Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory’s new in-town digs will be a hub for scientific exchange, with amenities.
Crested Butte has a new opportunity to model a different kind of conversation about our ecological future. Located just one Mountain Express bus stop past the four-way stands RMBL 365. Formerly the Crested Butte Hostel, the new science hub and accommodation opened in October 2025, transforming a century of discoveries from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) into a community-led vision for a more livable planet.
Executive Director Jeni Blacklock first imagined RMBL 365 in May 2025. “For a decade, RMBL has sought ways to extend conversations among our researchers beyond Gothic summers, to invite the public to engage with our findings, and to offer affordable housing to staff and scientists. The former hostel’s fit for this vision is uncanny, and it comes at an ideal time — before our 2028 centennial.”
Over its 97 years, RMBL has tracked the seasonal rhythms of ecosystems surrounding the Gothic townsite, a historic mining town eight miles from Crested Butte and accessible only by ski in winter. Each year, more than 200 scientists fan across thousands of Gunnison Valley field sites to uncover ecology’s slow truths. A 12,000-specimen herbarium and ten different 50-year studies that have monitored climate change, snowpack and streamflow, wildflower timing, marmot behavior, aquatic resilience, and pollinator networks, among other factors, have helped to shape a global understanding and have influenced creative environmental solutions. Yet Gothic’s summer isolation and winter quiet have long imposed limits on research, engagement, and connection. Now, that seasonal boundary is dissolving.
A LIVING ROOM THAT WELCOMES INQUIRY
Step inside the ground floor of RMBL 365 to find what is being called the “RMBL Living Room,” an open-concept gathering space centered on a stone hearth that will hold science talks, community forums, film nights, impromptu discussions, and celebrations of discovery.
To walk with Blacklock through this space is to glimpse a new vision for science in society. “It’s not just a lecture hall but a place to listen, ask questions, and consider how mountain science shapes local lives; whether it’s forest health and fire risk, the future of recreational economies in a world with less snow, pollinator resilience and the global food supply, how Indigenous ways of knowing inform science, or how artists and scientists influence each other,” said Blacklock. “Although we are calling this the ‘RMBL Living Room,’ we hope our neighbors and visitors ultimately see it as Crested Butte’s living room.”
HOSPITALITY THAT SERVES SCIENCE AND COMMUNITY
The second floor of the former hostel rethinks the purpose of Crested Butte lodging. Thirteen double-occupancy bedrooms house researchers when Gothic is inaccessible or at capacity. But when scientists are not in town, the rooms can be rented by any skier, biker, wildflower lover, or aspen peeper. On the third floor, a pair of two-bedroom apartments provides affordable housing for essential staff — individuals whose commitment keeps science infrastructure running year-round, yet who can’t afford to live where they work.
RMBL 365’s building will both house and fund science, as the affordable hostel and apartments (and industrial kitchen and public laundromat) will generate revenue for RMBL. Community members and visiting guests can enjoy learning about next-generation research while attending RMBL community gatherings — knowing that their room expenses and laundry quarters help support climate science in an era of dramatic budget cuts.
A ‘SYSTEMS SALON’
RMBL researcher Dr. David Inouye has spent more than 50 summers in Gothic. That deep connection allowed his work to expand beyond the hummingbird research that first brought him, to study the broader systems they depend on: wildflowers, other pollinators like bumblebees, snowpack, air temperature, soil moisture, and climate.
But other RMBL scientists have had to be more focused. Often responsible to university and grant obligations that require focusing on a single species or a specific relationship, they have not been able to navigate the Upper Gunnison Watershed on a systems scale. RMBL-Gothic will continue to support that depth of specialization.
However, RMBL 365 offers a new opportunity — a “Systems Salon” for scientists to gather and connect across their specializations, piece together a holistic understanding of the underlying parts and processes of our basin’s biodiversity, and explore what makes local environmental health vital to planetary health.
In turn, dialogue across RMBL disciplines, experts, and community members will welcome teachers, artists, journalists, entrepreneurs, students, civic leaders, and new scientists into one space to apply emergent knowledge of climate disturbance, water policy, ecological shifts, local resilience, and the larger human place in the universe.
A VISION REALIZED
Standing on the RMBL 365 balcony, looking out at the laccolith cliffs of Crested Butte Mountain’s west side, Blacklock reflects. “RMBL 365 goes beyond both scientific interaction and even science communication. This is science as civic engagement.”
RMBL 365 is a tangible step toward a Crested Butte that attracts people who prize applied knowledge as much as fresh air and powder days. And the social impact of the science discussed here will empower all of us — and communities like ours — to fight for more of those powder days.