Grand Lake plans to celebrate the community’s resiliency at the first ever Troublesome Fest this Saturday.

Saturday’s music festival is a fundraiser for the new nonprofit, Fire on the Mountain, which aims to produce community events to raise money for wildfire mitigation, education, prevention and recovery.

Co-founders Krystal Steward and Stephanie Conners explained that the event is meant to bring joy to a community still recovering from the East Troublesome Fire 11 months after the disaster.

Conners lost her home in the fire last October, and it was from that loss that the idea for Troublesome Fest began.

“I was experiencing a lot of pain from that,” she said. “I know everyone in our community was experiencing this pain. I just wanted to take it away.”

The music festival will be an all-day event including six bands on Grand Lake’s lakefront. The lineup features Shinyribs, Grady Spencer and the Work, The Samples, Dragondeer, Doesn’t Matter and Zach Heckendorf.

However, the festival won’t just be music, food and drinks. The event will put out eight information booths from nonprofits and organizations in line with Fire on the Mountain’s mission.

“They’ll be available to talk about wildfire mitigation awareness, recovery efforts after wildfire, the mental health aspect of going through a natural disaster like that,” Steward said.

The festival happens to be the same day as the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and will include a moment of silence along with other tributes honoring local first-responders.

“(It’s) to kind of bring a highlight to all the sacrifices that people have made to keep our county safe,” Steward said.

Most importantly, the organizers want this event to be a celebration of Grand Lake and a way to bring the community together following such a huge fire. Steward said they’re expecting 800-1,000 attendees.

“We wanted to do something big to invite a lot of people there to be able to talk about it and see what our community is doing since then,” Conners said. “It’s not getting us down. We’re constantly bringing each other up and picking each other up. We just want to show the world that we’re still here able to celebrate.”

While the event was meant to be a party for the community, Conners said that community has stepped up to help bring it all together.

“We could not have done this without the many sponsors that we’ve received, the volunteers,” Conners said. “We have just received so much love and support in this. It’s overwhelming and it’s seriously powerful. We cannot wait to see what, as an entire community, we are about to put on.”

Tickets are on sale at http://www.TroublesomeFest.com, from local vendors in Grand Lake or at the gate.