The Festival Bake Tent needs your support! Community bakers - please consider making pies (our most popular, big-ticket item), as well as any of your other favorite baked goods. A few additional requests to help make the bake sale a success are to package your items in sellable amounts (example, 2-4 cookies, ½ dozen cookies, dozen). Drive-up drop off begins at 7:30 am. Upon arrival, please notify the gate attendant of your needs, and they will assist you through the identified traffic plan. Once the festival begins (10 am), you will need to walk to the bake tent with your baked goods. Baked goods will be accepted all day.

Unable to bake, and still want to help? We still have some volunteer time slots available to help sell baked goods. https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B0A4BA9A823A2FF2-56482829-2025#/

We look forward to seeing you all at this year's Rist Canyon Mountain Festival on September 6. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me, Darcy Budge, Bake Sale Chair, at 505-977-9895 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The Rist Canyon Mountain Festival is coming up soon and we are still in need of volunteers, especially on Festival day. This is a community event and we would love for you to join us!

Here is a link to the sign up sheet.

Thank you,

Tricia Johnston

The RCVFD Mountain Festival is coming up quickly (September 6th!) and we would like to continue our tradition of having every conceivable type of Silent Auction item available. We have a lot of great items ready to sell: gift cards, art, liquor, jewelry, rare books, unusual antiques, tickets, amusements, and (I hope) an emotional support chicken. But WE NEED YOUR HELP with donations! You can donate, or talk someone else into donating, ANYTHING! We LOVE ALL of the great things you have found for us in the past! Your donations don’t have to be new, don’t have to be material (services you can provide are GREAT!), don’t even have to fit in our tent (thinking of you, Jon Stephens!). They just have to be items that someone would like to buy from us. We will be happy to have your great picks, and in return you will have our thanks, a charitable donation form, and good karma forevermore. We will also be happy to pick up your donations, and display them at the Festival and on our webpage.

Please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or text/call Janet Siegel at 970 231 7877. THANK YOU!

Do you have a classic canyon cruiser, or an offroad adventure machine with stories to tell? Come share your vehicle with the RCVFD Mountain Festival Vehicle Show!

This is the 2nd year restarting the vehicle show after a long hiatus. New for this year are separate divisions: Pavement for classic cars and Dirt for off road focused vehicles. Registration fees are $20 for RCVFD residents, and $45 for non-residents. Ballots for Fan Favorite (Road and Pavement) are a $1 donation, and the volunteer Firefighters will also choose their favorite Pavement and Dirt exhibitors. 100% of the proceeds benefit RCVFD. Winners and prizes will be announced at the end of the festival.

Last year's offroad entries included a heavily modified JK on custom frame and Unimog portal axles, a FLU419 offroad military surplus backhoe on a Unimog chassis, and a Cybertruck. The classics included a Jeep Willy's Truck from Jax (is that a classic or offroad?), a '66 Corvair Coupe, and a '65 Barracuda with original patina.

The Mountain Festival is a fun day, and includes live music, food trucks, free ice cream, fire fighter vehicles and activities, vendor booths, book sale, silent auction and more. Details for festival available at https://festival.rcvfd.org.

Vehicle exhibitor entry forms are due by August 31. Please contact Josef Dvorak at 970-631-4789 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more information.

The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning for Zone 215, which includes the RCVFD community, for the time period of 10:00 AM through 8:00 PM on Friday, 8-Aug-2025.

Conditions will be favorable for rapid fire spread. Avoid outdoor burning and any activity that may produce a spark and start a wildfire.

A hot and dry airmass will hold across the area through Friday. It will be breezy at times, especially during the afternoon and early evening hours, leading to potential for rapid wildfire spread. Slight relief should come through the weekend with a gradual cooling trend and winds diminishing by Sunday.

Dear Rist Canyon Community:

We are thrilled to share some wonderful news: thanks to your incredible support and daily votes, Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Department (RCVFD) has WON the 2025 Proper No. Twelve “One for All” $10,000 grant!

This would not have been possible without each and every one of you—our neighbors, friends, and extended community—who voted, shared, and spread the word far and wide. You rallied behind us and helped us compete with much larger departments from across the country. Your commitment to supporting local, volunteer emergency services truly made the difference.

With these funds, we’ll be able to purchase a TNT extrication rescue tool that will help us better serve our mountain community in emergencies. Your support is directly making Rist Canyon a safer place for everyone.

On behalf of the entire RCVFD team, thank you for believing in us and standing with us. This win belongs to all of us.

