Colorado & Utah Canyons Tour Company

Abstract

Ron Hopkins had just finished his first year as founder, president, head mechanic, chief cook, and lead tour guide for the Colorado & Utah Canyon Tours Company (CUCTC). The first year had been a good one, and Hopkins thought he probably had made a small profit—after all, he had ended the year with a positive balance in the CUCTC checking account. Among the many roles and tasks he performed at CUCTC, however, accountant/bookkeeper was not one of them. For that task, he calls on his former college roommate, Chris Norris to prepare the financial statements needed for a $300,000 loan application he intended to make at Lofton National Bank next month. Norris plans to organize the CUCTC financial notes and records Hopkins has sent him. Excerpt UVA-C-2364 Jul. 29, 2015 Colorado & Utah Canyons Tour Company Ron Hopkins had just finished his first year as founder, president, head mechanic, chief cook, and lead tour guide for the Colorado & Utah Canyon Tours Company (CUCTC). The company offered tours of the canyon lands located in western Colorado and eastern Utah. Depending on the season, a variety of tours were available including summertime rafting, hiking, horseback riding, and ATV tours as well as wintertime snowmobile, snowshoe, and cross-country ski tours. The first year had been a good one, and Hopkins thought he probably had made a small profit—after all, he had ended the year with a positive balance in the CUCTC checking account, and he had not gone hungry. Among the many roles and tasks he performed at CUCTC, however, accountant/bookkeeper was not one of them. For that task, he had called his former college roommate, Chris Norris, and offered him a free four-day summer ATV tour in exchange for preparation of a set of financial statements suitable for a $ 300,000 loan application he intended to make at Lofton National Bank next month. Norris, an avid outdoorsman, jumped at the offer, and he planned to spend the upcoming weekend organizing the CUCTC financial notes and records Hopkins had sent him. Company Background After college, Hopkins had worked for six summers as a seasonal U.S. Forest Service employee in southwestern Colorado. In that capacity, he had helped maintain backcountry forest roads, led a small team of other seasonal employees building new hiking trails, liaised with ranchers on some recurring cattle-grazing issues, and he had even been called on to help fight some sizeable forest fires. All in all he had loved the life and the land. He also loved the fact that when forestry season ended, he signed on with a nearby ski resort as a snowmobile tour guide and mechanic. He had not saved much money during the six years he had spent cobbling together his “careers” but he was not yet 30, was fit as any big-time college athlete, and hadn't spent more than a handful of days at a desk since graduating from college. . . .