MONTROSE - The proverbial lap of luxury now has a name on the Western Slope, and that name is Elk Mountain Resort.
Elk Mountain Resort covers 275 acres carved out of the aspens, evergreens and high country soil on the Uncompahgre Plateau, and it's scheduled to open in late April or early May. The resort is located about 20 minutes away from Montrose and 40 minutes from Telluride on Dave Wood Road.
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The resort has taken six years to build, and Keith Luttrell, the resort's director of operations, said the price tag is conservatively $28 million.
"It's luxury amidst the wilderness," said General Manager Jean-Luc Maumus. "In Europe, people take longer vacations. Here they are shorter, but they want to have an unforgettable or unique experience.
"In Telluride they have downhill skiing and a little bit of cross-country skiing. Here you are more in contact with nature and you can ski out from your cottage onto a cross-country trail in the national forest. It's more private and quiet here. If they (customers) want to be around people they can go to the bar or we can take them to Telluride."
There will be 46 buildings when Elk Mountain is completed, and the trees shield most of them from each other. In addition to families and couples, Maumus said, the resort will cater to businesses for corporate retreats or sales incentive meetings in the 26,000-square-foot main lodge, which is designed to look like a 19th-century hunting lodge.
The lodge has wireless Internet access on its two floors, an 80-seat restaurant featuring Pyrenees Alpine cuisine - Richard Chamberlain, the former executive chef at Little Nell's in Aspen, is on board as the culinary director - a 160 seat outdoor dining deck, and a separate 27-seat cigar bar, among other amenities.
Guests can phone in ahead of time to reserve their own private humidors, or select wine from a nearby wine seller that looks like a mineshaft.
The upper story of the lodge has barn wood paneling while the main fireplace on the first floor is open on four sides, allowing guests on the deck to cozy up to a roaring fire while they look out over a lake.
Elk Mountain Resort is not your typical, high-end luxury resort. The lodge is privately owned by Michael and Thomas Forman, a father and son team.
"He (Thomas) lives in Telluride and he flew all over the country to find a place like this," Maumus said, as he wheeled visitors around the snow-packed roads in a Lincoln Navigator. "This is for the clientele who want something different from the regular hotel experience."
The resort has the 16,000-square-foot Valhalla Shooting Club, with $52,000 lifetime memberships, which has outdoor clay shooting and an indoor pistol range, along with a training center. Other outdoor activities include an outdoor climbing wall, horseback riding, fly fishing, snowmobiling in the 10-acre snowmobile park, tennis, all-terrain vehicles and ice-skating on the lake.
Maumus said Blackberry Farms in Tennessee is similar to Elk Mountain Resort, but the latter is on a grander scale and more remote. The resort is located in Ouray County, and Dave Wood Road isn't paved all of the way up to Elk Mountain. The logistics of building such a high-end resort facility were daunting.
"The electricity comes in from just outside of Ridgway through a 14-mile underground trench, except for one small stretch where it goes overhead," Luttrell said. "We had to get easements from private property owners all the way here. The TV comes in by satellite and we have a temporary microwave tower for landline phones. We'll eventually run fiber optics for Internet access through the 14-mile conduit."
Luttrell said 90 percent of the construction crews and materials were local, with material such as granite and slate being imported nationally and abroad.
"We use virtually every lumber yard in town, and we go with whoever has what we need at the time," Luttrell said. "We've really kept competition alive within the local community."
Maumus, who moved from New Orleans to Montrose with his family in December, said the construction crews use to two ground thawing machines in order to dig trenches in the frozen ground.
The restaurant and bar of Elk Mountain Resort are open to the public, but anyone coming into the resort needs to check in with an armed security guard at the front gate.
Maumus said there will be a grand opening at the resort in July, which is hard to imagine as he walks by large snowdrifts on semi-melted sections of road. He is optimistic that when the resort is completed the travelers will come.
"We've had a few calls about this summer," he said. "One company called about coming here for five days to have a sales incentive meeting. Hopefully, every year will be busier because this area is such a destination. It will become more popular as people here about it. It's wilderness with comfort."
When the guests arrive at Elk Mountain Resort they'll find soft booties hanging in the foyers of the cottages, down pillows, goose down comforters, 450-thread count linens and large soaking tubs to help ease them into the lap of luxury.
Contact Mike Robuck via e-mail at miker@montrosepress.com.
Kaitlyn Heichel wrote on Nov 3, 2009 2:01 PM:
Sarah Bond wrote on Jul 13, 2009 5:31 PM: