Telluride

Telluride's summit reaches 13,150 feet, dropping 4,425 vertical feet to a base at 8,725 feet across 148 runs spread over 2,000 acres in Telluride, Colorado. Terrain splits 39 per cent expert, 23 per cent each for advanced and intermediate, and 15 per cent beginner, with average annual snowfall of roughly 300 inches. Nineteen lifts, including six quad chairs and one gondola, serve the mountain alongside four six-person chairs, three double chairs, one triple chair and four surface lifts.

Telluride holds a genuinely distinctive place among Colorado resorts, combining a National Historic Landmark Victorian mining town with some of the state's most dramatic, expert-weighted terrain and a free public gondola connecting the historic town to the newer Mountain Village. Its considerable 4,425-foot vertical drop ranks among the largest in Colorado.

Telluride was founded in 1878 during the San Juan Mountains' silver and gold mining boom, and the town's name is popularly said to derive from tellurium, though it more likely stems from a corruption of 'to-hell-you-ride,' reflecting the area's rugged remoteness. Mining sustained the town for decades before its decline in the early twentieth century.

Telluride Ski Resort opened in 1972, developed by Joseph T. Zoline on the mountain above the historic town, bringing renewed prosperity to a community that had fallen into decline. The resort has remained under a series of private ownership groups, with the free gondola, opened in 1996, connecting the historic town to the purpose-built Mountain Village. Adult daily tickets run from 169 to 249 US dollars.