by Mac » Wed Jan 22, 2014 3:38 pm
The two are not really comparable. Bachelor is a big cone, Telluride is more spread out into different sections. You can access everything at Bachelor from the peak, Telluride is more segregated in terms of steeps, bumps, groomed cruisers, etc. Different lifts bring you to different places, depending on what you're looking for. The trails at Telluride are a little more well defined than they are at Bachelor, if that makes any sense. Telluride is way more developed, there's high priced condos everywhere. And there's basically two towns. There's the original old western town, which is at the end of a box canyon, and there's the newer ritzy ski town at the base of the lifts, that are connected by a gondola. But everything I saw was done tastefully, not the typical sprawl you see at some places. One thing I noticed was that Spring comes early in SW Colorado, I was there in mid March, and they were already into their freeze/thaw cycle, so everything there that wasn't groomed was basically off limits, at least for the time I was there. It had been warm for a few days before I got there, and then it turned cold and stayed that way while I was there, so everything that wasn't groomed stayed frozen. But they have some long, long wide open groomers that were impeccably groomed, so that wasn't such a bad thing. But I only skied one day at Telluride, so take my opinion FWIW. We had skied two days at Purgatory in Durango, one day at Wolf Creek, and one at Telluride over the course of four days. But it seems like a place that has it all, no matter what you're looking for, and plenty of it. And the views alone are worth the trip. Definitely a place I want to make it back to. If I had to pick only one mountain to ski at, that would be high on my list.