Words, Photos and Captions Ben Eng T elluride. It’s a remote and scenic former mining town, situated at the end of a deep box canyon in the north-ern part of the San Juan Mountains. A southwestern Colorado resort named after a mineral never actually found here. A town of 2,300 people that sits in a county that doesn’t have a single traffic light and voted 80 percent in favor of marijuana legalization in 2012, by far the highest margin in Colorado. It’s the location of Butch Cassidy’s first bank robbery and the first two AC power plants designed by Nikola Tesla for practical use. It’s also one of only a handful of places this side of Europe where the lifts and runs start and stop right in town. Plus, Oprah owns a house here. Indeed, it’s a town of contrasts, made up of the super-rich, backwoods rednecks and festival-going seasonal hippies, all tucked into a canyon at 8,750 feet. director at Telluride. Pete was rad—he was stabbed in the head once in front of a bar in Durango, and he ran a campaign based on making fun of Telluride’s rich tourists and second-home owners. He knew I was getting started as a photographer, so he gave me a season’s pass. Coincidentally, my friend Pablo had moved to Telluride in 2003, and my first day riding with him opened my eyes to what the place really had to offer. Pablo and his roommate Herb took me straight to the backcountry access gates. I always knew the area itself was pretty solid—a huge vertical drop with no shortage of long, steep runs—but I had no idea what was lurking on the other side of the ropes. It was like taking nearby Silverton Mountain and attaching it to the side of an already great ski area, but with easier access, easier egress back to the lifts, touring access, and no rules and no avalanche control (a factor in Silverton’s favor). It was a real eye-opener— a functioning town with decent nightlife where you could walk to the lifts and hot lap the ski area, or take a lift-assisted tour to the some of the monolithic couloirs and faces the San Juans are known for, then ride park and après all you want because you haven’t seen your car in a month. By 2011, after spending years driving the constant loop between Wolf Creek, Purgatory, Silverton, and Telluride, I decided that dying in the morning highway madness also known as the Powder 500 wasn’t worth it and moved to Telluride full time. When I first started riding in the early ’90s around Summit County, all I knew about Telluride was that Rocket Reaves grew up there. But for the younger, broker version of myself, it was a vague spot that was hard to access and expensive to visit. I finally got my first taste of the area when a coworker invited me on a road trip in ’96. At the time, I was looking for a four-year college transfer that was closer to a ski area than my hometown of Colorado Springs. Fort Lewis College in Durango fit the bill. It was a six-hour journey through the mountains to get there. I had never visited the southwest part of the state before, and was blown away by how much bigger, more rugged and beautiful the mountains were compared to Summit County and Vail. It was like being in a dif-ferent part of the country. On that first trip, I watched a monoskier named Turbo cause a shitstorm when he bundled up a baby doll so you couldn’t tell if it was real and dropped it from the lift, years before the Landspeed/CKY video. (The dude is a freak, and if you really want to see something totally melt-your-face-off bizarre, look up The Rad, The Bad, and The Mono on YouTube.) After settling into life in Durango, I was shredding Purgatory as often as possible between classes and work as it was only 30 minutes up the road. But once a season, I’d drive the two hours to Telluride. It wasn’t un-til 2003 that I got my break when my buddy Pete became the marketing 050 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
The Snowboarder's Journal frequency 14.1: Page 50
