Up until this season, Telluride ski area in remote southwestern Colorado has not only been tough to get to–335 miles from the nearest big city–but also very tough to ski.
Double-black-diamond runs with daunting names like the Plunge and Spiral Stairs far outnumbered green-circle trails with demure monikers like Little Maude and May Girl.
And steep and deep snow moguls were far more in evidence than the handful of movie moguls who have come to call this picturesque and historic old mining town at the head of a spectacular box canyon home.
All of that changed this ski season with the first non-stop American Airlines flights from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to Montrose, the nearest big town from Telluride at 65 miles away, and a ski terrain expansion that nearly doubles the size of the ski area.
Prospect Bowl ushers in a kinder, gentler era for a mountain that could make even Telluride tough guys like Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson wish they’d gone to Aspen. Make no mistake, the 733-acre, three-chairlift expansion has its share of challenging terrain, but for the most part it’s made up of rolling, gladed intermediate and beginner runs that add some easy listening to what used to just be a three-chord slam dance.
“We’ve had 30 days of guests on it, and they’re absolutely blown away,” Telluride Ski & Golf Company COO Johnnie Stevens said at the official grand opening Jan. 12, although Prospect Bowl has been up and running since December. “And I know that this is going to translate to people who maybe before hadn’t come to Telluride coming here now.”
In fact, Telski is banking on it. The $14 million investment is aimed at making the area more attractive to families, with a wider diversity of terrain that should be conducive to longer stays and allow Telluride to better compete with destination giants like Vail and Aspen.
“We know that we’re going to be able to compete from a terrain standpoint . . . ,” Stevens said, “but we believe that people are ready for change, and Telluride is one of those great changes. So we have a niche.”
Still 40 percent expert terrain, Telluride now has a more balanced 38 percent of the mountain labeled intermediate and 22 percent beginner, but what makes T-Ride, as it’s affectionately known to locals, so different is that the easier runs aren’t clustered near the bottom.
Prospect Bowl, with a soaring summit elevation of 12,255 feet, has a graceful network of groomed beginner runs above 10,000 feet that command staggering views of 13,319-foot Palmyra Peak and the surrounding San Juan Mountains that rival any vistas in the Swiss or French Alps. And the new bowl is easily accessed by chairlift or gondola from either the town of Telluride or the swank enclave of Mountain Village.
“Prospect Bowl is so different than the rest of the mountain,” said Stevens, a former hard-rock miner who grew up in Telluride and has worked for the ski area since it first opened in the early 1970s. “It’s like going to another resort. You’re tucked in under these magnificent peaks, and we tried to make it different and unique.”
Iconoclasm and counterculturalism have become a Telluride tradition. The town where Butch Cassidy robbed his first bank more recently had a dreadlocked town councilman who played in a reggae band.
And the same place that last year proudly advertised “Get here before Starbucks does” once defied Thomas Edison’s 1880s push to promote direct current (DC) electrical power when a miner named Lucien L. Nunn convinced George Westinghouse to build a 60,000-volt alternating current (AC) power plant in town and run the lines through what is now Prospect Bowl to Nunn’s Gold King Mine.
The charming Victorian town became the first in the world with electric streetlights and was nicknamed “City of Lights.” Many of the buildings from the gold rush days of more than a century ago still stand and house some of the finest restaurants, shops and bars in Colorado’s ski country. But Telluride remains laid-back and unimpressed with glitz.
Having only recently torn down “Bus Town,” a collection of broken-down school buses and cars on a prominent hillside that served as extremely affordable housing for some of the town’s hardier residents, Telluride is still very much about flying in the face of norms. But at the same time T-Ride has embraced a new Norm–retired four-star Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who has been a part-time resident for several years and cut the ribbon on Prospect Bowl Jan. 12.
“I always had this dream of living in a log home out West some place, surrounded by craggy mountains,” Schwarzkopf said. “After I retired and my book was successful and I had a little bit of money, I started looking for a home all over the West. There were two places I had crossed off my list that I would not go: one was Aspen and the other was Telluride. It was a show biz sort of thing, and that was what I was trying to get away from.”
But a Realtor friend of his kept pestering him until one day Schwarzkopf took a quick side trip to Telluride from Denver, and “that was it; I fell in love it with it.”
While his children still love to ski the mountain, the former commander of the Allied Forces during the Gulf War injured his knee while skiing Telluride two weeks before the grand opening.
“People ask me what category of skier I am, and I tell them I used to be intermediate kamikaze, now I’m advanced mediocre,” said Schwarzkopf, who first skied in Switzerland as a young man.
