THE REAL WILD WEST - JUST ASK HOLLYWOOD

Alf Alderson discovers the real wild west in Telluride, Colorado

Telluride Colorado

Driving down Telluride’s wide main strip, otherwise known as Colorado Avenue, is quite an experience; authentic western-style hotels, bars and restaurants line the street, the snow draped ridges and peaks of the San Juan Mountains line the horizon and the steep ski runs of the town’s high altitude ski resort snake down to the edge of town – throw in a Hollywood star lounging about on the corner of Colorado and Aspen and it all becomes slightly surreal.
“Look, look, it’s Samuel L. Jackson!” I cry to my buddy Tom.
“Nah, it can’t be…”
“You didn’t see, you’re driving…let’s turn back and check”.
After all, it’s not every day you’re in the Wild West and you spot one of your favourite movie stars.
Not that movie stars are anything new to Telluride with its famed annual film festival, but this was a bit different because the reason for Samuel L. Jackson’s presence in Colorado’s wildest ski resort was that when Tom and I were visiting Jackson, along with the likes of Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Roth was shooting Quentin Tarantino’s last movie ‘The Hateful Eight’ in the mountains and forests surrounding Telluride.
The Hateful Eight is, of course, another no-holds-barred Tarantino western, complete with classic soundtrack, gratuitous violence and larger than life characters; it’s set on a high mountain pass in a blizzard – hence, no doubt, the choice of Telluride as the location, since with an average annual snowfall of almost 26-feet a wintry atmosphere ain’t hard to find hereabouts.
So, a quick ‘U’-turn (easy on Telluride’s wide streets) and we’re off hunting for movie stars. Needless to say Mr. Jackson – if it was indeed him – has gone to wherever movie stars go early of a midweek morning in March, but no matter, we’re here to ski, not gawp at movie millionaires.
And what skiing it is. Tom and I have arrived in Telluride on the tail end of a storm that’s deposited over a metre of snow on the surrounding mountains, and now the sun is beginning to glimmer through scudding clouds and the dusty fresh snow that is one of the resort’s two trade-marks awaits our attention.
The other Telluride trade-mark is scary steep terrain. So steep that you have to access it by a steel bridge…
The resort’s now infamous ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is a combination of steel staircases and a bridge that allows access to Gold Hill Chutes 9 and 10 for skiers who like their riding to encompass a touch of sheer terror .
Installed in 2010, you’d think most people would have been happy with chutes 1 – 8 which are all vertiginous, double-black diamond terrain; but no, Telluride decided to play upon its reputation for scaring the living daylights out of its guests by bridging the chasm between chutes 8 and 9 with said bridge, so there are now two more virtually vertical chutes on which to test yourself.
Gold Hill Chutes sit below the resort’s high point, 4060-metre Palmyra Peak, in the heart of Rocky Mountain scenery that will take your breath away in every sense of the word. Even crossing the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ leaves you breathless, since you’re at an altitude that converts to around 13,000-feet in old money.
And with the recent heavy snowfall it’s going to be a challenge getting down the Gold Hill Chutes in one piece; so I’m not too ashamed to say that it comes as something of a relief to find that the danger of avalanches has resulted in Telluride Ski Patrol closing the chutes for the day.
Phew…
Tom is more disappointed than me since I actually skied the chutes the year before ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was installed, so I have some idea of how exciting/formidable they can be, but in a resort the size of Telluride there are still plenty of options left to us.
We head to the Gold Hill Express Chair and spend the morning doing laps down the double-black diamond runs that snake in between the trees, with the occasional foray into Revelation Bowl for some easier, more wide open skiing.
The snow glitters like miniature Swarovski crystals in the sunshine, both from occasional snow showers and from the powder puffs left hanging on the air by the passage of our skis; other skiers are few in number and this is surely Colorado at its best, where the hype that is such a part of American skiing is actually surpassed.
The scenery does its best to compete with the skiing in an effort to impress. Telluride sits in a big, bold and rugged Rocky Mountain landscape similar to that of the Alps; where many Rocky Mountain resorts lie beneath the tree line so that forests are a prime feature of the scenery, Telluride has the altitude to ensure that its higher peaks stand proud of the trees.
There’s a feeling of true wilderness as you look out across the San Juan Mountains, and in this sense it’s very different from the Alps – there are no neighbouring ski resorts and associated infrastructure, no mountain villages, alpages or roads to be seen – were you to venture off into the backcountry you’d be seeing the Wild West much as it appears in ‘The Hateful Eight’, which is set around 150 years ago.
The fact that the higher slopes lie above the tree line has its advantages if, like me, your tree skiing tends to be more of an accident avoidance exercise than a graceful dance between the firs, since you can find plenty of open bowls in which to lay down wide, easy turns – or you can simply head to the wide array of exciting pisted terrain above town.
This is where Tom and I find ourselves in the afternoon after a superb lunch at Alpino Vino, the highest restaurant in America, where the cuisine is inspired by that of the Dolomites (which is perhaps no bad thing in the land of burgers and fries).
We’re standing atop a range of surprisingly steep blue and black runs (there are no reds in the USA) ready for the thrilling thousand-metre descent down into town on a black named Bushwhacker.
Bushwhacker and it’s neighbouring pistes are sufficiently free of other skiers for us to be able blast full pelt all the way into Telluride over and over again until the altitude finally gets to us as we decide to call it a day.
We want to save a bit of energy for exploring downtown after dark, when we discover an enticing range of bars and restaurants where the Wild West theme is very prevalent – but in a civilised way. Despite Tom’s wish to see someone hurled through a bar window, or a quick shoot-up in the middle of town, the nearest we get to a free-for-all is a spot of minor confusion over the drinks order in Smuggler’s Brewpub on Pine Street.
With a the civility and refinement that Telluride emanates these days it’s strange indeed to think that little more than a hundred years ago Butch Cassidy was high tailin’ it out of town with $21,000 (around $500,000 in today’s money) in his saddle bags after holding up the San Miguel Valley Bank on Colorado Avenue.
This rootin’ tootin’ Wild West past is much a part of what makes Telluride so special, and Tom and I come to the opinion that that the unconstrained behaviour that was part and parcel of the former mining town hasn’t been lost so much as just migrated up into the mountains where, on your skis or snowboard, you can push it as hard as you want.
If Butch had skied instead of robbed banks he’d have loved it…

TRAVEL INFO

Package deals to Telluride are available with Ski Safari (www.skisafari.com) and Ski American Classics (www.americanskiclassics.com)

More info – www.TellurideSkiResort.com