I never would have imagined that I would own a gun. Growing up on the east coast, I thought guns were things that people used to rob convenience stores or impress other gang members. Guns were bad, I believed. Why would I ever want to...
Telluride has long been a hub for cinema, with world renowned film festivals like Telluride Film Festival and Mountainfilm in Telluride, but the newest film festival—Telluride Horror Show—is starting to steal the show. Telluride Horror Show celebrates the scary movie genre and is in its...
[caption id="attachment_23788" align="alignleft" width="95"] This year's Telluride Horror Show poster.[/caption] A lot of people, even self-proclaimed film buffs, turn up their noses at the mention of horror movies. But their cinematic snobbery doesn’t apply to things like film noir, Alfred Hitchcock’s dark, taut suspense or Quentin...
I was grumbling from the minute I woke up. I had a humongous hangover—I don’t usually drink anymore, but our two- and three-year-old children spent the night at their grandparents so Blake and I could celebrate our anniversary. I guess we celebrated a little too...
I guess I recognized I was different at my first Halloween party in college. There I stood, white-chalked face and spiked black hair, with eight pairs of scissors taped to my fingers, a ghoulish version of Edward Scissorhands; I was surrounded by a bunch of sexy kittens, lingerie-clad angels and Playboy bunnies. Needless to say, I didn’t reel in any dates that night.
It was then that I realized there are two types of people in the world: People who like horror movies and people who don’t. Not everyone likes to be scared, so if you find yourself in the latter camp, you might want to skip to the next article or go shop online for a cute Halloween costume, something with ears or a thong. If you belong to the cloister of us who revere ghost stories, scary movies and spooky urban myths, read on. We’ve got a festival for you: the second annual Telluride Horror Show, October 14-16.
It's hard enough to let your child ride a motorcycle for the first time. Imagine he or she grows up to be a professional motocross stunt rider, like Chas Burbridge.
Chas and some of his friends who live on the Western Slope are coming home to Norwood for the Freestyle Motocross Exhibition on July 16 (Saturday) at the San Miguel County Fairgrounds. The event is a fundraiser for the Wright Stuff Community Foundation and its Prime Time Early Childhood Education Center. Chas and the other professional FMX team members travel all over the country and world to stage events like these, performing in front of stadiums full of thousands of people, but this show will also be a homecoming for the local boys.
The following is from an on-and-off series about summer hikes by Deb Dion Kees, who blogs for Telluride HIking Guide.
Don’t look down, I reminded myself. I could feel my breathing get choppy, and even though we were above 13,000 feet in elevation, I knew it wasn’t from the exertion of being at altitude—it was fear. The serrated ridgeline, sharp and snow-covered, stretched out hundreds of feet ahead of me and I dug my trail running shoes into each icy step, hoping it would hold. Don’t look down.
It was probably a couple of weeks too early in the summer to do it, and I definitely should have brought an ice axe, but the Telluride Peak Traverse still ranks as my all-time favorite hike. The Traverse is one of the new routes in the upcoming third edition of Telluride Hiking Guide, and even later in the season, when the high alpine basins and the knife-edge of a ridgeline are no longer coated with stubborn spring snow, it is a serious adventure.
Telluride Mountain Club will hold a “Free Bear Creek” rally, slideshow and membership drive Jan. 19 at the Last Dollar Saloon from 6:30-11 p.m.
The “Free Bear Creek” movement was born on a spring day back in 1998, after forest rangers arrested two local skiers as they exited the Bear Creek trail. The skiers, Himay Palmer and Matt Lewis, had just finished a classic backcountry tour from Ophir to Telluride; they had not, in fact, poached the closed Forest Service terrain off Telluride Ski Resort, which empties skiers and boarders onto the same trail. Palmer balked and was maced, and the two long-haired telemark skiers in handcuffs became emblematic of the struggle to keep public lands open to the public.
Check out this weekend's snow sculpting contest....
(Above is a local clip from the 2009 Ice Festival.)
The first time I ever swung an axe at ice, I was surprised. It felt good…really good. It was so different from rock climbing; instead of my hand fumbling, fingers aching, trying to find something to hold onto, the axe made a nice “clink” sound, sticking perfectly into the ice and giving me purchase. I felt like a superhero as I picked my way to the top of the frozen waterfall, right axe, left axe, then moving up with my feet, digging in with the teeth of my right crampon, then the left. It was oddly meditative and beautiful, despite the exertion and the cold. Why, I wondered, isn’t everyone doing this?