The current war on terrorism, which traces its roots back to Schwarzkopf’s Operation Desert Storm, was a huge source of concern for Telluride officials early in the season, when Sept. 11 travel worries caused reservations at ski resorts statewide to drop by more than 20 percent. But excellent early season conditions have buried most of those concerns under a blanket of snow.
Telluride had its busiest day ever Dec. 29, with more than 6,000 skiers and snowboarders plying the powder. “It seems like America just wanted to go skiing and celebrate, and they got on the planes just before Christmas and we’re incredibly fortunate,” COO Stevens said of the surprising support from destination skiers. “Telluride’s a long way from anywhere, but the journey is worth it.”
The 129-passenger MD80 American flights out of O’Hare run daily through March 31. The flights land in Montrose, which offers rental cars and shuttle service to cover the 65 miles to Telluride, but there are also frequent daily flights on smaller planes from Denver and Phoenix into the Telluride airport, the highest commercial facility in the country.
Once in town, there are 69 shops and galleries to peruse, 50 bars, restaurants and cafes to relax in, and 5,059 beds in lodging properties ranging from four-star opulence to the most basic condo to collapse in after a tough day on the slopes.
And despite its fun and funky image, Telluride has learned to cater to some very upscale guests over the years. A surprisingly eclectic and sophisticated array of eateries will please the palate and reload the carbos for the next day on the slopes.
From the grandiose Allred’s, a 12,000-square-foot restaurant high atop the gondola at 10,550 feet, to the more intimate and urbane Cosmopolitan in the Hotel Columbia in town at the base of the gondola, haute cuisine is well represented. The diversity of dining options runs the gamut from the Asian delights of Honga’s Lotus Petal to La Marmotte, fine French fare in a rustic building that was once an icehouse in the mining days.
Lodging, too, is all over the map. From the historic New Sheridan on Main Street, with its 32 elegant and fully restored rooms dating to 1891, to the quaint, 16-room San Sophia Inn a block from the gondola, Telluride offers accommodations that bask in the town’s rich past. But the resort in recent years has added larger, more modern lodging options such as the new, 59-room Hotel Telluride at the west end of the historic district three blocks from the gondola and the 174-room Wyndham Peaks Resort and Golden Door Spa at the opposite end of the gondola in Mountain Village.
The gondola itself is one of Telluride’s greatest amenities. Billed as free public transportation, it whisks passengers from town, up and over the mountain and back down into the gated community of Mountain Village, an incorporated town of 1,000 with its own restaurants, shops and nightspots.
Telluride, though, with its year-round population of 2,200 and famed summer music and film festivals, is the cultural heart of the community and also offers the liveliest nightlife. Apres skiing watering holes like Swede Finn Hall, Leimgruber’s, the Wildflour and the last Dollar Saloon pack people in after the lifts stop running. The intimate new martini spot, Blue Point’s Noir Bar, has added a more discriminating option for couples looking for a less raucous scene. And then there’s the Fly Me to the Moon Saloon for late-night live music.
After last call, virtually every bed in town is within short walking distance or just a quick trip away on the gondola. It may be a bit of trek to get to Telluride, but once in town there are few ski resorts in the world that offer the same ease of access.
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
Through March 31, American Airlines has daily non-stop service from Chicago O’Hare to Montrose, 65 miles from Telluride. Flights leave Chicago at 8:45 a.m. and arrive in Montrose at 10:46 a.m.
On the return, the flight departs at 11:50 a.m. and arrives at 3:43 p.m. Call 800-433-7300.
GETTING AROUND
The following shuttle and limo services are available between Montrose and Telluride:
Telluride Express van service is $32 per person one way between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. ($50 per person one way at other times). Call 970-728-6000.
Mountain Limo also has shuttle service for $32 per person one way between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. ($50 per person one way at other times). It also offers Chevy Suburbans, which seat up to seven passengers and include TVs, VCRs and Playstations, for $175 one way for the entire vehicle. Call 970-728-9606.
Alpine Luxury Limo offers private Chevy Suburban service with TVs, VCRs and Playstations that seat up to seven people for $175 one way for the entire vehicle. Call 877-728-8750.
The following rental car agencies are available at the Montrose airport:
Budget, 970-249-6083; Thrifty, 800-847-4389; National, 800-CAR-RENT; and Dollar, 800-800-4000.
INFORMATION
For lodging recommendations call Telluride Central Reservations at 866-287-5016, and for general information, log onto www.telluride-ski.com.
— D.O.W.
