The day after 50-year-old Nathan Ginn of Littleton died in an avalanche near Berthoud Pass, his backyard was filled with dozens of people doing the exact thing he loved — enjoying the snow.
“I called my son and told him to open the house because I wanted all his friends over to skate the snow field before it melts,” his wife, Carrie Ginn, told The Denver Post on Monday.
Nathan Ginn had turned his yard into a miniature winter paradise, which was par for the course, according to his friends and family.
“He was very much about taking life by the horns, living life one minute at a time,” Carrie Ginn said.
Nathan Ginn was killed Saturday when an avalanche rocketed down Mines Peak in an area known as “The Fingers” or the “High Trail Cliffs,” according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center and Grand County Coroner’s Office.
He was powsurfing, also known as powdersurfing, which is riding a snowboard down a mountain without any foot bindings or handles. He had climbed the mountain three times when he went for a fourth and final run on Saturday, likely triggering the avalanche that killed him, his family said.
Carrie Ginn said she had a sinking feeling in her stomach when she got home from work Saturday night and his van — a much-loved and refurbished 1995 Toyota Previa — was missing from the garage and he still hadn’t texted her that he was safe.
“He would say, ‘Fun and done,’ and I did not get a ‘Fun and done’ on Saturday night so I kind of knew something was up,” Carrie Ginn said.
She checked his GPS location and saw his dot in one spot, and it stayed there for hours until rescue crews reached his body and dug him out.
There’s a sense of things coming full circle, said stepson Drake Watkins. Nathan Ginn rode the slopes around Berthoud Pass for 30 years and the area is intertwined with his life. He took Carrie Ginn to the mountain pass on their second date, returning several times as they dated and again when he proposed under the light of a full moon.
When he wasn’t powdersurfing or river surfing, Nathan Ginn could be found teaching art at Compass Montessori School in Golden, renovating his home, doing tricks on a half-pipe he built in the basement, building tree houses in the backyard, working as an arborist in the summer, creating art as a muralist or one of the many other adventures he was known to take.
“If there was anything I’d want people to remember about Nathan, it’s a model of how to live life to the absolute fullest and how not to take anything for granted,” Watkins said.
Carrie Ginn’s last conversation with her husband was about the importance of taking action.
“He was like, ‘I don’t believe in bucket lists. Why would anyone do that? Live in the moment and get it done,'” she said.
Nathan Ginn “died doing what he loved,” one friend wrote in a blog post on Super Critical Flows, a website dedicated to river surfing. According to reporting from Denver7, the blog was written by Nathan Ginn’s decade-long friend David Riordon.
Ginn volunteered for many years teaching river surfing and skateboarding to Chill Foundation youth in Denver and “had an infectious smile and personality,” Riordon wrote.
Nathan Jay Ginn was born Feb. 11, 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to parents Becky and Craig Ginn. He moved to Colorado in 1992, where he continued his love of all things outdoors.
In a GoFundMe to pay for funeral costs and other expenses, Nathan Ginn’s friends said he dedicated his life to bringing people together and making sure everyone felt welcome.
“His kindness, humor and genuine enthusiasm for life will live on in all of us,” his friends wrote.
He is survived by his wife Carrie Ginn, children Rowan and Bear Ginn, stepson Drake Watkins, parents Becky and Craig Ginn, brothers Sean and Eric Ginn and twin brother Phillip Ginn.
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