To our Beloved Hell’s Angels, 

Winter tranquility has gently arrived to Boulder Town, and thanks to the hard work of our incredible crew and all of incredible you, we have successfully navigated the big wildness of Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm’s 26th season—PLUS the Lodge, PLUS Little Bone. Whew.

It’s hard to put into words how enormous 2025 was for us. As we write this love letter to you, it's been just over ten months since we took ownership of not only our building but the entirety of Boulder Mountain Lodge. This season brought tremendous growth to our HBG ecosystem, and as we took over stewardship of the property, there was a massive amount to do/solve/change/fix/figure out. If you missed the backstory of what we were up to this year (Lodge improvements big and small; opening our food truck, Little Bone; welcoming the monks of Drepung Loseling back; hosting many sweet weddings and special events, and on the list goes), you can find our action-packed Autumn and Spring newsletters here. We feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of possibilities for our new Hell’s Backbone World and are stoked about all that lies ahead.

We ended this exciting year on a very high note with great news from the City Weekly’s Best of Utah Awards: Hell’s Backbone Grill was named Best Farm-to-Table Restaurant and (big deal for all you Spicy Cowgal Chipotle Meatloaf lovers out there) Best Meatloaf in the State. And we were especially pleased that Boulder Mountain Lodge was named third Best Utah Hotel! That, plus our dear hardworking Hellion Lacy Allen being elected to Boulder town council, brought a lovely burst of energy as we pushed to finish the season.

As we’ve arrived at this moment of rest and reflection, we're grateful that we somehow managed to pull this off—and are now leaning into how we can be of greater benefit as we deepen our mission of higher consciousness hospitality. For those of you dreaming on your 2026 trips to Boulder, we’ll open dinner reservations for next season in mid-January (we’ll send a newsletter to let you know when availability is open on Tock), at which point we’ll also announce our opening date.

Mixes & Magic

Now that it’s winter, we’re fully focused on shipping out holiday cheer from our online store! We have about ten days left to get your gifts out in time for the holidays, so hurry, don’t delay! Place your orders straightaway! The USPS “ship by” date to receive deliveries by Christmas is December 18th.

Our Hellion hands are working hard right now to keep everything in stock and ready to go. We’ve made many batches of Blake’s famous Vanilla Piñon Buttermints, and you’ll also find in the store this year a limited amount of her Piñon-Chile Brittle with Pasilla Negra and Guajillo (the recipe for this is also in our first cookbook, With a Measure of Grace). And Jen has just baked tray after delicious tray of our ever-popular granola, plus lots of batches of drool-inducing Peanut Butter Falcon Dog Biscuits, among copious other delights.

But wait, there's more! We’ve added new and wonderful things for your pantry, including Spiced Apple Butter and our first-ever shelf-stable bottles of She Devil hot sauce! (You asked, we answered.) You’ll also find several new titles on our list of favorite and inspiring books by our author friends, including Rebecca Solnit’s newest, No Straight Road Takes You There, and a limited number of signed copies of Pam Houston’s powerful book Sight Hound, delivered recently by the author herself. We have newly designed “HBG Artist Series” canvas totes, a few styles of ReCap hats, and beautiful jewelry made by our talented Hellion emerita Ana Rendon. As always, your support is immeasurably helpful. It fills us with gratitude AND helps keep our crew here busy!

Overwintering

While the restaurant closes for the winter, our dreamy Boulder Mountain Lodge remains open! Many of you are already aware of how magnificent this season is in Boulder and have booked yourselves a wintertime retreat. Come for the astonishing and crisp desert hiking, cross-country skiing on the mountain (thank GOODNESS there’s already some snow this year!) or a quiet respite for reading, writing, and generally escaping the hectic world. Boulder is in the 99th percentile in the nation for dark skies and clean air, so it's an amazing space for stargazing, too. Plus, we are keeping that bodacious hot tub out by the bird sanctuary good and toasty.

This winter, we are providing a complimentary continental fireside breakfast in the common room: There will be some variation from week to week, but think housemade granola with organic yogurt, hard-boiled farm eggs, freshly baked scones or muffins, and, of course, teas and hot coffee with real organic cream.

