Behind the Scenes

The Magic of Mountain Operations at Telluride Ski Resort

BY ERIN SPILLANE

LIKE ANY GREAT PRODUCTION, TELLURIDE SKI RESORT OFFERS AN EXPERIENCE LIKE NO OTHER.

It’s one that holds audiences enthralled by an absorbing narrative told against a breathtaking backdrop. Weaving this tale of on-mountain magic and adventure are the ski resort’s dedicated and talented cast and crew, a few of whom are lifting the curtain ever so slightly to give those of us who love this corner of Colorado a peek behind the scenes at Telluride Ski Resort.

HOW IS SNOW MEASURED?

Few things are more important to a ski area than snowfall. At Telluride Ski Resort, the white stuff is measured manually and via sonar devices at the top of Lift 6 and the bottom of Lift 14 in Prospect Bowl. According to the ski resort’s snow safety manager, Jon Tukman, manual measurements come courtesy of an observer from Telluride Ski Patrol who, daily between 6 and 7 a.m., measures the new snow and also weighs it to determine water content.

Clearly, it’s a serious business, although it can be tricky when it comes to comparing seasonal snowfall totals. Over the 50 years that the ski resort has been in operation, changes have occurred in what time of year measuring gets underway and where measurements are taken on the mountain. Comparisons, then, stick to totals for December through March, which are the four full months of each ski season. By this yardstick, the top three are the winter of 2007-08 (341.5 inches), 2018-19 (318.8 inches) and 2016-17 (311.7 inches), although Tukman notes that the data folks at the ski resort recently “recovered hard copies of snow reports from the ‘70s and ski patrol weather observations from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s so we should be able to create a much more accurate picture of historic snowfall during the ski season in the near future.” Still, he cautions, comparability issues will exist even with better historical data.

For those who like a visual to accompany the numbers, there’s also the popular Pow Cam, which films a snow stake that is featured on the ski resort’s website. The Pow Cam automatically resets each day at 4 p.m., with the storm side cleared after each storm clears out. Says Tukman, this is “a visual reference for the public and catnip for the powder hungry. If the image of the stake is obscured, it means the camera is buried [in snow] and it’s time to turn off the computer and go skiing.”

WHAT DOES SKI PATROL DO ON POWDER MORNINGS?

Most days start early for Telluride Ski Patrol and the resort’s Department of Snow Safety, but on powder days alarm clocks go off even earlier. The first to arrive at the staff locker room in Telluride are the gunners, patrol members who use a World War II-era Howitzer to launch small explosives at snow-laden slopes in order to trigger a controlled slide. Says Ian Kirkwood, patrol director, “For an early morning mission, the earliest gunners come in at 4 or 4:15 a.m. They’ll get to the locker room and get themselves suited up and ready to head up the hill. It takes a little while to mobilize and make their way out to the locations they need to go to.”

At that hour with the lifts closed, the gunners travel by snowmobile. Once their mission is done, they join the rest of the crew, who have been skiing or traversing since daybreak, their equipment strapped to their backs, to areas that may need attention. >>

Kirkwood notes that the “next folks to come in are members of the snow safety team and the weather observers. They start at 5:30 or 6 a.m. That is the time that we ask people to be in and ready to go by, that isn’t when they arrive.”

Kirkwood stresses that every storm is different, which means that a variety of factors dictate where on the mountain the gunners and ski patrol staff go. “It’s really variable,” he explains. “Sometimes we may only get 2 inches but the wind has concentrated the snow into certain areas and [the accumulation] ends up being a lot more than 2 inches, so that’s a factor, and other times we may have a really big event, like 13, 15, 20 inches overnight, and then we start from the ground up.”

This means, Kirkwood says, working from lower elevations on the ski resort uphill toward higher ones with the aim of opening as much of the mountain as quickly as they can in a safe manner. And then there are a variety of factors that affect where attention is focused, including wind, the direction of the wind, how much snow, the type of snow — wet and heavy or dry and light or some other variation — and where on the resort the snow has been deposited.

