10 minute read
70 Is the New 30
Telluride’s older generation is crushing it
BY ERIN SPILLANE
Dorian Gray had his portrait and Benjamin Button his clock. For Ponce de Leon,
it was a mythical spring in Florida, while Don Ameche, Wilfred Brimley and Jessica Tandy had the swimming pool in Cocoon.
Telluride’s older generation? They have their own fountain of youth, this corner of the San Juan Mountains with its spectacular, vertiginous surroundings. The area’s backcountry makes it the perfect match for an adventurous community that values intense outdoor activity and athleticism to a degree unusual in other places. And, seemingly, those values don’t diminish with age.
THEY DO WHAT?
So, what exactly does older Telluride get up to?
Unsurprisingly, skiing in the winter and hiking and biking in the summer form the backbone of this cohort’s adventure mix.
Take Erik Fallenius. A Realtor who has lived in Telluride for 43 years, the 67-year-old celebrated turning 60 with an Ironman triathlon (his fourth) and is planning another to celebrate his 70th birthday. He also regularly takes his bike on a lap of the San Juan Skyway, a 220-plus-mile loop that includes multiple high-altitude passes like Red Mountain at 11,018 feet. Fallenius notes that he typically stays the night in Durango, the midway point, adding drily, “I call it the almost death ride because we do it in two days instead of one.”
Jane Watenpaugh, 72, has lived in Telluride for 48 years. A former Nordic ski instructor and member of the Telluride Ski Patrol, she and her husband owned and ran Sunshine Pharmacy for 40 years. Since retiring, Watenpaugh seems not to have slowed down. In summers, she hikes daily and twice a week does “something longer”, like the Sneffels Highline, a 13-mile hike with an elevation gain of about 2,300 feet and a summit of 12,000 feet above sea level.
This past winter, Watenpaugh racked up 75 days on the Telluride Ski Resort, mentioning casually, “I didn’t do the peak this year, but I did do lots of Quails and Baldys.” So, while this grandmother of three may not have hiked to ski Palmyra Peak, which tops out the ski resort at 13,150 feet above sea level, she was regularly hiking the ridgeline of Black Iron Bowl (12,250 feet) and dropping into the extreme terrain there, like Mountain Quail, as well as nearby Bald Mountain.
She adds, “I am addicted to my Fitbit. I pretty much can’t go to bed without my minimum 10,000 steps, 5 miles and 10 floors. It’s just a kind of gauge that tells me if I sat around too much that day.”
A recently retired bookkeeper and one of the first female ski instructors at the Telluride Ski Resort, Katie Jewett has lived in Telluride since 1973. In the winter, she is part of a group of long-time locals in their 60s, 70s and 80s who ski together every Friday. The “Skeezers” (as their kids affectionately call them) can usually be seen ripping it up on the Gold Hill chutes and other notoriously gnarly spots on the mountain.
In the summers, Jewett plays tennis daily, hikes some afternoons and golfs on the weekend — an itinerary that might exhaust someone half Jewett’s age in any other community. “We just don’t see it that way here,” she says, laughing.
‘DON’T LET THE OLD MAN IN’
Talk to this group and repeatedly they will tell you that their active lifestyles are “part of who we are” and “it’s just what we do”.
Retired teacher Vicki Eidsmo, also a member of the Skeezers, was born and raised in Telluride, the granddaughter of immigrants who arrived in the area in the early 1900s. Eidsmo recalls growing up in the waning years of the area’s role as a mining hub. “As kids, we didn’t hike, we just played out in the mountains. We didn’t think about it as special or different. I think it’s been a way of life for me for so long — the outdoor activity — that I don’t really ever think ‘oh wow, I’m amazing’. It’s just a way of life for me.”
Page 22, Erik Fallenius. Page 23, (l-r) longtime locals Marilyn Siegel, Marcia Millar, Peggy Schmeltz and Sally Whitehead pause mid-hike for a photo by Vicki Eidsmo. Opposite page, front row (l-r): Franny Cohn, Joni Knowles, back row (l-r) Chris Newman, Wendell Thompson, Carol Hyatt, Jane Watenpaugh. Below, Erik Fallenius; right, Katie Jewett; far right, Tom ‘Socko’ Sokolowski. Courtesy photos
Katie Jewett
Fallenius echoes Eidsmo — “It’s just a part of who I am,” he says. — and cites an interview with Clint Eastwood: “The interviewer asked him ‘What keeps you going?’ and Eastwood replied: ‘I get up every day and I don’t let the old man in.’ That really resonated with me. So much of getting older has to do with our spirit. If you have a young spirit, if you don’t ‘let the old man in’, you’re just going to do much better for a longer period of time and your quality of life will be so much better.”
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
Then there’s the social aspect.
For Eidsmo, hiking means time with friends: “I think one of the really important aspects of why we do what we do is that it is how we socialize. It’s how we see each other. We don’t sit down in a coffee shop and have coffee, instead we go for a walk or a hike to connect.”
She adds, “We all grew up here, whether we were born here or came here when we were in our 20s, and we all share that love of being outdoors and exploring. There’s the activity and the scenery, but the socializing is so important.”
