TELLURIDE — Local legend holds that the long-coveted ski terrain of Revelation Bowl earned its name from curious powder pioneers who simply couldn’t resist the temptation to drop in and schuss the sugar.
The revelation? They’d be hiking the 800 vertical feet back up and out.
Revelation Bowl — the first lift-served terrain expansion at Telluride since 2001 — bottoms out on rocky shelf more than 1,500 feet above the cliff-shrouded confines of Bear Creek Canyon. Unless you are a skilled mountaineer, there’s no way out but up.
Below the bowl lies a skier’s nightmare of rocky crags and avalanche paths. Above it, a skier’s dream.
“It really adds a new dimension to the whole Telluride experience. It’s just an incredibly beautiful, high alpine bowl, in a setting incomparable to anything else in North America,” Telluride Ski and Golf Co. CEO Dave Riley said. “It’s such a perfect bowl because of the way it curves around and loads up with snow coming over the top of Gold Hill. You could almost take a spoon and scoop out the whipped cream.”
Situated on a northeastern aspect topping out above 12,500 feet, the open, 50-acre bowl offers a skiing experience the likes of which Telluride has never known.
Need a bump fix? Try The Plunge off Chair 9. Groomed cruisers? Take your pick around the Mountain Village. Up the pucker factor? That’d be the hike to chutes off Gold Hill and Palmyra Peak.
But lift-access bowl skiing? Before Revelation, that was the province of other areas, places such as Vail, Copper and Breckenridge. Not anymore.
“It’s different than anything else at Telluride,” said Kim Havell, a 13-year local skier. “It adds a whole new dimension to our ski experience and our powder-day options. We now have true ridges, bowls, trees, chutes and peaks to ski.”
Technically, there are only four new advanced and expert runs served by the locally manufactured Leitner-Poma fixed-grip quad installed last summer. But the bowl skis far bigger. The Gold Hill ridge runs in either direction from top terminal, offering steeper pitches and rock features on the far sides of the bowl. The heart of the bowl features an expanse of rolling terrain and a groomed runway for fast cruising into the scenic belly of the San Juan Mountains.
It’s what Riley refers to as “adventure terrain,” albeit at the lower end of the resort’s rapidly increasing adventure spectrum.
That spectrum was stretched significantly with last winter’s introduction of Palmyra Peak and Gold Hill Chutes 6-10 to Telluride’s inbounds ski offerings. The additional double black-diamond acreage accessible from a 1,350-vertical-foot hike topping out at a rarefied 13,150 feet helped the resort return to a reputation rooted in big mountain swagger, slapping an exclamation point onto the 2006 expert-only expansion into Mountain Quail/Black Iron Bowl. After softening its image with the addition of lifts to entice intermediate skiers into an area known as Prospect Basin in 2001, Telluride’s ensuing offerings serve as a reminder of what made the area so great in the eyes of big mountain skiers through the years.
“I think the addition of that wide, flat, groomed terrain was totally appropriate. But Telluride didn’t start with that. It’s always been known as a steep, bumped out, challenging resort,” Riley said. “At this point, our next move clearly is to provide the adventure terrain that competes with the great resorts of the world, places like Chamonix, Verbier, Whistler. We’re just so fortunate to have the terrain that we have to be able to do so.”
All told, the resort has expanded by nearly 400 acres in the past year. It offers some of the most challenging and visually stunning resort skiing on the continent. The 2,000-acre resort’s vertical drop is now one of the largest in North America at 4,425 feet — 3,845 feet of that lift-served — with terrain rivaling that of Jackson Hole, Snowbird and Crested Butte.
And the adventure may not yet be finished.
With the addition of the Revelation Lift, Riley has floated the idea of further expansion into the current backcountry terrain in the easily accessible Bear Creek drainage. The lift already drops skiers and snowboarders within easy striking distance of a backcountry access gate that formerly required a lung-busting trudge to nearly 13,000 feet. The expansive terrain of Bear Creek — roughly 1,700 acres — is largely visible from the chair.
It’s already a popular “sidecountry” ski haunt among Telluride’s rotating crop of die-hard skiers making laps through the gate, and a notoriously dangerous spot for those lacking in backcountry snow savvy.
An expansion into the steep, rugged terrain of Bear Creek would still be several years away, but already the politics of powder have stirred the community. Some view expansion as a welcome boost to the resort’s reputation, others as an infringement upon the wild.
Almost everyone agrees that the enticing terrain just beyond the Revelation Bowl ropeline will attract more attention this winter, however, and likely more casualties.
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
By the numbers
400 Acres in the recent expansion at Telluride
4,425 feet New vertical drop, among the most in North America, with 3,845 vertical feet lift-served