Kirkwood also points out that what the snow has been deposited on is also key. “Has that terrain slid recently? What is the snow depth? These are just some of the factors we consider in assessing slope stability,” he says.

Despite these complexities, Kirkwood describes a close-knit team of snow safety professionals who like to dig into the variables. “It’s all part of the fun. No two days are ever the same.”

And the idea that on big days patrol is whooping it up in neck-deep powder while the rest of us queue patiently below for the lifts to open?

Says Kirkwood, “It’s absolutely a myth. I will say that it is our job to make sure we have a safe playground for our skiing public — locals and visitors. We are always going to be out there ahead of others, whether there is new snow or not, but on big mornings when there is a crowd waiting out there in lift lines, I get it. They see us skiing by and covered in snow and there’ll be tracks on the slopes, but we are just doing our job, assessing terrain, what has happened overnight, addressing hazards and making sure that it’s safe.”

Kirkwood stresses staff safety too. “We are usually skiing from what we call islands of safety to islands of safety so we don’t overexpose ourselves to any risks. I want every one of my staff to make it through the day safe and sound. I know sometimes it looks like we’re out there having fun — and skiing is fun — but we really are working.”

HOW DID SOME OF THE RUNS GET THEIR NAMES?

It’s a tale that dates right back to the early 1970s.

Johnnie Stevens, who grew up in Telluride and worked in local mines as a college student on summer vacations, was part of the group that labored tirelessly to construct the ski area before its grand opening in December 1972.

One task? Naming the runs.

Stevens, who would go on to serve as head of ski patrol before rising to the role of chief operating officer at the resort, was in agreement back then with Senior Mahoney, miner, ski pioneer and the new ski area’s first mountain manager. The pair, with their unique backgrounds that straddled Telluride’s mining past and its skiing future, argued that history needed to figure in the process. Says Stevens, “Initially there was an idea to name runs after card games. I remember seeing maps with runs named One-Eyed Jack, things like that. Mahoney and I were thinking that there’s so much history here [so] we started down the road of naming the runs after the history of Telluride.”

The upshot is a ski resort deeply connected to the region’s story. A number of trail names, for instance, refer to mining claims once staked on what is now the ski resort, runs like Electra, Mammoth, Happy Thought, Apex, Dynamo and Little Rose to name a few, as well as Roy Boy, which takes its name from the Roy Johnson Mine. The Plunger mining claim was another that lent its name to what has become an iconic Telluride Ski Resort trail, according to Stevens: “Mahoney and I were trying to come up with a classic name … something that differentiated us from other areas and denoted what we were. We decided that was the Plunge.”

The tale behind Powerline, a double black off Lift 9, is another fascinating link to the area’s mining heritage. In the late 1800s, mine owner and entrepreneur L.L. Nunn achieved a world’s first: the commercial transmission of alternating-current, or AC, electricity from a newly constructed power plant to his Gold King Mine, south of the Telluride. After the electrification of Gold King, other mining operations required electricity, so a line from the power plant was strung up across land that is now part of the ski resort. Powerline follows part of that route. >>

HOW DO WORKERS AND SUPPLIES MOVE AROUND THE MOUNTAIN?

Sure, we all adore the Wagyu beef panino at Alpino Vino, but ever wonder how the beef, bread and that gorgeous robiola bosina cheese find their way to one of the highest restaurants in North America?

“All of our food and beverage material goes up on the back of our snowcats,” explains Scott Pittenger, director of mountain operations at the ski resort. “We have specially designed snowcats that we call ‘haul cats’ that have a large basket essentially that sits at the back of the cat, where we can load pallets of food and drink, and they go all around the hill. We also use those cats to bring trash down and replenish water supplies and basically anything else that we need to move around the hill in large quantities.”

