The dark green building at 24 North Main Street has been a post office, a bank, a bar, a grocery outlet and, for a short while, an appliance store. The Flume's profile of its newest owners lists all of them. Now it has another name. According to The Flume, Hatte Meneau and Cody Lindig bought the property in March and reopened the old South Park Saloon as The Dusty Bottle Saloon. The name comes from a Grateful Dead lyric. Two doors down the block at 16 South Main, The Kettle Café now sits where The Black Kettle Coffee Shop opened in November 2024.
Both places where people gather on Main Street now run under names that weren't on those signs when The Black Kettle opened. For anyone who lives here, that makes this October different from earlier ones. Mud season in town now comes with dates you can look up. On the mountain above town, nothing is dated, and that hasn't changed.
The Saloon Posted Its Own Break
The Dusty Bottle's homepage says it is on its "Mud Season break" from October 5th through the 19th. That's two weeks, posted ahead of time, on a building that calls itself the highest saloon in North America at 10,578 feet. The site doesn't give a reopening date or fall hours. Its regular schedule, from the Explore Park County listing published in September, is Wednesday through Friday from 3 p.m. to close and Saturday and Sunday from noon to close. That listing also says seasonal hours may change. Read the 20th as the end of the break, not a confirmed reopening. Check the bar's social pages before you go.
The break sticks out because the saloon spent the summer as the place the evening continued after events. The Flume's June profile listed free after-show music following Thursdays in the Park on June 18, June 25, July 2 and July 9, plus the South Park Bluegrass Festival on July 3 and 4 and Festival in the Clouds on July 17 and 18. Summer gave the bar its schedule. Winter is the first season it will have to plan for itself.
The owners have talked about what that could include. In the same article, Lindig described a starting menu of pizzas, calzones, stromboli and salads made from scratch. Once a grill and fryer are running, he wants to add Friday fish fries and "maybe a Sunday pasta special this winter." Meneau said they would also like to host community dinners around the holidays. These are plans for now. The bar's website today describes "Pizza & Bites" and shows its menus as images, so nobody has published a fish-fry night.
"We are all about feedback, from our employees and the community. Nine out of 10 times, we're going to say, let's try it." — Hatte Meneau, in The Flume
So this winter's menu, music nights and holiday dinners will partly depend on what regulars ask for. The article reported five staff members, all from Alma.
Mornings Belong to The Kettle Café
While the saloon is on break, the café is where Main Street gathers. Jamie Fletcher and Erin run it as a family business. Explore Park County says Fletcher is a self-taught chef with more than 25 years in the service industry, and that the couple came to Alma with Breckenridge experience.
The breakfast burritos carry local names:
- The Native has eggs, bacon, cream cheese, cheddar, sweet potato, red onion, spinach, green chile and maple sriracha.
- The Big Dog Daddy has eggs, chorizo, bacon, sweet potato and green chile.
- The Local has eggs, bacon, pepper jack, avocado and green chile.
- The Alma Love is the vegetarian one, with eggs, avocado, pepper jack and salsa.
The listing also covers gluten-free and classic breakfast sandwiches, plus lunch items like paninis, wraps, smoothies and juices. It says the lunch menu is still growing and items depend on availability.
Hours are where you'll want to check. The Kettle Café's website lists 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Thursday and Friday, and 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. It's closed Tuesday and Wednesday. The Explore Park County listing gives slightly different times, including Sunday closing at 1:30. The café's own site says to check Google for current hours.
Put the two posted schedules together and you get the week on Main Street:
| Day | The Kettle Café | The Dusty Bottle, regular schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Morning into early afternoon | Closed |
| Tuesday | Closed | Closed |
| Wednesday | Closed | 3 p.m. to close |
| Thursday | Morning into early afternoon | 3 p.m. to close |
| Friday | Morning into early afternoon | 3 p.m. to close |
| Saturday | Morning into early afternoon | Noon to close |
| Sunday | Morning into early afternoon | Noon to close |
Tuesday is the one day when neither place is open. From Thursday through Sunday you can have breakfast at the café and come back for the evening at the saloon without leaving Main Street. Between October 5 and 19, the saloon column is empty and the café has the town to itself.