With heartfelt gratitude,

Lucy Corro (on behalf of RCVFD and the Grants Committee)
RC 185
RCVFD Volunteer Firefighter, Wildfire Partner Program Ambassador
Bellvue, CO 80512

Dear Rist Canyon community,

We’re thrilled to share some big news—Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Department (RCVFD) is a semi-finalist for the 2025 Proper No. Twelve “One for All” Grant! We’re one of only 24 fire departments nationwide selected for a chance to win $10,000, and now we need your help to make it to the final 12.

It all comes down to public voting, open July 1–8!
You can vote once per day at: https://propertwelveoneforall.com/en/vote

How you can help:

• Vote for RCVFD every day July 1–8


• Share this link with your friends, family, neighbors, and on social media


• If you post online, tag @properwhiskey and use #VoteRCVFD to help amplify our message!

What’s at stake?
Winning this grant will let us purchase a Brute TNT cordless extrication tool — vital rescue equipment to help us save lives in our wild mountain community. Every single vote counts, especially as we compete against much larger city fire departments.

Spread the word!
Sample post for your networks or social pages:

We’ve been selected as a semi-finalist for a @properwhiskey One for All grant! Help RCVFD win $10,000 for life-saving rescue equipment—vote daily July 1–8 at propertwelveoneforall.com! #VoteRCVFD

About the program:
Proper No. Twelve’s “One for All” initiative is awarding 24 grants in 2025 to support underfunded fire departments. This is a huge opportunity for our small but mighty Rist Canyon team.

Thank you for supporting your local volunteer fire department — your vote could truly make the difference!

Questions or need more info? Just reply to this email or visit www.rcvfd.org.

With gratitude,

Lucy Corro (on behalf of the RCVFD Grants Team)

Fueled by a common desire among area residents to protect their communities, the Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Department was established 50 years ago. In 1975 volunteers from all walks of life came together to begin building a fire department that today has 35 volunteer firefighters serving a 110 square mile area. The coverage area includes Rist Canyon, Stove Prairie, and the Buckhorn, as well as providing mutual aid for an additional 50 square miles in conjunction with other local emergency response agencies.

The first fleet of vehicles were donated and using their own personal credit, the volunteers-built Station 1 on Rist Canyon Road. In 1975 it acquired its first pumper, a 1947 Army-surplus, 2 ½ ton 6x6 converted by the Colorado State Forest Service into a 900-gallon capacity vehicle. Today the RCVFD owns, operates, and maintains 12 vehicle and three stations with the planning process for a fourth underway.

Excerpts from a RCVFD letter to residents outlined four reasons for creating the Department: “The fire danger is getting much worse because of the rapidly increasing population, the greater number of tourists, and the many pine trees killed by bark beetle which serve as ready fuel for any fires that do start.” A state forest service warning to the founders provides reasons 2-4: “that we’re just sitting on a pile of kindling waiting for the right match; that the small-fire capability, with slurry bomber backup, of past years is not going to be enough to save our forests, range, homes, and lives under these conditions; and that we must organize ourselves for the possibility of larger and more frequent fires than we’ve had to worry about before.”

Today the RCVFD is staffed by approximately 30 volunteer highly-trained emergency responders. Its response area has grown from 38 square miles (more than 24,000 acres) in 1975 to approximately 110 square miles (more than 70,400 acres) today.

This year we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary with Ristwatch articles, Facebook and Website updates as well as with celebrations during the annual Mountain Festival on Sept. 6 and at the RCVFD annual meeting next fall. We want to thank and celebrate 50 years of volunteers’ dedication to our community.

The National Weather Service has issued a Flash Flood Warning effective until 9:15pm affecting areas in Larimer County including the Buckhorn Creek Basin and Miller Fork Basin. Please be aware of your surroundings and don't drive through flood waters. If necessary, seek higher ground. See NOCOAlert for more information and a map of the affected area.

The Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Department has been wrestling with the idea of building a fire station to improve response to the area of the Buckhorn. We are assessing the practicality of such a move. Obviously, purchasing land, putting up a building and equipping a new station is an expensive process.

We want to make sure we are good stewards with the money that has been donated to us, so it is important to get this right. Strong local support would inform us that this is important to the residents of this area. It is imperative that we have local volunteer responders to make a station in this area successful.

We are holding a community meeting at the residence of Lower Buckhorn Area Representative Dean Yoder on May 10 from 2:00 to 4:00 PM. Dean’s address is 19995 Buckhorn Road. While the purpose of this meeting is to assess the level of support from the residents in the Buckhorn area, we welcome comments from all residents of the RCVFD area. Please plan to attend and share your opinions.

Your Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Department Board