Pittenger points to an agile system: “We also have trailer tubs that we tow behind snowmobiles. If Allred’s needs a quick delivery at 4:30, right after the lifts have closed, and they need it as soon as we can, we’ll package it up and zip it up the hill.”

Not unlike elves laboring behind the scenes at Santa’s workshop is the resort’s haul cat crew, operators that coordinate with the ski resort’s food and beverage team to make sure the on-mountain restaurants get what they need.

How about transporting workers?

“Using our lift infrastructure is definitely the best way to get our employees to work around the hill,” Pittenger says, adding that workers take the lifts to the closest point to their place of employment and then ski the rest of the way.

And if the lifts aren’t open?

“Our first strike is to get our earliest lift operators on the hill,” he explains. “They get to work by snowmobile. There is a sequence of which lifts we open up first that is often dictated by snowfall. If there is a forecast for a lot of snow or it’s during a storm, ski patrol may request certain lifts to be opened earlier than usual and we’ll get our lift operators out the door as quickly as we can.”

Pittenger adds that getting the lift operators to their lifts also happens via one of the haul cats, outfitted in this case with benches for the lifties to sit on. “They are then driven to a central location, normally at the top of Lift 5, where they can distribute themselves into Prospect Basin, down to the bottom of Lift 5 or anywhere else they need to be.” >>

HOW DO THE RUNS GET GROOMED?

Grooming runs on the ski resort happens, according to Pittenger, “whenever the public is not on the hill. As soon as patrol has done their sweep below the point where our snowcats can enter onto skiable train, as soon as they have swept the public below that point, our cats hit the hill.”

Those snowcats, and the operators, or groomers, who drive them, operate in two shifts, one from 3:30 p.m. to midnight and the other, the graveyard shift, from midnight until 10 a.m. Pittenger started his career at Telluride Ski Resort as a grooming snowcat operator on the graveyard shift. “It’s pretty spectacular,” he says of being on the mountain alone at night, snug in the heated cabin of a snowcat. “It is a serene and amazing landscape that you get to be a part of. Being able to watch storms come in and roll out, being out in the darkness and seeing the moon and the stars — it’s pretty special.”

Some of the steeper runs, he adds, call for specialist equipment and groomers with expertise and experience. “A significant portion of our fleet is made up of what are called ‘winch cats’,” Pittenger notes. “They have a specialized boom on the back of the cat, with about a thousand meters of cable on it that utilizes the winch. Then we have various anchors around the mountain, generally on the top of the run, although some of the runs have multiple anchors, or what we call pick points. These are the snowcats that we use on the steepest terrain that we groom.”

Pittenger continues, “On Bushwacker, Plunge, Milk Run, Cimarron, Magnolia, Majestic, Silver Cloud — all of those really steep groomers that we are known for — we use a winch cat and seasoned operators. It’s definitely more technical and it’s how we are able to groom some of the steepest runs in North America. You feel like superman operating the winch cats. It’s pretty awesome.”

Another special element of grooming at night, he remarks, is the wintertime fauna. “You definitely see semi-nocturnal animals that come out at night. Foxes and coyotes will show themselves. There’s porcupines and occasionally a bobcat or lynx.” Pittenger chuckles as he remarks that groomers take immense pride in their work and sometimes, much to their annoyance, find their artistry has been “destroyed” by a herd of deer or elk crossing a just-finished run. Does this prompt a redo by the perfectionist at the wheel of the snowcat? “Oh yeah,” he replies.

“One of the cooler things that I have seen is occasionally you’ll see that a rodent has delicately left a trail of footprints on the ski run in front of you and then you’ll see a wing imprint from an owl where it has captured that rodent and flown away,” he says. “You don’t see the owls very often, but it’s pretty special to see evidence of their activity. Ermines, too, are fun to watch. They like to porpoise through the snow on a powder night.”

Muses Pittenger, “Spending this kind of time on the mountain feels like a privilege, that’s for sure.”