In the mid-1970s, some hardscrabble Crested Butte locals started cobbling together what would eventually be called “mountain bikes” out of pre-war Schwinn frames and parts salvaged from a Denver junkyard. They weren’t thinking about mountain biking at all, because the sport didn’t yet exist. Most of those rides started at the top of a mountain pass and ended at the bar.
Fast forward five decades, and it’s the kids leading the charge and carrying forward Crested Butte’s legacy as a birthplace of mountain biking. The Crested Butte Development Team (CB Devo) was established in 2015 by Amy and Mike Nolan to share their passion for mountain biking with the community and to help kids fall in love with the sport, while also using bikes as a vehicle for personal growth. A long-time friend of the Nolans, Adam Olmstead, has been in CB Devo’s orbit since it was a kernel of an idea being kicked around by Amy. What started as a “what if” conversation around a campfire eventually became the program we see today, with more than 40 coaches and 200 kids involved.
“That first year there were 60 kids in the program, and it was basically Amy and a small board just kind of running the whole thing,” Olmstead recalled. His involvement began as a parent of kids in the program’s early days, before he eventually became a coach. Today, he is CB Devo’s director of operations; his son, Luka, who pipelined through the Devo program, is now a junior coach; and his daughter is in the high school race program.
“At its core, we’re looking to develop good humans on and off the bike. Developing good riders is part of our mission, but developing good humans is probably a bigger part,” Olmstead said.
“We want to see these kids grow up to be pillars in the community. I love to see kids who start in the program as four-year-olds and pre-Ks. And then I love to watch those same kids come all the way through the program and be part of the high school race team, which is the exit to the program.”
After 10 years as executive director, Amy Nolan passed the wheel to Will Frischkorn in January 2025. Today, Frischkorn, Olmstead, Assistant Director of Operations Brett Alvarez, and the instructors work together to facilitate days full of stoke and substance for both the pedal and downhill programs, and they curate rides each day to suit each group’s ability level. Frischkorn’s love of cycling began in childhood in West Virginia, where, like a lot of kids in the ‘90s, he ripped a BMX around on backyard jumps and trails before exploring singletrack at the state park.
Around age 13, he got his first real taste of mountain biking after borrowing a friend’s bike. You’d never know it by his humble and easygoing persona, but Frischkorn’s early West Virginian foray into biking burgeoned into a pro road cycling career that took him around the world. At age 16, he won two of three events at the Junior National Road Cycling Championships (which features a criterium, road race, and time trial), and before long, he moved to Colorado Springs to live at the Olympic Training Center with the Junior National team. He signed his first pro contract at 18 with Team Mercury. Looking back, Frischkorn said he felt lucky that things just kept going his way. “I had this incredible ride for the last handful of years. I raced with a team that had amazing ethics and was clean-focused. With them, I made it all the way to ride the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, [Tour of] Flanders, all the races that as a little kid I dreamed of doing,” Frischkorn said of his arc and the close of his career with UCI ProTour team Garmin–Slipstream.
He retired from professional cycling at 29 with his love of cycling intact. Now, Frischkorn and team are striving to make the mountain biking dream happen for kids of all ages. And for every kid — and there are a lot of them — that dream is different.
”We have 200-plus kids riding with us, almost a quarter of our school here in Crested Butte,” he said. “We get kids from three, four years old all the way up through our high school race team out there. The goal is getting any kid that wants to ride a bike — that has stoke for it, that loves the outdoors — truly competent and excited and passionate and set up for a lifetime of riding bikes after they’re done with us.” Olmstead echoed Frischkorn’s sentiment and added, “Now that Devo’s been in existence for almost 12 years, I’ve been lucky enough to see kids go through that entire progression.
Honestly, I get a little emotional talking about it, but seeing kids that I knew as kindergartners and first-graders who are now some of our most amazing coaches… It’s just been such an incredible evolution.”
