Triathlete Diva: Revelation at Telluride's New Revelation Bowl: I Have Food Poisoning

After four straight days of skiing 9-4, a time restriction placed on skiiers by Telluride's more recently wussified hours of lift operation (I seem to remember having the option of submitting oneself to frostbite by riding up lift 9 at 7:30 am) something terrible happened.

Feeling as fabulous as a girl could after riding a mountain bike nonstop for one week, then skiing for 4 days, I went for my favorite winter run back into Telluride's box canyon, mine-side, then sat in a hot tub. It was the high life. Aside from throbbing toes caused by boot banging, everything was peachy keen.

Then, at 2 in the morning on Thursday, January 8th, I was attacked by something coachubby and I can only describe as pooke. Let's just say it was not only a space-saving design to have the bathtub right next to the toilet, but a lifesaving one as well.

I was aiming for a 6.5 day skiing streak, but was aggressively savaged by, from what investigators (mom) could tell after close inspection and clean-up, a darth "Insalata di Pollo e Spinaci" from Rustico on Telluride's main drag.

Rustico Telluride

I figured it was the Big Guy's way of punishing me for accidentally ordering the most expensive thing on the menu from a restaurant down the street a few days earlier. Who knew a "Pasta Special" could cost more than $20? Now I do.

And I paid for it.

By not getting to eat or ski or be in any way vertical for 2 straight days, and not getting to eat anything with flavor or much protein through this very moment. All those muscles I packed on in the "off season"? Gone. Eaten by the darth Italian salad.

Telluride

I still managed to pull off one more "epic run", skiing 3,130 vertical feet of pure moguls rather unaggressively, before jumping in the car and lying down for the 8-hour drive back to Phoenix on Saturday, soothed by the "r"-challenged voice of Tuba City's 91.3 Native public radio---the only station for hundreds of miles in Northern AZ, which treated coachubby, my parents and I to hours of the hits...from 1950 and decendingly beyond.

But before the bug, there was the pure awesomeness that can only come from a 60-inch base in December, and a fresh dumping the first two days upon arrival in my (and apparently Tom Cruise's) happy place, Telluride. An awesomeness that also came from knowing that there'd be something new in this year's pilgrimage to the canyon--Revelation Bowl.

Revelation Bowl

Skiiers, myself included, had longingly looked into the beautiful, vast, pure openness on the East and opposite side of Gold Hill. They can't help it. The lift drops you off in a way that you practically start down that silky slope if you don't hang left down the road to the double black of your choice under Gold Hill. (Don't get me started on how you used to have to hike before 2pm to get to do a single Gold Hill run!)

According to the Telluride Daily Planet, Revelation Bowl was so named for all of the people who followed that longing in their heart to make fresh tracks down the virgin bowl, only to have the revelation a short time later that there was no way out...unless you like jumping off of cliffs.

And so helicopters worked round the clock to install Lift 15 so that those of us who dream of backcountry skiing, but who secretly like the idea that Ski Patrol will rescue us if we screw up in bounds, could ski that area. Coachubby loved it. I loved it. The snow was thick and abundant. The terrain is steep, but fun.

And when you get enough of all that openness and sunshine, you can hit up Buzz's Glade from the new lift.

So there you have it: Revelation Bowl was a worthy investment by Telluride developers. Now if only there'd be a lift (and enough snow) up Palmyra Peak, Mt. Baldy, and the higher-up Gold Hill chutes, Telluride would become the country's most enabling ski resort for self-punishing quad abusers. In fact, it might just be there already.

And that's how we like it!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Revelation at Telluride's New Revelation Bowl: I Have Food Poisoning

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