Telluride has always held a certain mystique for me. Growing up we watched ski and snowboard videos every year in the months before the snow fell, while dreaming of the winter to come.  I lived in a small town in British Columbia. The exotic names of the ski resorts we saw always got jumbled together, Vail, Squaw Valley, Chamonix, but one always stood out — Telluride.   

I don’t know why, but it seemed that Telluride held a special place in the hearts of the narrators on the television. It was always spoken of with a particular reverence. When I finally visited, I found out why.

Mountains surround the town on three sides. Without a serious four-wheel drive vehicle and intimate knowledge of the back roads, there is only one road in and one road out. The ski runs rub up against one side of the town so that any resident can walk to a ski lift in around fifteen minutes.

Telluride is a small town in a box canyon at the end of highway 145. It’s a town with an anti-establishment tradition that started when Butch Cassidy staged his first robbery at the San Miguel Valley Bank and continued when hippies flocked there in the sixties. At one point, there was a serious movement to ban cars. These days, when the moon is full and the snow is deep, locals gather at a cabin in the bottom of a valley north of the resort. They drink, play music, and then hike up the broad pristine slope. Telluride backwoods counterculture is like none other.

My trip to Telluride lived up to the legend. My days on the hill were filled with steeps and powder and our nights were spent in local halls dancing to funk with grizzly-bearded hiking booted locals.

On paper, Telluride is not as big as some other ski areas. It also doesn’t get as much snow. But acres and inches are not a measure of history, culture, and passion.

Telluride, no doubt, is one of the purest ski areas in the West.

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This is how it was: legendary.

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Telluride is a town named after a rare exotic metal that became a rare — and in it’s own way exotic — destination.

Telluride has been a mythical place for me ever since I heard about it in the ski movies that my family watched each year in the weeks leading up to opening day. Narrators always spoke about Telluride with deep reverence. It was a legend.

When I finally visited in 2013 the resort it lived up to my ideas about it as a young boy. Pretty much every house in Telluride is a ski-in ski-out if you’re willing to walk a few blocks in your boots. Tourism development has been kept largely separate from the old mining town itself, helping to maintain it’s old mountain town charm. The mountains are as epic as any I’ve seen.

When we visited we asked the locals how they felt about it. This is what they told us.

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