Skiing in Telluride by Arnie Wilson
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Thanks to the conquistadors and the native Americans they confronted in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Colorado lexicon is richer than many. There’s a lot more to the skiing place names in this iconic state than Aspen, Vail and Breckenridge. Much of Colorado once belonged to Spain, and Spanish, as someone said, “is not just English with an o at the end”. Even the name Colorado itself – dubbed “the Switzerland of America” by President Theodore Roosevelt – means red or ruddy in Spanish; so called because of the ubiquitous red soil which also often gives the state’s rivers a reddish hue.
I found myself in what was once the land of the Tabegauche (“place where the snow melts first”) Ute or Nunt’z Indians in the Uncompahgre (“hot water springs”) National Forest. As I gazed up at the mighty San Juan mountains, it occurred to me that such nomenclature also gives south-west Colorado an unusually evocative atmosphere. One that you won’t find nearer the old cow town of Denver and the great flat-as-a-pancake plains to the east, where the flu pandemic of 1918 helped empty the region of its already sparse population.
Telluride, some 350 miles south west of Denver, at the west end of San Miguel County, is a genuine old wild-west-cum- mining town turned hip ski town. Its wide main street, Colorado Avenue, was built to allow stage coaches to accomplish U-turns. At the end of the street (speed limit 15 mph), which peters out in a box canyon, the San Juans – the youngest and most rugged range in the Rockies - rear up majestically, as if painted there by Hollywood theatre stage hands.
Off the Beaten Track
It’s a magnificent though remote place to visit, winter or summer, but some locals get itchy feet. One woman I bumped into (on April 1) turned out to be from Nottingham who had “met” her husband on the internet. “I’d never heard of Telluride” she said, “but I came to live here and love it. Mind you, it’s good to get out of town to shop occasionally.” The nearest Wal-Mart - and traffic lights - are in Montrose, 65 miles away.
Not that life here is dull. How could it be when you can enjoy a “Butch Cassidy Ski Chase” (they never tire of telling you, almost proudly, that Cassidy pulled his first bank job here), a Gay Ski Week and even kick-boxing lessons?
This is serious cowboy country, which did not escape the notice of Hollywood. Telluride featured in classic westerns like True Grit and How The West Was Won. Some 30 miles to the north west, the small town of Nucla was used for some of the scenes in Thelma and Louise. One of Telluride’s legendary characters, Roudy Roudebush, offers “horseback adventures” for tourists, and skiers who fancy a day off from the slopes.
At the recently renovated “New” Sheridan Hotel - actually built circa 1895 - Roudebush (d.o.b. circa probably between the wars) can usually be found at the bar, occasionally accompanied by his horse, who, unlike Roudy, sticks to water. The amiable wrangler offers his business card to anyone interested in joining him. It says: “Gentle horses for gentle people; fast horses for fast people. And, for people who don’t like to ride, horses that don’t like to be rode!”
Another great local character, Johnnie Stevens, born in nearby Ouray - a small town named after a peace-loving Ute chief – rejects, tongue in cheek, the idea that the 2,200 townsfolk are friendly just because they like to stop for a chat. “We’re not friendly – just lonely” smiles Stevens. “But then life’s a 10 when you have no IQ, no aspirations, and no plans!” Stevens has twice been Chief Operating Officer at the ski hill.
Sometimes his dry wit backfires. Not long ago he caused near panic in some parts of town when he suggested - with a straight face – that each November there should be an election to vote between 200 and 250 people out of the town until the population was back to what it was when the ski area started in the 1970s: approximately 450 people.
Says Stevens, whose party trick is to claim he can’t help doing wolf impressions when anyone pours him a shot of tequila: ”Most of the people in the discussion were relative newcomers who thought the world would be better off if there were fewer people in Telluride. After listening to this ‘nimbyesque’ idealism in an ‘Ideas Festival’ forum , I suggested, tongue in cheek, that people instructed to leave town would have to do so within three to six months, and if they really wanted to go back to the days of yesteryear, their homes must be torn down and we would acquire more open space. A lot of people took me seriously, and some asked to be exempt from the vote based upon various good deeds they may have performed!”
Rough and Tumble Ski Country
Stevens presided over some of the biggest expansions on Telluride’s slopes – agreeably steep and challenging, but in the early days, not as extensive as some Colorado ski areas. One expansion doubled the size of the terrain almost overnight, and more recently, the ski area trumpeted the addition of even more terrain on the mountain it describes as “unmatched in North America.”
“Yikes!” the resort announced. “On the heels of Telluride’s opening of Black Iron Bowl – named after an old mining claim - to public access, Telluride opens sick hike-to terrain”. (Translation – the resort has some exciting new terrain if you don’t mind walking up to it.) “Located east of Black Iron Bowl, this unbelievable terrain includes well over 200 acres and almost 2000 vertical feet on the north face of the 13,320 foot Palmyra Peak.”
There is certainly some remarkable backcountry skiing here, and one or two of the local extreme skiers (every resort with radical terrain seems to breed them) have skied descents which are not ski runs at all – more steeper-than-hell “no-fall zones” sometimes entered by rope, where, without question, if you make an error, you die. Fortunately for recreational skiers, these “runs” are completely separate from the “lace-like trails woven into these spectacular mountains” shown on the trail map. In any ski resort with “spectacular” mountains, there are always ways to come to grief if you charge off with over-ambitious plans into the backcountry without a guide or sufficient skills.
Not being big on hiking, I decided against the one-hour to one-and-a-half hour trek (depending on your fitness and the weather conditions) to Palmyra Peak, or even Mountain Quail (which you pass on your way to Palmyra after 30-45 minutes) and took the line of least resistance to Genevieve (five-to-10 minutes).Other options include Bald Mountain (20-25 minutes, with a view from the summit of the historic mining town of Alta) and Gold Hill Chutes 6-10 (45-50 minutes) After recently opening Revelation Bowl, served by a new quad chair, Telluride is opening four more wide couloirs and chutes dropping 1,600 vertical feet above the tree line in the Gold Hill area in time for the new season.