When I first moved to town in 1994, my roommate, a bartender at the old Swede-Finn Hall, told me a secret. He told me to never turn down a shift on a powder day. “There is no single bigger factor here in Telluride that affects the size of your tip more than good snow.”
He was right. Snow doesn’t just make people tip better, it makes people feel better. Walking around town these last few days, while the sky dumps its downy, white goodness all over, you notice that people are smiling more and that they have a bit of a bounce in their step. The holidays? Nah. The holidays make people frenzied and a little insane. (Didn’t you hear about the woman who maced the other shoppers at a Target on Black Friday so that she could get a Wii?) No, it’s definitely the snow.
And as far as snow goes, this is only the beginning. The resort is cautiously unveiling more terrain (Lift 5 opened this weekend, and Lift 6 is running just for access down See Forever) and they are reporting a hefty 11 inches of new snow in the last 48 hours. And according to the Robert Report, there is more on the way. Jerry says this round should last through tomorrow, just long enough to get us to Noel Night and to keep people sane as they shop and try to scoop up holiday discounts at the local stores. So keep smiling, people. Christmas and Hanukkah are coming, Santa is on his way and Lift 9 will be open soon.
In the meantime, Telluride Inside and Out contributor, former ski racer and Telluride Ski Resort ski model Jesse James McTigue gives us some early season drills to help perfect our form while we’re still skiing the groomers and waiting for the powder days to come. It may not be a powder day quite yet, but Jesse is still giving us some great “tips.”