Win A Set of Washable Fabric Sandwich Bags to Replace Ziploc Baggies

Telluride is trying to stay at the top of the food chain when it comes to eco-consciousness. The town staged a “plastic bag challenge,” a contest against other ski towns asking consumers to choose reusable shopping bags instead of the disposable plastic ones, and is currently contemplating a 25-cent tax on the disposable bags. This spring, Mountainfilm in Telluride lauded Suzan Beraza’s film “Bag It,” an environmental documentary about the impacts of plastics, with the festival’s prestigious audience award. The film encouraged people to take steps to eliminate their use of disposable plastic containers of all kinds, which are clogging up landfills, choking our oceans and waterways and leaching cancer-causing chemicals like BPA (Bisphenol A) and phthalates into our food and other products.

There are all kinds of disposable plastics on which we’ve grown to depend, but one of the most ubiquitous is the sandwich baggie. “Ziploc” has become a household word and over 20 million sandwich bags from school lunches end up in U.S. landfills every day, according to a company called 3GreenMoms. These three moms decided to do something about it: They created LunchSkins, reusable, washable fabric bags that are food-safe, dishwasher-safe and come in vibrant colors and patterns.  LunchSkins reduce waste and save money, because they can be reused hundreds of times, and according to 3GreenMoms, they are a healthy choice: “Food just tastes better in a pastry bag.”

Two of the three founding moms, Cris Bourelly and Jennifer Stoller, passed through Telluride on their way cross-country shortly out of college in the late 1980s.  They said the beauty of what they encountered here while camping, hiking and climbing that summer inspired them to live a greener life. 3GreenMoms has agreed to give one of our lucky readers/fans a set of one sandwich bag and one snack bag. All you have to do is click “like” on this post on our Facebook page or make a quick comment below on this page to be entered in the giveaway. “We are excited to help others reduce plastic waste and contribute to the greening of Telluride by using LunchSkins instead of single-use plastic baggies,” says Bourelly.

37th Telluride Bluegrass Festival June 17-20

Everyone in Telluride has a favorite Bluegrass Festival memory. Maybe it’s because the festival is held on the solstice, when the days are the longest of the whole year and the warm weather coaxes barefoot dancing and other misadventure. I think it’s also because bluegrass is the perfect soundtrack music for summer in Telluride, when the rushing San Miguel River rolls like a banjo, the sun plays on the wildflowers like the delicate plinking of the mandolin and people head high up into the mountains, their footsteps keeping time like the steady “chuk-chuk” of the guitar.
My favorite bluegrass moment came in 2002, back when I was working for KOTO, the local radio station. They broadcast the festival live, so that locals who have to work can listen in until they finish their shifts and make their way down to the park. In between sets, we interviewed the artists, and that year I got to talk to Dr. Ralph Stanley, the bluegrass legend.
I am not a bluegrass fanatic, unlike many of the 15,000 people who trek to Telluride every summer for the festival, but I have learned to appreciate the genre and all of the so-called “newgrass” music it has spawned. So I was nervous to interview the Dr., who is the epitome of old school bluegrass, but I immediately warmed up to him. Unlike most of the big acts that come to Telluride, he met us before he went on stage, instead of trying to dodge the interview after his performance. He showed up dressed in a fancy hat and tie, looking like he was about to play the Grand Ole Opry. He was a sweet, gentlemanly old man and seemed genuinely flattered to be interviewed. After a few polite exchanges on the air, we shook hands and he asked me if there was anything I wanted to hear. My own personal request line! I wondered if he could play the oft-covered “How Mountain Girls Can Love,” an old standard and an anthem of sorts for mountain women.
I expected his set to be a sleeper, a quiet Sunday night closing act during which people could shuffle out, feeling satisfied after a weekend full of fun. Instead, The Dr. and his Clinch Mountain Boys took hold of Telluride Town Park and the crowd was transformed into a single, moving mass, twitching to the jangly beat and shaking in time with the banjo. They were the consummate bluegrass veterans, hitting each blistering note, singing in pitch-perfect harmony and howling their haunting Appalachian tune “Man of Constant Sorrow,” made famous by George Clooney in the offbeat film: O Brother, Where Art Thou? The audience fell in love.
So did I, and not just with the band. It wasn’t until the second curtain call that the Dr. obliged my request and played my song, and it was a sublime moment for me, listening to the original music performed by the artist who had written the song. The lyrics seemed especially relevant to me and a certain in-and-out-of-town climber as we danced, a happy reunion and one of those unforgettable snapshots in time. Ralph Stanley sang, just for us, the sentiment utterly simplistic but as perfect as the summer night: “Get down boys, go back home/Back to the girl you love./Treat her right, never wrong/How mountain girls can love.”

Telluride Magazine's Editor-in-Chief Mary Duffy riding horseback around Wilson Massif.

