The high-altitude ski town with something for everyone
Snow adventures and luxury apres-ski await in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains.
The ski runs of Telluride follow a fairly self-explanatory naming convention. Mine Shaft is a double black diamond so steep it feels like you’ve just fallen down one. Enchanted Forest is a woozy blue that weaves its way between glades of towering evergreen trees. Boomerang loops gently back to where you started at Mountain Village. And See Forever? Well, take a guess.
I’m 3735m high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, at the top of the Gold Hill Express chairlift, and I can see 150km to the La Sal Mountains in Utah. To my left, skiers are peeling off and plunging into Revelation Bowl, which bottoms out above the craggy cliffs of Bear Creek Canyon.
Higher up the ridge, the most daring are making forays into the formidable Gold Hill Chutes. And in the distance, tiny figures are taking in some of the best hike-to terrain in North America, trudging to the top of Black Iron Bowl for a 300 vertical metre drop into pitches, chutes and couloirs.
The terrain sounds – and looks – extreme, and much of it is, accounting for Telluride’s allure for expert skiers. But what I didn’t realise until I got here is that more than half the terrain is beginner or intermediate, and every chairlift has either green or blue runs leading off it, so you’ll never get stuck at the top of the mountain. It’s literally the height of inclusivity.
Telluride Ski Resort celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, but the area has a human history stretching back 10,000 years. The original inhabitants, the Nuchu people, knew the San Juan Mountains as the “Shining Mountains”. By the 1870s, those mountains were aglow with silver and gold as a mining boom took hold. When the silver price crashed in 1893, the town entered a prolonged fizzling-out period, and by the middle of last century had fewer than 500 residents. Its revival began in the late 1960s when Los Angeles businessman Joe Zoline – buoyed by the success of Aspen – bought land and started cutting ski trails, opening the resort in December 1972.
Tucked in the southwest corner of the state, six hours’ drive from any major city, the resort has a way of eluding the masses. For Australians, though, it’s supremely accessible, via direct flights from Los Angeles to Montrose, linked by a 90-minute airport shuttle service, or from Denver to Telluride Regional Airport, just minutes from the mountain – and the country’s highest commercial airport.
However you arrive, Telluride astounds at first sight. You could not dream up a more dramatic location for a ski town, jammed up the end of a box canyon (a kind of geological cul-de-sac), encircled by sheer, red rock cliffs. Pastel coloured Victorian-era homes with gables and bay windows are scattered around a main street straight out of an American Western set, lined with brick buildings and cast iron facades.
The modern, European-styled Mountain Village sits 300m higher, and does the heavy lifting for accommodation and ski resort infrastructure, leaving the historic town full of authentic charm, free of the gaudier trappings of ski culture. A free gondola whisks you between the two in 12 minutes. It’s an inspired arrangement.
Where Aspen has Prada and Gucci boutiques, Telluride has classic American sandwich bars with vinyl swivel stools, where you can sidle up to a stranger and strike up a conversation. I get chatting to a bloke who’s been here since 1995, and ask him how he ended up in Telluride. He shrugs: “I just rolled up the canyon and never left.”
But don’t let the lack of pretension fool you. This is a high-end destination resort with world-class ski facilities, hotels and restaurants. My skiing companions and I are staying in a five-bedroom penthouse at Lumiere with Inspirato. The ski-in/ski-out property has 18 lavish residences, wrapped in a mountain rustic palette of natural tones, each exquisitely furnished with the highest quality timber, stone and leather.
Cocooned from the typical cacophony of a standard hotel, the vibe is quiet and personal, with the smell of freshly baked biscuits filling the lobby and wafting out into the fire-lit bar. We soak up sunset from our private outdoor hot tub, and cook breakfast in our immaculate chef’s kitchen. Each morning the ski concierge has our boots heated and skis waiting on the white stuff. When the ski day is done it feels like we’re coming home, rather than going back to a room.
If you crave more of a buzz, the recently overhauled Madeline Hotel – part of the Auberge Resorts collection – is awash with alpine vibrancy, inside and out. Apres ski hour is signalled every afternoon by the strangely mournful blowing of a Swiss alphorn by Stetson-hatted general manager Bryan Woody.
Punters heeding the Pied Piper’s call are welcomed with a glass of Champagne in one hand and a sheepskin blanket in the other. Highlights from the locally inspired menu include haute “devilish” eggs, topped with shaved black truffle and caviar, and a shared plate of Rocky Mountain elk loin so tender we talk about it for days.
Down in town, the New Sheridan Hotel – where in 1889 Butch Cassidy hid in plain sight from the police at the bar after robbing his first bank – has recently opened its fine-dining Chop House, where you can tuck into bison rib eye prepared by French-trained chefs. Seeking post-dinner fun, we poke our heads into packed bars, cowboy hats floating on a heaving sea of revellers. The atmosphere is as warm as the night is cold; just don’t miss the last gondola ride home at 2am (there are no taxis in Telluride, and the walk back to Mountain Village would probably be your last).
Bluebird days and perfect snow ensure heavenly skiing. Prospect Bowl becomes a favourite for its slick descents into wide open glades, and we’re among the first to ride the new high-speed Plunge Express, a quad chairlift that services the steep, north-facing bump runs and replaces the much-loved but ageing Lift Nine, cutting the ride time in half and increasing uphill capacity by 70 per cent.
After honing our turns on the all-comers slalom course (no world records set, alas), we ditch our skis outside Bon Vivant, a French country-style lunch institution. Pink sunglasses are dispensed on entry to the deck, DJs spin tunes, and suited waiters wielding shimmering sabres knock the corks off bottles of Champagne. If Telluride has a place to be seen, it’s here. The bistro takes no bookings, so to secure a table arrive at 11am and put your name down.
For a truly elevated on-mountain dining experience though, you literally can’t top Alpino Vino. At 3647m, it’s North America’s highest fine-dining restaurant, set inside a tiny stone cabin perched over an abyss (being Telluride, you can, of course, ski the abyss). Dinner guests arrive by snowcat, which chugs up the mountain at the pitch (if not the speed) normally associated with a plane on takeoff. It’s terrific fun.
Telluride tales are shared over Northern Italian plates of butter-poached lobster tail and wagyu tenderloin braciole, the latter exquisitely paired with 2011 Luigi Oddero Piedmont nebbiolo.
The wood fire crackles, the smell of cooking fills the cabin, and out the window the falling snow sparkles silver in the moonlight, settling softly on the Shining Mountains.
In the know
Travelplan has a variety of Telluride ski packages including discounted accommodation, lift tickets and airfares. Lumiere with Inspirato one-bedroom residences from $US1500 ($2235) a night; five-bedroom penthouse from US$7000. Telluride’s ski season runs from late November to early April.
Ricky French was a guest of Travelplan and Colorado Ski Country.