CB Devo instructor Clara Lantz, 23, was raised in Girdwood, Alaska, and though she had dabbled in mountain biking as far back as eighth grade, skiing was her main focus growing up. She was (and still is) a competitive freeskier and credited her influential coaches for inspiring her to become a coach herself. But it wasn’t until Lantz started her first semester at Western Colorado University that she truly fell in love with mountain biking. And it all happened by chance. A friend whom Lantz met during her first week of school convinced her to come to Western’s first mountain bike practice of the season. “In my very first fall season of mountain biking, I ended up getting thrown right into races. I remember feeling really scared, but it was super fun,” she recalled of her experience joining the team as a freshman. Lantz continues to compete, but like Frischkorn and Olmstead, she has plugged into the magic that is helping kids fall in love with riding bikes — and grow as people, too. She joined the CB Devo team three years ago and coaches both the pedal and downhill programs.
“It’s very rewarding. I love being outside and doing this job,” she said. “The past couple of years [of coaching] have made me realize how much I love working with kids of all ages. I want to give back. I feel like it’s my turn now that I’ve acquired a certain skillset; that it’s my turn to give back to this awesome community and help these kids get better at the sport that they really like, and make sure that as they get better at it, they still love it…just like my coaches did for me when I was growing up.”
Like any small non-profit organization, CB Devo isn’t immune to funding, staffing, and retention challenges — 200-plus riders on a given day requires many instructors and lots of operations support — and they’ve long been dedicated to keeping programming fees accessible while balancing hiring and retaining team members. Fundraising is a big part of Frischkorn’s job, whether seeking private donations or pursuing grant opportunities. The goal is to keep CB Devo affordable and, eventually, build up enough reserves to offer financial aid and tuition assistance to families who need it.
Despite their efforts to build the program around fun and accessibility for riders at all levels, some think CB Devo is only for the hardcore. “I think for a little while there was this misconception that Devo was only for kids that are super serious, that are, you know, riding super expensive bikes and want to race,” Frischkorn said when asked about that perceived exclusivity. “Do we have some of those kids in the program? Yeah, absolutely. But it’s a handful. Most of the kids in our groups, they’re out there purely to get outside, to have fun with their buddies, to learn to crush on a mountain bike, and have a ton of fun while doing it.”
Retention is another piece CB Devo is hyper-focused on. As kids get older, more activities compete for their attention and time, and then there’s the social aspect as well.
“Our numbers are so strong up through fifth, sixth grade,” said Olmstead. “It’s starting at that middle-school age where we start to lose kids. Sports start to take a little more commitment, and they can’t be as spread out. Those kids start feeling stronger about the things they want to do and the choices they make, or they want to focus on other sports like soccer or hockey, things like that.”
He noted, “Female retention is an even bigger challenge than with the boys. If their friends aren’t mountain biking, then that’s not something they’re going to be drawn to.” To keep riders engaged, CB Devo created a junior coaching program that pairs middle school-aged riders (and up) with younger riders. They’ve also started incorporating new events where kids can bond on and off the bike. CB Devo held its first annual “Fearless and Fabulous” day last summer, when the middle school girls rode Doctor Park and then spent the rest of the day hanging out at Blue Mesa. It’s all about using the bike as a vehicle for fun, growth, and adventure.
For instructors like Lantz, it’s gratifying to see the girls she’s coached grow through the program.
“I like seeing the kids conquer their fears, and seeing how happy they are afterwards,” she said. “And watching them build relationships with each other and come together as a team is super rewarding.”
Looking down the trail, Frischkorn said there’s a new Short Track series — a short, intense race that usually lasts around 20 minutes — on tap for summer 2026, and maybe even some fresh singletrack opportunities in the works that would expand beginner riding and learning opportunities. Beyond that, the goal is to foster what the Nolans built, carry forward the legacy of fun on bikes, a tradition that began in Crested Butte more than 50 years ago, and propel that momentum into the future.
“The last couple of years there has been just this huge influx of little kids, three, four, five, six years old, that want to be a part of the program,” Frischkorn said. “That is super exciting. That’s the future of the program. That’s the future of people riding bikes in the valley. They’re the future stewards of the land here, right? It’s these kids. So we’re stoked about the littles. Hugely so.”