How did the Christie Lodge in Avon become the home of the last known lynx trapped in Colorado?

The story of the last known Canada lynx in Colorado prior to reintroduction is somewhat well known.

Less well known is what happened to the body of the animal after it was killed.

Colorado’s last known lynx was illegally trapped on Vail Mountain in the 1970s when “an individual who first observed the animal while riding on a ski lift took a lynx illegally from the front side of Vail Mountain,” according to the Forest Service.

Jake Ivan, a senior scientist in the Mammals Research Section of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, recently co-hosted a presentation to the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail about lynx reintroduction efforts. Ivan mentioned the lynx which was trapped and killed in the early ’70s in Vail.

In a conversation following that presentation, Ivan said he had heard the rumor, but had never confirmed for himself, that the lynx he referenced in his presentation is now on display in the lobby of the Christie Lodge in Avon.

Christie Lodge General Manager Lisa Siegert-Free said the lynx has been there for decades.

“The Battle Mountain shop class, I think, built the case,” Siegert-Free said.

The card in the display case says the lynx was “killed illegally in the early 1970s on the east side of Vail Mountain,” and that it “was thought to be one of the last lynx in Colorado.”

The card also offers a hint as to why the Christie Lodge has the museum-style display in its lobby. There’s no date on the card, but it says “During the last 3 years the Colorado Division of Wildlife has been searching Colorado for additional information and evidence that lynx still exist in Colorado. This study has been a cooperative effort with the Colorado Division of Wildlife, United States Forest Service, Vail Associates, Adam’s Rib, Colorado Trappers Association, Burnt Mountain and the Christie Lodge.”

No one at the Christie Lodge today — even Siegert-Free, who has been there for 38 years — can say exactly how the lodge was associated with the study. But there’s one thing Siegert-Free knows for certain: The lynx doesn’t belong to the Christie Lodge, it belongs to the state of Colorado. The lodge merely provides a viable museum-style display for the lynx specimen, which is able to be viewed for free by the public in a lobby that maintains regular hours and has bathrooms nearby.

Retired Colorado Parks and Wildlife manager Bill Andree confirmed the lynx in the Christie Lodge lobby is the Vail Mountain lynx — the last known lynx in Colorado prior to reintroduction efforts.

But the lynx only became “known” because it was trapped and killed, something Andree said the trapper was cited for and paid “about a $50 fine,” Andree said he recalls, if memory serves.

Andree said he thinks the lynx was trapped “over in Northeast Bowl, by Mushroom and Benchmark and all of that,” he said. “Could have been on Highline or one of those.”

The lynx was killed before Andree’s time; he became the Vail district wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife in 1981.

In the decades to come, there was much suspicion that lynx still did exist in Colorado, based on tracks, hairs and scat. This was part of the logic behind reintroduction, the fact that a remnant population might still exist and be able to mate with the reintroduced cats.

Andree said the study to see if lynx still existed in Colorado, which is referenced in the Christie Lodge lynx’s display card, was part of the lynx reintroduction effort of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“We were working on the lynx crew to locate if there were any lynx tracks,“ Andree said. “We needed a place to house two people … so (the Christie Lodge) provided us with lodging for two people for an entire winter, and then we provided them with the lynx for that.”

Andree said the facilities at the Christie Lodge were helpful to the effort at the time, as there were several off-site sessions set up to ready for the potential collaring of the animals.

“We held a couple training sessions there with our veterinary folks,” Andree said. “They provided us with a spot to do a lot of the things we needed to get done.”