Telluride weekend

Contributed by tom. January 2005.

See the thumbnails of all pictures.

Telluride -- I've been there only once, during the summer, and have been wanting to get out there and ski... as luck would have it, my friend Diana is working there at the Adaptive Ski program, and invited us to come visit. In this case "us" means Lisa, me, Brian (who was visiting from Mexico), and Chris. We packed into the truck on a Friday night and headed out there, with skis, carving boards, softy snowboards, and the rat dogs. Laika stayed with a friend in Salida.

With a dinner stop in Montrose (excellent Chinese buffet with lots of crab and shrimp), we got a bit delayed but made it to Diana's home in Ophir around 10pm. Roads were OK, although with a dusting of snow on them I drove somewhat slower.

Day 1

The first day we all snowboarded -- skis stayed in the truck. Lisa and I were on carving boards, and Trevor, Chris, and Brian were on softies... Trevor, Diana's boyfriend, took us around the mountain -- and he was a most excellent guide. We hit almost all the lifts, and looking at the map later we realized that he introduced us to almost all parts of the resort, with the exception of Golden Hill. My favourite were some of the bumps off Lift 5 and the (small) powder runs in Prospect Bowl. Diana met us for a few hours in the afternoon.

The group

Lisa overlooking the town of Telluride

Lee, another hardbooter we saw at Lift 4, told us about Plunge, a front face double-black diamond run that's often groomed and that's amazing for carving. Turned out it wasn't groomed that day, so we just ran the bumps -- I'm still learning how to run them on a carving board, but having fun regardless.

View

Area bounds

We also hit some terrain parks -- I only went to the small one near Ute Trail, but the rest of the group hit the big ones by Lift 4, and caught some big air!

Chris catching air on his tele's

Brian in his new shades

Chris and Trevor

At night we ran back to Ophir to let the rat dogs out, we changed clothes, and drove back to Telluride (just about 10 miles) to meet with Diana and Trevor for dinner. We caught up with them in the Mountain Village, and hopped on the gondola to go over the mountain tops and into town. Some unexpected issue caught us a few hundred yards from the mid-station, and we spent about an hour hanging in the dark!

Chris, Brian, Trevor

Tom, Lisa on his lap, and Chris

Day 2

We got to the resort a bit after opening time, and used different gear. Lisa and Chris took their telemark skis, I opted for the all-mountain Donek freecarving board, and only Brian remained with his softie. While adjusting the blanket over the truck contents a ski pole snapped out of my hand and just shattered the truck window! It was cold outside... but not *that* cold!

The shattered truck window

...but... it was a beautiful day, so things were OK.

panorama.jpg

SNOCYCLES

Diana was very stoked on the idea of spending an afternoon riding SnoCycles, which are bicycle-like frames with shocks, with skis instead of wheels. They're made by K2 Gravity Tools. At first we were a bit suspicious of them, they look so silly, but they turned out to be a HOOT! They are really fast, they carve nicely, and we even ended up hitting some black diamond runs on them.

Chris on his "hawg"

Diana

Our group

The SnoCycles carve really well -- so I didn't want to do anything else! On a big wide slope I tried doing cross-unders with my skis on top of the front ski -- using the cycle like a mono-ski. It worked well for about half dozen turns, then I was probably going too fast and ate it!

Tom's crash

Chris

After a few runs Diana took us on a double black diamond run called "Runaway Train!" It was a narrow and steep mogul run -- took us a while to get down it, but it did turn out fun after all :)

Brian and Tom heading to "Runaway Train"

Tom

Diana and Trevor -- thanks for having us over and being such excellent hosts!