No. 187 - Telluride: Wonder Bread in the San Juans

I’ve visited most American mountain towns – at least the ones with ski slopes and twenty-dollar bowls of chili.

I spent two college summers in Jackson Hole, ice climbed in Vail, and read poetry in Aspen’s Little Nell. I’ve toured Hemingway’s room in Sun Valley and was dealt a full house in a card game in Breckenridge. I enjoyed the views from the St. Regis in Deer Valley and wrote postcards from a park in neighboring Park City. I also battled altitude in Taos, camped in single-digit weather in Bozeman, and spent the better part of my childhood summers in Leavenworth, Washington – before Disney-like imagineers turned it into a Bavarian catastrophe.

But there was one city in southwest Colorado conspicuously missing – and that would be Telluride, of course.

Like Aspen, Telluride is hard to get to. Actually, it’s even harder than Aspen on account of being in the San Juan range. All the resorts along I-70 have the convenience of the Denver airport (DIA), but Telluride – far from it.

For reference:
DIA – Breckenridge: 104 miles
DIA – Vail: 120 miles
DIA – Telluride: 353 miles through treacherous winter mountain passes

Telluride is the equivalent of vacationing in Nantucket – you have to really want to be there and you have to put up with an unusual amount of travel that’s easily avoidable. Hence, it stayed on my bucket list decades after visiting the aforementioned towns.

But, alas, I made it – by way of Atlanta, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Galveston, Houston, Austin, and Santa Fe – a story for another day.

I’m going to be honest. Brutally honest. I might as well just go ahead and say it: I wasn’t impressed. OK, there it is, as I told a friend when stack ranking these ski towns, it’s akin to being picky about taking home Ms. February or Ms. August – both are 10s, but we have our preferences, as it were. So here goes.

First impression is what everyone’s first impression of Telluride is: overwhelming. It sits in the bottom of a massive valley of mountains – making it as picturesque as it gets. Pick any three-syllable adjective that comes to mind: majestic, beautiful, resplendent. Hell, let’s go with some four-syllables: magnificent, ethereal, effervescent. Dare I say … a fiver? Extraordinary. Yup … that’s it. Simply put, Telluride is extraordinary.

And keep in mind I haven’t stepped foot in the infamous gondola yet. This is just driving down Colorado Avenue – Telluride’s version of Main Street.

So you mosey on in to Telluride at 15 miles per hour, which, amazingly, everyone does – talk about slowing life down. Not that the town leaders got together in an expensive coffee shop and decided to enforce a snail’s pace speed limit in an effort to slow everyone’s nervous systems down, but it sure feels like it.

And lo and behold, the San Juan range engulfs you on three sides – like I said, there ain’t nothin’ like it.

As you pass century-old Victorian homes and into downtown, where every shop is charming, you become hyper-aware that you’re in Telluride.

Once you’ve parked, which is free (for now), you get to experience something that, if we’re being honest, only the wealthy get to – a perfectly curated mountain town designed for aspiring Black Card holders.

You see, as beautiful as Telluride is, it’s insanely exclusive. What may have once been a typical ski town full of dope-smoking bohemians is now a living J. Crew catalog – like a cargo ship’s worth of Wonder Bread spilled into its streets.

Everyone is thin, attractive, and walking manicured dogs. It’s not Aspen – I’m not saying that – but even Aspen still has a town drunk who reads poetry. Telluride seems to have pulled a year-round “Super Bowl.” What I mean is, when the Super Bowl comes to your city, the unwashed masses magically disappear. POOF! They’re gone overnight and no one knows where they went. Telluride must have hired the same company to deal with its “problem” because it’s shockingly obvious how spit-shined everything is.

And that’s what leads to my comment about being brutally honest. When a town removes the acid heads, poets, and drifters, it removes its soul. Telluride is lacking BIG TIME in the soul department. Per my comment about it being the capital of Wonder Bread (i.e., perfectly put-together Caucasians), every town needs characters – especially mountain towns.

That said, in the spirit of being transparent, I was once accused of being “shockingly Caucasian.” I play golf, wear loafers, and can’t stomach the idea of leaving the house without my shirt tucked in. I am Wonder Bread incarnate. So is my dad and my uncles. You should have seen the four of us at The Masters in ’08 – not that we were really distinguished from the other patrons, but we looked like Brylcreem and J. Press had a baby.

I just found the general atmosphere to be lacking. That said, I took the gondola ride six times and was in AWE the entire time. Having the only gondola for public transportation in the country is amazing. When I say I could ride it all day, I’m not kidding. Zipping up and down a gorgeous mountain range is as good as it gets for me.

But do you see what I’m getting at? Telluride has ALL the ingredients to be THE best ski town in America, but it’s missing the flour. You can’t have a genuine mountain culture without the hippies, freaks, and artists.

The big question is, would I go back? And to be honest, I don’t know. If the objective was only to ski – of course. Absolutely. Zero debate. But that’s not the only reason we go to these towns. If I wanted spit-shined Wonder Bread, there are easier places to get to. And I get that some folks want that (for the life of me I cannot understand why).

I like the grit in life. I like the dirt under our collective fingernails. I have zero interest in a manicured town. One visit a year to The Masters and its perfect version of everything fills that bucket. For the other fifty-one weeks I need authenticity. I need poetry that doesn’t rhyme. I need humans who are broken. I need lawn chairs on the front lawn, and cigarette butts on the sidewalk, and a patina that’s as brittle as the layers of paint below it.

Nothing is perfect – and the idea that anything can be presented as such is a lie. Telluride is far from perfect, but its imperfections are in the wrong place. Where there aren’t campgrounds, there are multi-million-dollar modern homes that are occupied seasonally. Why? Who does that serve? I understand economics, especially in these high-rent towns, but when you trade real people with interesting stories for the ultra-wealthy, you get a town that feels off.

I’m sure I’m coming across as judgmental, but that’s how I feel. My impressions of Telluride are mine alone; though after talking to buddies who’ve been there, the near-universal opinion is that I hit the bullseye – and what’s odd is I felt it the moment I first drove down Colorado Avenue.

A desire for perfection permeates the air – and it’s not appealing.

And I have no idea how to fix it. But maybe… just maybe, the city could start with something even Aspen has: a hostel – the St. Moritz – where rooms don’t come with a television and the showers are communal. Lord knows Aspen is Fifth Avenue in the Rockies, but even they have a place for normal folks to rest their head at night – and it’s downtown, not miles away.

And maybe build a campground that isn’t in a National Forest. A place where drifters can crash. Hell, you don’t even have to give them a bathhouse – let ’em funk it up with patchouli oil and grass – just give these characters a role in the play.

Telluride reminds me of a Broadway play without an antagonist. Too much Odysseus and not enough Poseidon. Maybe that’s it. There’s a lack of balance. Trust me, spend a weekend at the St. Moritz in Aspen and you’ll get your fill of everything that the St. Regis isn’t – and you’ll love it.

*Composed, Edited, and Published in Atlanta, GA