Telluride seems to be questioning the economics of catering to "extreme skiers" and would like to push the mountain to be more appealing to"intermediate skiers" (aka where the $$ is in skiing).
while this may be possible for resorts like vail or breck it just does not work here due to the terrain. the san juan mtns are in general steeper/provide more extreme terrain than its i70 counterparts.
the owner of the mountain Chuck Horning fired or rather moved the former CEO Dave Riley to a bs position within the parent company so he (the owner) could have more influence on the day to day operations of the mountain. Rileys accomplishments during the past few seasons included the "opening of Black Iron Bowl, expanding access to Palmyra Peak, the Gold Hill Chutes and the opening of Revelation Bowl, serviced by the new Revelation Lift."
now heres where im starting to get mad as i write this...
the owner of the mtn was not happy with this expansion of extreme terrain and basically decided to take over. the owner brings up these utterly BULLSHIT questions "What’s the value of Telluride’s hike-to extreme terrain, considering how much it costs to open it? Why does Telluride Ski and
golf Company’ s marketing focus on promoting extreme terrain, since most skiers are intermediates? Why do we need to host the World Cup? Is it necessary to run all of our lifts all the time?"
whats that mean? this season today december 26th, all that is open is EVERY FUCKING INTERMEDIATE trial with 0 of the black or harder runs currently open . while yes the snow hasnt been the best, never in my ~18 years of skiing at this mtn have i seen them open the terrain in this order.
/rant. fuck me if nobody reads this.
tldr/sparknotes:
the owner of telluride is a huge fucktard and is focusing on drawing intermediate skiers and as a result, believes major "funding" should be cut from the expansion and opening of hike to/more extreme terrain.
