Quinn Whitten was born an adventurer. His introduction into this world was in itself a wild ride: his parents racing in a friend’s Suburban through the mountains of Idyllwild, California, and meeting a police escort partway to leapfrog every intersection and just barely make it to the hospital in time. That innate spark took him to far-off places, including Alaska, where his untimely disappearance last December has left his family grasping at thin air for answers.
“He came in on a huge adventure and he never slowed down,” his father, Tom Whitten, told The Sopris Sun.
“Alaska was his next frontier,” added Quinn’s sister, Ali Whitten.
Quinn and his roommate, Josiah Bracken, reportedly left Back Beach in Sitka, Alaska, bound for Quinn’s floathouse on Camp Coogan Bay in a 14-foot skiff boat the night of Dec. 13. It wasn’t until Dec. 15 when authorities were informed that the men were overdue.
There’s been no sign of them since.
“Quinn was pure wit and chaos,” Ali said. “He just had the most amazing mind and was just so personable. But then he also had that edge about him that if anyone told him he couldn’t do something, he would do it, no matter how dangerous or extreme it was … That was the punk rock, anarchist within him.”
Quinn and his mother, Sky Quarto, moved to Breckenridge to live with his uncle, Joe Quarto, but he ended up in the Valley before the peak of his adolescence. At 6 years old, Quinn got on a pair of skis, but in 1984, when Breckenridge first allowed snowboarders on the mountain, he dropped the sticks, picked up a board and learned to fly.
He grew up pushing against the grain as a rogue skateboarder and snowboarder, a subculture stigmatized by polite society at the time. Having dropped out of school, acing his GED and getting partway through Colorado Mountain College course work, he went on to start a construction company and own five properties across the map — from Sitka to Panama.
His curiosity was unbound. “He had tremendous motivation toward traditional learning,” said a longtime friend, Danielle Prall. “But he was one of the most self-studied [people], as if he had a craving for knowledge and information. I don’t know that I’ve met a more voracious reader.”
“He lived as if the boundary line was an invitation,” said fellow snowboarder and friend Heath Bollock. “The places he traveled, the oceans he crossed, the mountains he carved, the pavement he punished beneath wheels — all of it lived on the edge.”
“I was a Glenwood kid, but spent a lot of time hanging out with the cool kids and punks in Carbondale,” recalled Rebecca Binion, a close friend back then, but who later in life became Quinn’s partner of 10 years. The two lived on Crystal Circle in Carbondale with Binion’s two children, Alex Fisher and Lily Nichols, and, eventually, Quinn’s little sisters, Ali and Cait, who Quinn took in when they were still in high school.
“Our family was Alex and Lily and Cait and Ali,” Binion stated.
Much of their time was spent working on the house, from nurturing its garden, a passion of Quinn’s, to building an in-ground, concrete pool in the backyard — strictly for skateboarding.
Aside from his family, Quinn provided just about anyone in need with a place to lay their head. “He helped people and he was very non-judgemental,” his mother said. “It was very important to him to support people that are usually invisible in society.”
It was a party house, and all that came with that, but it was also a family home. While Quinn wasn’t one to back down from an argument, or even a fight, he was also a committed caregiver.
Quinn was last in Carbondale for Alex’s wedding in August. His sisters convinced him to stay the night at their house. He cooked a family recipe with fish from Alaska, they caught a flick at Movieland in El Jebel and finished the night talking trash about boys.
He was expected to be getting ready to come home for Christmas, when his family heard the news. “He was coming back that week,” Cait said. “The holidays were always spent together.”
A murky case
According to a spokesperson with the Alaska Department of Public Safety (DPS), a report was received on Dec. 15 that Quinn and Josiah Bracken were overdue after shoving off from Back Beach and heading to Camp Coogan Bay — about five nautical miles — on Dec. 13. According to the DPS incident report, Bernadette Kibby reported that she had seen them off at Back Beach around 11-11:30pm, but neither showed up for work on Dec. 15. The spokesperson said that the weather was “poor with high winds and snow” at the estimated time of their disappearance.
The Coast Guard relayed to DPS that Quinn’s phone had last pinged on Dec. 15 at 12:52am — just over 24 hours after their supposed departure. A Coast Guard small boat had deployed the night of the 15th, but had to turn back due to weather, while one “good Samaritan” was still out searching. DPS Search and Rescue postponed a search until the morning of Dec. 16, when multi-agency efforts continued, coordinated by the only local DPS trooper on duty at the time, Kyle Ferguson. “Search and recovery efforts halted at dusk on Dec. 17 with negative results,” stated Ferguson’s report.
On Dec. 17, according to the report, Sitka Mountain Rescue tallied “independent indications from multiple [search] dogs” in the same area of Cannon Island (about 325 yards from where they departed at Back Beach), but a dive search was delayed until Dec. 20-21, due to weather and a lack of volunteer divers.
The Sun also spoke with Josiah’s mother, Brande Bracken, who said that she talked with her son the day they reportedly left Back Beach, who told her that he was not going out to the floathouse due to the weather.
To further conflate matters, a friend of Quinn’s, Stephanie Two Two, was charged with burglary and several counts of theft for allegedly facilitating the stealing of multiple firearms from the floathouse after the men’s disappearance. That case is set for trial the week of April 27. The Sun reached out to Two Two’s attorney, but has not received a response.
Because of mysterious circumstances surrounding the case, parts of the family are left ruminating over what-if scenarios.
That said, it’s not irregular for people to go missing off the coast of Alaska. In fact, Ali recalled a text her brother sent about a year ago regarding a group of his friends whose boat capsized, and only three of the five bodies were recovered. “It really spooked him,” she said.
Quinn earned his master captain’s licence a few years ago, according to his uncle, after spending a year captaining a tuna-fishing boat with a Filipino crew. Uncle Joe knew several master captains when he lived in Alaska in ‘90s, some of whom lost their lives at sea.
Desperate for closure
Ali recalled a sociology course in college that covered missing persons at sea and grieving families being offered gifts from the ocean — items of their lost loved ones — which brought some closure.
“I remember being so mortified by that story,” Ali said. “But maybe the ocean will give us something back, eventually.”
“One of the saddest things to me is that Quinn had such great plans for the future, and, in his nature, very inclusive,” his mother said. “ I hope his credo of radical freedom lives on through all [who] knew him.”
Binion is organizing a tribute day of riding at Sunlight Mountain Resort coined “Live to Ride, Ride to Live” — a saying tattooed on Quinn’s calves — in his honor on April 4.
Quinn was known to jot down notes, including this entry copied verbatim.
Sept. 7, 2024
Spending first night at Camp Coogan floathouse
I hauled a 30” x 69” exterior door and a cool old 16? X 72” cabinet door out.
When I arrived, I saw the most amazing jellyfish display of my life! It was so cool to see the intricacy and delicate movements of the creature. It had tentacles trailing at least 8’ in the most ephemeral, ghostlike movements. The symmetry of the jellyfish certainly exemplifies fractal kaleidoscopic geometry.
So grateful! Amazing life.