And, drumroll please … as an exciting winter amenity, we now offer HBG grab-and-go meals for in-room dinners! Finally, HBG nourishment even while the restaurant is closed! We’ll consistently have our vegan and gluten-free Three Sisters Posole with blue corn muffins, along with other of-the-moment stews and hearty soups. This week, Jen is making two kinds of tamales, including her delectable Pumpkin & Gruyère version with Red-Chile & Pecan Sauce. These dishes will be available for purchase to lodge guests at reception, ready to heat and eat and be topped off with some sweet treat, such as our Cowgirl Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies. And our rooms are now outfitted with a small refrigerator, microwave, dishes, cutlery, and an electric tea kettle. (They’re warm and cozy, too, with new fluffy comforters.)

If you're scanning the horizon for a pop-up retreat location, a birthday celebration, a family getaway, or an elopement this winter, do reach out. With enough lodge guests in your group, we can likely arrange a simple catering!

Casting Call

While we always try to give ourselves a moment of rest, our focus during winter quickly turns toward hiring and planning for the next season. Our 2025 crew was terrific, and we are WILDLY grateful to have the majority of our team returning next year. But as our organization expands, so do our staffing needs! We are hiring for most positions, which now include Little Bone and the Lodge in addition to HBG and the farm. If you know someone who could be a good fit or if you yourself have thought of joining the team, now is the time to apply on our website! As we get busier and busier, we do value experience, but it’s not entirely essential. Most important is an openness to learning and a willingness and desire to work HARD! We’ve started hiring, but will be interviewing through January. We hope to hear from you!

Finishing Strong

We started our restaurant a quarter of a century ago with the mission to create a literal and metaphoric “warm hearth” for visitors to gather around, here in the heart of the sublime Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. We’re closing out this year with a profound sense of accomplishment, intense determination, and a strong desire to support and uphold our original promise and commitment.

All public lands in the US are under threat right now from an administration that sees them only through the lens of resource extraction and development. We are more committed than ever to the effort to keep this natural and national treasure whole, intact, and preserved—for now and for all future generations to come—in accordance with the wishes of the five tribes who formed a protective coalition this spring by proclamation. Please consider donating to some of the many nonprofits bringing lawsuits and waging the political fights necessary to keep them safe. Our recommendations include: Grand Staircase Escalante Partners, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Grand Canyon Trust, and Conservation Lands Foundation.

We also want to ask you to support our friends at Torrey House Press, a small nonprofit literary publisher that works to amplify voices who write about the beauty, conflict, and ultimately the importance of preservation of the land and cultures of the American West and our ever-changing planet. You can donate to them here or buy from our store some of the many books that they have helped bring into the world from beloved, established authors like Pam Houston and Craig Childs and emerging writers like Stacie Shannon Denetsosie and Zak Podmore. And you can join Blake and other THP authors for a special conversation live from your favorite chair at 6:00 pm MT Sunday, December 28. Register for this event here.

Things in our country are harrowing right now, and doing hospitality within the context of it all has been emotionally challenging for us and our team. It's impossible to understand how the powers that be can devote themselves to projects that gravely accelerate the destruction of our planet. It's brutal to bear witness to violence and cruelty toward those we share the world with, be they children, marginalized populations, endangered species, or any of the earthlings on our shared home. It feels like everything we love is under attack—and yet, this year so many of you came to see us, and you asked so sincerely how it was going, and we locked eyes and embraced. We shared stories of the extraordinary work that we are collectively doing to push back against fascism, fear, and hate. To get to feed you, laugh with you, house you, and be together in this remote place—it felt different this year, maybe more like communion. It was amity, true heart-family, and golden hope, and it landed for all of us like a kind of holy belonging.

We’ve said it before, and it bears repeating: When we are fighting for what we love rather than against what we hate, the work is enlivening and informed by wisdom and care. You motivate us to keep moving forward, to keep believing in the goodness, truth, and genuine tender-hearted beauty of humankind. We see you, and importantly, we feel seen and deeply held by you. This is true love, and isn’t love really the whole entire point?

May your solstice time be lit aglow with graceful and elegant kindness, and may your holidays be bright with illuminating magic and peace.

Most sincerely,
Blake, Jen, Nina, Morgan, Nick & the Hellions

PRAISE SONG

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there's left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

~ Barbara Crooker