I know, I know. We hate these cutesy questions and Facebook prompts just as much as you do. But we love the responses and the dialogues that ensue. We never fail to learn something about our readers and the people in our community, and it helps us appreciate the unique quality of the mountain town experience.
So, at the risk of being cliché, we are offering a free subscription and a little notoriety to the person who comes up with the best answer to the question: What are five things you’ve done that most people haven’t? You get bonus points for things that are related to Telluride and for originality.
In the interest of fairness, Duffy and I are offering our own lists. Hopefully they will inspire you to share some of your own unusual experiences.

Five Things Deb Has Done That Most People Haven’t
1. Landed my paraglider in a tree.
2. Hitchhiked with my Swedish friend, with one can of tuna and $5 each, just to see how far we could make it in our two days off from work. We made it to Lake Powell and one of our rides was from the truck that paints the median lines on the road.
3. Slept on the cargo rack on top of my van for an entire summer.
4. Worked as a roller-skating waitress in a diner.
5. Ran with the bulls in Pamplona.

Five Things Duffy Has Done That Most People Haven’t
1. Circumnavigated the Wilson Massif on horseback, and rode her horse into the Sheridan Bar.
2. Went snorkeling for trout in the San Miguel River.
3. Rode an inner tube down the Hughes irrigation ditch, from Woods Lake to Specie Mesa.
4. Interviewed Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil and Jerry Garcia.
5. Worked on a caribou grazing study on the north slope of Alaska.

Two of the films featured at this weekend’s Mountainfilm in Telluride festival are the work of local residents: “Eastern Rises” by Felt Soul Media and “Bag It” by Reel Thing Productions. You can read about Suzan Beraza (Reel Thing executive director), who is profiled in this summer’s magazine, and Felt Soul Media’s Ben Knight is a contributing photographer to Telluride Magazine (cover shot, winter 09-10).

“Eastern Rises” is Felt Soul Media’s fourth beautiful film about fishing and the environment, and follows a group of intrepid fishing fanatics to the Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Europe. Felt Soul Media also produced “The Hatch,” “Running Down the Man,” and “Red Gold.” Ben Knight and Travis Rummel share their eye for beauty and their passion for the sport of fishing to help protect the wild places that inspire them.

“Bag It” is Beraza’s directorial debut on a feature-length film, and was written by local author Michelle Curry Wright and hosted by local actor/comedian Jeb Berrier. Like the other Reel Thing productions, “Bag It” has an environmental message that will touch audiences and, hopefully, make better and more conscious consumers out of the people who watch the movie. I know it has made a difference in my everyday life: I no longer take plastic bags from the grocery store and I take a much harder look at the things I purchase and what materials contain them.

We hope that audiences this weekend will find these films as inspiring as we do, and will be intrigued as we are with the people who live here and who make Telluride special.

Bear Creek Permit Decision This Week

For years, skiing from the Telluride resort into Bear Creek meant ducking a rope and breaking the law. This spring, you won’t just have the Forest Service’s permission to ski off-piste—you might also have a ski patrol guide.

Skiing in out-of-bounds Bear Creek has been the topic of much debate in Telluride. The area is avalanche-prone and dangerous— there were avalanche deaths in 1986-87, 1989 and 2002 as well as numerous accidents and injuries—and the Forest Service has closed access from ski resort boundaries in the past.

Since 2000 (following a spirited local “Free Bear Creek” campaign) the Forest Service has allowed access into upper Bear Creek from a designated gate at the top of the ski resort. This season the agency opened more backcountry access points, including one lower in Bear Creek. USFS District Ranger Judy Schutza says they opened up access because so many people were skiing into Bear Creek anyway, and not always from safe routes. “We lifted the closure order because people were ducking the rope and going wherever they wanted to go … we put in some access gates in safer places and it seems to be working pretty well.”

This spring the agency might take things one step farther: This week, the Forest Service is expected to issue a permit to the Telluride Ski Resort to allow guided backcountry trips into Bear Creek. The permit would allow the resort to offer guided excursions this season from the upper access points into Bear Creek. As with any guiding or public lands permit, the ski resort would have to pay a fee to the Forest Service based on the volume of business generated.

Not everyone is pleased about the possible permit—town officials from Telluride and conservationists have argued that it would put commercial activity in Bear Creek Preserve, an area protected by a conservation easement. Schutza says that the permit would skirt the conservation easement, but locals who oppose the permit application argue that skiers and boarders will not always follow the exact permit route.

It’s not just a question of the conservation easement; it’s also a question of liability. How do you keep people safe in such a notoriously unsafe area? The ski resort started conducting snow safety tests in Bear Creek last season to get a better picture of the avalanche activity and risks in the area. It’s not just the copious snow, but also the avalanche danger that has helped to create Bear Creek’s mystique and allure, giving it nicknames like “The Dark Side” and runs called the “Suicide” chutes. That air of danger is well-deserved: One of the people caught and injured in a slide just this year was a professional ski patroller.

The snow testing and the permit application have led to much local speculation about the Telluride Ski Resort expanding to include Bear Creek terrain, but CEO Dave Riley says that there have been no decisions or plans made. Riley told the Telluride Watch that “at this point, we’re just listening, asking a lot of questions and gauging what the issues are.”

We’d love to hear what you think. Post a comment below or email editor@telluridemagazine.com.