Robert Keith Williams grew up in a family anchored in the outdoor lifestyle and in tune with nature. With his father as the Boy Scout leader, Robert and his mother and two brothers camped throughout the Sierras. The Boy Scout experience left Robert with the life-long motto of “Adapt, Improvise and Overcome.” Although Robert’s childhood home was in Santa Monica, California, it was in the Sierra Mountains where the family gathered to ski and hike and where Robert’s family built a weekend home in Mammoth Lakes. After high school, Robert attended Community College of the Siskiyous in Weed, California, where rumor has it that he skied more than 180 days one season. Robert chose Colorado University Boulder, with its access to the mountains, for his undergraduate degree in American Studies and later his MBA.
After his MBA, Robert worked for two local companies in the Boulder area, first EMCO and then Micro Motion / Emerson. He was fanatical about the quality of his work, and his teams loved his engaged and personal approach. True to his outdoor athletic spirit, Robert was the instigator on many lunchtime road bike rides regardless of the weather and could be counted on to always push the pace with his co-worker pelotons. Although he enjoyed the energy of the high-tech ’90s, he eventually left this office work to seek higher ground at 8,200 feet in Nederland, Colorado, where he began Metamorphosis Design and built custom sustainable homes.
In 2004, Robert met Michelle Moore, a Colorado girl whose love for mountain living equaled his own. A first date spent road biking Lefthand Canyon to Jamestown led to scuba diving in Mexico, then to Crested Butte for hiking, camping, and of course, skiing. Robert then got serious and brought Michelle to his family cabin in Mammoth, where they spent their days yodeling off the top, experiencing the “Mammoth Magic”, culminating with his proposal at Twin Lakes Lodge. Married in 2006, Robert and Michelle continued their many adventures traveling, skiing, and hiking, often in the company of their labs, Lulu and Sachmo. Robert and Michelle’s family became complete with the birth of their boys, Ty in 2007 and River in 2011. The boys recounted these fond memories of time spent with their Dad; hiking to the river behind their house with their black lab, Daisy, while hearing stories of Boy Scouts and learning about wildlife, riding mountain bikes at West Mag, learning to ski and race with Dad at Eldora and Mammoth, road trips to Mammoth, family camping trips, razzing each other, working out and always pushing each other to do “one more rep”, building the shed together and learning about construction, and Dad’s constant support of all things school related.
In 2007, Robert’s life direction changed dramatically when he read a Newsweek cover story about the murders of a mountain gorilla family in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Robert felt that he, personally, had to do something, and he jumped feet first into working to protect the endangered gorilla species. He became the point person in North America for fundraising for Virunga National Park, home to the majority of the world’s surviving mountain gorillas. Robert’s many trips to the Congo brought him new and fascinating friendships and opportunities for service. To stem the illegal harvesting of trees in the National Park to make charcoal for cooking, Robert introduced a press that could transform ordinary yard waste into briquettes suitable as cooking fuel. He accompanied bloodhound puppies from Switzerland to the Congo to track the illegal poachers who threatened the gorillas and their environment.
In 2012, Robert began building his final masterpiece, an architecturally stunning and net-zero energy-efficient home in Nederland for his family. Robert was passionate and exacting about many things in his life, and this construction project was a years-long personal drive to build the perfect home. Every detail was painstakingly designed and crafted; how the house is orientated to take in the spectacular Divide views, the inviting spaces for family and friends to gather, and the use of natural and sustainably sourced materials. The completed home reflects Robert in every way. It is welcoming, beautiful, full of love and laughter, climate-conscious, shows his precision workmanship, and the next mountain adventure is always waiting at the front door.
Robert was an expert skier, and skiing was a constant joy throughout his life. He learned to ski at a young age in Mammoth and quickly fell in love with skiing off the top and dropping into long, steep, powder-filled runs. At CU Boulder, Robert joined the ski team, and Eldora became his home mountain. Throughout his adult life, Robert split his time skiing at Eldora and Mammoth, loving and finding challenges on both mountains. On most winter weekday mornings, you could find Robert making turns at Eldora and working on his technique. The quest for the better line and the joy of perfectly flexing into and popping out of a turn kept a shit-eating grin on his face. He was also a skilled ski mechanic and built a beautiful tuning workshop where he sharpened and waxed his skis after each day on the slopes and happily tuned skis for family and friends.
In addition to skiing, Robert was an accomplished cyclist, surfer, and scuba diver. He taught his sons to ski, mountain bike, and most recently how to surf a paddleboard in Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod. He was a skilled and enthusiastic vegetarian chef. A favorite meal was Greek pizza for the family and a special cheese pizza with stuffed crust for Ty, and all made with homemade sourdough crust followed by Bananas on Fuego for dessert. Robert volunteered time in his community, coaching the Nederland middle-level ski team, serving as president of his HOA, and helping neighbors with fire mitigation on community workdays. He cut, split, and stacked wood for the entire winter each year in a fashion that deserved artistic acclaim. Before placing a log into the stove, he searched each piece for friendly spiders, which he transported back to their homes in the woods.
On December 7, 2021, at age 60, we lost Robert in a ski accident on Eldora Mountain in Nederland. Robert is survived by his loving wife Michelle and adoring sons Ty and River, the prides of his life, his brothers Albert and John, and a host of life-long best friends. Part of Robert’s legacy is a lovely grove of young aspen trees that he planted at his Nederland home, and of course, all those fortunate spiders.
Please consider donating in Robert’s name to Our Children’s Trust, a non-profit dedicated to securing the legal right to a safe climate and healthy atmosphere for all present and future generations. https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/donate-now
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.cristmortuary.com for the Williams family.
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