Town Hall Holds the Calendar Steady
The one fixed date that comes back every month belongs to the Alma Foundation. Bingo returns October 15, 2026 in the north room of Alma Town Hall, with a potluck at 6 p.m. and the game at 7 p.m. It runs on the third Thursday of every month from October through May. Using that rule, the rest of 2026 falls on November 19 and December 17. The Foundation is also looking for people to join what it calls its "extremely lucky Volunteer Bingo Team."
Opening night is October 15, during the saloon's break. The Town Hall potluck carries the community calendar through the two weeks the bar is dark. The two aren't unrelated. The Flume reports that Meneau is the Alma Foundation's treasurer and that the saloon plans a strong collaboration with the Foundation.
The surrounding area adds a few dates in the same window:
- Saturday, October 10, 1 p.m. Cellist Craig Hultgren performs New Music at NoLo at the historic North London Mill site outside Alma.
- Thursday, October 15, 6 p.m. Alma Foundation potluck and Bingo at Town Hall.
- Saturday, October 17, 6 p.m. Como Dinner and Bingo at the Como Civic Association, according to The Flume's Park County events listing.
- Monday, October 19. The last day of The Dusty Bottle's posted break.
- Thursdays, November 19 and December 17. The next two Bingo nights.
One caution about lookups. The Town of Alma's online business directory still lists South Park Saloon at 24 N. Main St. That entry is out of date.
Above Town, Snow Sets the Dates
Main Street publishes its dates. The roads and trailheads above town don't have any to publish.
The Forest Service says Kite Lake Campground operates from mid-May to mid-October, depending on weather. The page doesn't give a winter gate date for the road up. The roadwork closure on NFSR 8 between Kite Lake and the forest boundary at Alma was temporary. The order ran June 4 through July 31, 2026, and it isn't a seasonal rule. If you followed the two summers of construction on that road, as covered in our post on Alma's summer road, that closure is over, and what happens next depends on the weather.
Mosquito Pass, reached by County Road 12 off CO-9, works the same way. The Forest Service says it stays open until snow falls and is usually open only six to eight weeks after the snow melts in July.
After the high roads close, the Colorado Mountain Club lists Hoosier Pass as open year-round for snowshoeing and backcountry Nordic skiing. The two routes it names are a big step apart:
- Hoosier Pass Loop, west side: 2.8 miles with 688 feet of gain.
- Hoosier Ridge: 9.5 miles round trip with 3,000 feet of gain.
Near the top of the pass off Highway 9, Explore Park County describes Montgomery Reservoir freezing into solid blue ice in winter. The listing describes the view. It doesn't describe a designated winter route or access conditions.
Getting to any of these after a storm depends on Park County's plowing order. Its Public Works snow map explains that Primary roads are plowed first and keep getting plowed while snow is still falling. Secondary and Tertiary roads wait until the Primary roads are done and the snow has stopped, which can take several days. Will Call roads have no route or schedule and are handled as needed. The map lets you look up which class your own road falls in. That class tells you more about a snowy morning than any calendar does.
The Weeks Ahead, Read Together
Here is how the next stretch fits together. The saloon's break runs through October 19. Bingo starts in the middle of it, on the 15th. The Kettle Café keeps serving breakfast burritos five mornings a week. Somewhere in the same weeks, without a posted date, Kite Lake Campground ends its weather-dependent season and the first real snow closes the route over Mosquito Pass. Hoosier Pass stays open for snowshoeing and Nordic skiing all winter. Fairplay has its own version of this split between a set calendar and the weather, covered in our fall post on the town just down the road.
This winter will also show whether the saloon's new plans become regular nights. Fish fries, a Sunday pasta special and holiday dinners are all things the owners have said they would like to try.
At Breckenridge Mountain Brokers, we follow Alma's Main Street the way locals do, one changed sign and one posted break at a time. If you're wondering how a road's plow class or a winter access question affects a property you own or are considering above town, visit our Alma neighborhood page and start the conversation with us. Start Your Mountain Home Search.