And, time spent outdoors now has a particular poignancy, and purpose, for Eidsmo whose husband, Ivar, passed away in spring 2020. In a town of exceptional athletes, Ivar stood out, even >>
Top, John Mansfield; above, Tori, Vicki, Ivar and Lisa Eidsmo. Opposite page, (l-r) Patrice DePagter, Tami Huntsman, Susie St. Onge, Sue Lincoln, Marilyn Siegel, Carlotta Horn on a hike with Eidsmo. Courtesy photos into his 70s, as an extreme athlete and passionate steward of the outdoors. His passing left Vicki, their two daughters and the wider community grieving deeply. She agrees that time spent in the backcountry that her husband loved so much has been a balm.
Watenpaugh, too, emphasized that time with friends is as important as the workout. “The social aspect of these activities is just as important to me as the physical rewards. I am so fortunate to have a group of really great girlfriends who are just as fit as I am, or more so, who keep me motivated. They act as my champions, my critics, my competition, my life coaches, my spiritual advisers. The outdoors is my church ... all conditions, all terrain. It invigorates me, it humbles me, it makes me a better person.”
WORK AND WORKING OUT
Sometimes it’s their professions that either motivate or enable these Telluriders to stay uber fit. With nearly 50 years on the mountain, Tom “Socko” Sokolowski is the longest-serving seasonal employee at the ski resort. He started in 1972 doing trail work before joining the Telluride Ski Patrol the following year, where he still works today.
Sokolowski agrees that maintaining a high degree of fitness has played an important role in his long tenure as a patroller and describes a routine that involves Pilates and, in the summer, daily uphill hikes and bike rides. “I usually get in about 500-600 miles on my bike in a summer. When you compare that to other people here who really ride, it’s probably not much. I know a guy who rides about 8,000 miles each summer. But, when you compare it to other 75-year-olds in other places, it’s probably a good amount.”
For Jewett, it was her work for a local tour company that led to new avenues for outdoor adventure. “I didn’t get paid, but I did get a free trip every year. That started in 1998 and I have taken a trip a year.” Jewett’s friends (and soon their spouses) began joining her on these multi-day, high-alpine treks on well-known and challenging routes across Europe, including the Tour du Mont Blanc and the Italian Highline, strenuous, high-adrenaline adventures that only wound down when Jewett retired last year.
The area’s older set also mixes this culture of athleticism with their extracurricular lives. Fallenius, for example, has a long history of advocating for local youth, serving as a founding board member and past president of kid-centric nonprofits the Telluride Academy, One to One Mentoring and Just For Kids. He and his wife founded the 100mile Mountains to Desert Ride, that nowadays is Just For Kids’ primary annual fundraiser.
Says Fallenius of the popular ride: “Josephine and I decided that a cycling event was the right way to go because of my passion for cycling. It’s been fun to start something and then step away and see it thrive.”
SLOWING DOWN (A LITTLE)
It turns out that these super humans are not, in fact, entirely superhuman, with all acknowledging getting a little slower with age and citing some combination of yoga, Pilates, stretching, weights and calisthenics to maintain the level of fitness needed for their endeavors.
John Mansfield
Vicki Eidsmo
Says ski patroller Sokolowski: “You do have to learn how to pace yourself. On a powder day, you may want to go out and kill it, but you have to slow down. Sometimes I remember that I still have six hours to go on my shift and I take it a little easier.”
John Mansfield, 77, is a 50-year local who spent his career working in juvenile diversion and co-founded One to One Mentoring. John is passionate about supporting San Miguel County’s youth. He’s also passionate about mountain biking, taking to his bike almost daily. Mansfield says that he has switched to an e-bike to make exploring the dirt roads and tracks on Wright’s Mesa near his Norwood home just a little easier. “The e-bikes allow us to not just keep riding, but to have fun riding. And it means we can still go to all the places we used to go.”
Katie Jewett wryly notes that many of her peers are crushing it on local trails, tennis courts and golf courses courtesy of joint replacements. “A lot of my friends have new hips or knees or shoulders. There’s a whole bunch and I think one of the reasons why many of us are still active is because of these surgeries.”
THE BEST ‘GYM’
Unanimously, this group credits their active lifestyles in part to having a pretty engaging backyard. Mansfield, who is also a talented artist with sculptures on display in the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., insists, “It is absolutely a motivation … 100 percent, 200 percent.” He recalls his first summer in Telluride, back in 1969. “We spent weeks just wandering the backcountry. There were so many mysteries and so much history up there. It was all so beautiful and interesting and that started it for me. Whenever I could get up into the backcountry, I had to go.”
Eidsmo likewise says that the beauty and interest of the high country is part of what gets her outside and up high. “I love the wildflowers. We go up to the basins at a certain time of the year because we know that the columbines and the king’s crowns and queen’s crowns will be in bloom. It’s a motivation because you know you are going to see something so beautiful.”
The Telluride native adds that sometimes she and her friends will take a book on Telluride’s history up into the basins above town where they can spend time among the ruins of the area’s mining past. “It’s fun to use your imagination and think about what life was like for the men and women who lived up here.”
Says Jewett: “The biggest motivation for us is where we live. You walk outside and there’s Ajax and there are all the mountains. I could play tennis and golf somewhere else, but I would be doing it for the tennis and golf and not the scenery. Every day here when I am outside, I look up and see something incredible.
“My friends and I, we don’t take any of this for granted.”
