Sports Writer
TELLURIDE -- You can learn a lot at Telluride Ski Resort by listening to a local. The friendly shredders will discuss where the snow’s good, where the mountain needs a little more cover and the next time it’s expected to snow. All you have to do is strike up a conversation when they decide to share a chair up the mountain with you.
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Other times, you might forget the person next to you was a stranger before you happened to sit down on the same chair together.
After a storm dropped 31 inches on the mountain last week, the locals had plenty of stories to tell about the mountain.
Telluride, on the western edge of the San Juan Mountain Range, averages more than 300 inches of snowfall per year and if you want a challenge, they’re easy to find at the ski area.
If you’re just starting to get the feeling for shredding or you want to learn, the diversity of Telluride’s 1,700 acres has something for everyone’s ability.
Out of the mountain’s 1,700 acres, 24 percent is rated as beginner terrain, 38 percent is rated as intermediate terrain and the other 38 percent is black, double-black or extreme terrain.
On lift 9, the Plunge, 2,000 vertical feet of moguls is the challenge. That’s a good place to find a local.
On lift 6, Apex, the challenge is black and double-black gladed trees. Local knowledge says be careful there until the base gets a little deeper than its current 37 inches. The first couple days after this last storm, a run or two was all you needed to realize the snow was a little hollow; if you made a hard turn, you might have hit a log buried just below the surface. The snow over there has since firmed up and many hidden obstacles have already been exposed.
After the last storm, however, it would be hard to find a Telluride local who wasn’t happy with the mountain’s conditions.
Even a man who hit a rock and put a core shot in his snowboard was in a good mood. “Gold Hill looks so tempting,” he said and then gritted his teeth. Then he smiled and laughed, acknowledging that early season isn’t quite over yet.
On Gold Hill, lift 14, the challenge is extreme terrain. The steep terrain features cliffs and a couloir for you to push your limits.
Looking up at the Gold Hill and Prospect Bowl, many of the gnarly-looking cliff faces you’d see are out of bounds. Unlike Crested Butte Mountain Resort, one turn over the next ridge in Telluride’s extremes won’t pop you out on top of a huge cliff you might have to jump off. But then again, in extreme terrain, cliffs are par for any course.
If you’re just learning how to ride down a mountain, Telluride has a few lifts that exclusively serve green and blue runs.
On lift 10, Sunshine, you can cruise greens down through some of Mountain Village’s neighborhoods and admire the architecture.
Lift 5, Palmyra, exclusively serves blue, intermediate, runs.
At Mountain Village’s base area, lift 4, Village, mostly serves beginner and intermediate runs too. Telluride’s crew was busy blowing snow there and forming the man-made whale backs into park features this last week.
If you go to Telluride and don’t know where to ride, consult the trail map. Or, you can ask a local for some advice. If it hasn’t snowed in a few days, however, don’t expect anyone to tell you where to find a powder stash. Nobody, not even Telluride’s locals, are that nice.
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