters right at hand.

Like many who work in remote areas he has no use for a cell phone because they often have no service, and he doesn’t use social media, saying, “I don’t want anyone to know how much fun I’m having.”

He points to the walls, saying, “Here’s where I put my photographs.” And the walls are covered — jacketed bodies flying through the air, people embracing in worlds of sky blue and white, assorted landscapes.  

There is an ancient animal who keeps Gumby company at home and on the road. “Not Pokey,” Gumby says, but a silent, gigantic, shaggy orange chow chow Shepherd mix named Jake who mostly pants while standing still. 

“I always hear people calling for Jake,” Gumby says, adding, “They hardly notice me.”

A seasonal employee at the Izaak Walton Inn updated a Wikipedia page to list Jake as mayor of Essex in 2014. Gumby says, “I think it lasted about four months before someone removed it. But the locals did think it was pretty funny.” 

“My parents started me skiing when I was 2 and a half,” Gumby recalls of his childhood near the Sugarloaf ski resort in Maine. “As a baby I was in a knapsack, getting the feel of it. That gets in your blood.”  

He remembers at one point he wanted to be a dentist because of an elf who wants to be a dentist in the 1964 movie “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” — yet strangely, another claymation figure came to define his life. 

“I never wanted to be anything,” Gumby says. “I just knew what I wanted to do.” 

He worked as a DJ, a dishwasher, a laborer, and a carpenter.

“I never defined myself by my job,” he says from underneath a chandelier of mountain bikes and hanging outdoor equipment. 

When he arrived in Whitefish in his 30s with his rookie years behind him, Gumby found the small town in its heyday “ski bum wise” with everyone “chasing powder” during the day and working in bars at night.

“Whitefish was the place to be in the '80s and '90s. You could find a place to rent, pick a job, then ski.” 

Gumby credits freestyle skiing pioneer Wayne Wong with encouraging his generation of ski bums, and providing them with enough lingo to be harder to understand than the surfers of that time. 

“I’ve driven through heinous weather,” Gumby says, listing off Montana mountains and highways, adding that he was lucky to have a crew of fellow ski bums that all looked out for each other as they got lost in blizzards or slid their trucks off the road. 

LOGE Camps has taken over the Izaak Walton and started renovations. 

The company has upgraded the ski shop from a basement room to the large upper story of a cabin that faces the hotel with plenty of windows on the walls. Downstairs there is a changing area.   

“I won’t even know what to do with myself. I’m so excited,” Gumby booms to the walls of the bare, unfinished shop. 

Next year he anticipates better skiing in Essex to match the improved ski shop, and more year-round activities for the Glacier National Park crowd.  

Walking his dog toward the distant peak of Essex Mountain, Gumby says he feels truly lucky to live so close to Glacier National Park, and thinks it was the right call to organize his life so he doesn’t have to drive four or six hours to visit different slopes or scenic waterways. 

“It’s so cool to get right out into it. That’s the key,” he says.   

Gumby also acknowledges the possibility of shrinking snowpack and smoky summer skies. He travels with an arsenal of solar panels for his truck and camping gear, optimistic that people, and outfitters, are moving in the right direction. 

“My days are numbered, but I don’t want to have the planet suck for the next generation if I can do anything for them,” Gumby says, adding, “Solar is great because you can’t blow yourself up using it, like gasoline.”

Gumby knows people caught in Montana wildfires this summer may look for greener pastures, but he won’t.

“I'm no Nostradamus, but this place is pretty good.” 

Reporter Carl Foster can be reached at 758-4407 or cfoster@dailyinterlake.com.