Noticias

• Telski Reopens Lift 1 as Ski Patrol Strike Continues
• Coming Up On Council Previews Telluride Town Council

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Telski Reopens Lift 1 as Ski Patrol Strike Continues

The Telluride Ski Resort has reopened with very limited terrain after being closed for more than a week.

The ski company closed the resort Dec. 27 after the Telluride Ski Patrol Union voted to go on strike, according to Telski officials. Ski patrol and Telski have been in contract negotiations since June 2025.

While the mountain is technically reopened, few runs are available. On a snowy Monday morning, Lift 1 was spinning, with only the Meadows Carpet and Vista Carpet open.

Just off the slopes, about 30 ski patrollers were on the picket line for another day of striking.

“This is day 10, sadly,” noted Jessica Blount, a 20-year ski patroller at Telluride Ski Resort.

“I feel really really torn about it. I didn’t think it would go this far. I didn’t think it would drag out this long. It was never what we wanted, but our jobs are just as important as anyone else’s. We’ve heard the word ‘entitled’ thrown around a bunch, which makes me feel really bad, because we don’t think we’re any more important than anyone else, but we are just as important. We have an important job it turns out. The Ski Resort can’t run without us. We’re not asking for anything unreasonable,” Blount said.

On Saturday, Telluride Ski Resort sent a message to the community saying it has had continued conversations with ski patrol to bridge the gap between the two sides.

The ski company offered a new proposal that would increase the base rate for station leads, add a “complexity pay bonus” of $1.50 for all hours worked — paid out midseason and at the end of the season — provide a three-year contract, and include cost-of-living pay increases in years two and three.

But Katherine Devlin, vice president of the Telluride Ski Patrol Union and a ski patroller at the resort for six years, said the offer does not address the union’s needs, specifically citing the bonus structure.

“We really need the base structure to be addressed, rather than a bonus structure. When you’re applying for a mortgage, you can’t tell your loaner ‘Hey I’m going to be getting a bonus at the end of this year’. So, it’s another Band-Aid on the problem, it’s not really fixing it,” Devlin said.

She said the union countered with another offer to Telski on Sunday.

“We have lowered the price of the proposal, again, so that delta is getting smaller and smaller – the difference between our proposal and theirs. So, we’re getting closer and closer. It’s good news,” she said.

Emil Sante, a ski patroller at Telski for 30 years, said patrol is ready to return to work as soon as a deal is reached.

“If we got a deal today, we’d be in the locker room first thing in the morning and coming up and doing our job,” Sante said.

In the meantime, Sante encouraged visitors to continue skiing.

“We wish people a fun day on the ski slopes. We’ve had a lot of people come to us and apologize for skiing today. We say ‘no, no no no. We want you to ski. We want you to have fun,’” he said.

However, the limited terrain is not working for everyone. Filipe Fernandez, who is visiting with a group of about 20 people from Guatemala, said the group plans to cancel the remainder of its trip if more terrain does not open by Tuesday.

“And obviously because of our bad experience, we’ll never come back here again. It’s a lose-lose situation, because everyone is losing – the visitors, the restaurants, the hotels. Everyone is losing and the mountain is empty,” Fernandez said.

Telluride Ski Resort and the Telluride Ski Patrol Union met Saturday and Sunday for contract negotiations and are planning to meet again Monday evening. The resort said it is working to open as much terrain as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, the Telluride School District is making contingency plans for its Ski PE program. On Friday, Superintendent John Pandolfo sent a letter to families notifying them that all winter physical education classes, including Ski PE, would be canceled for the week. The district plans to assess the situation on a week-by-week basis for the remainder of the season.

“Most optimistically things will be resolved and/or more of the mountain will be opened and we can make a well-informed decision that we feel is in the best interest of our students and our families to send students up on the mountain. But that’s going to depend on a lot of different things – including mother nature,” Pandolfo said.

The school district does not charge specifically for the Winter PE program. Pandolfo said any reimbursement would need to come from the ski company or another organization.

“We know all of this is really hard on families. After I sent my message on Friday, I got some immediate responses from families that said ‘we are struggling enough that we probably need a full rebate if we can get it’. Our hearts go out to everyone who is impacted,” he said.

Pandolfo said he remains hopeful.

“We have a long way to go. It’s Jan. 5. I’m still banking 10 feet of snow before we get to April, and everything else resolving. We just have to be hopeful and play it by ear,” he said.

Some youth ski programs, including the Comets, plan to move forward with skiing on Lift 1 for the time being.

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Coming Up On Council Previews Telluride Town Council

Telluride Town Council is convening on Tuesday for its first meeting of 2026. In this installment of Coming Up on Council, Communications Manager Lindsey Mills shares what to expect.

Story begins at 6:00.

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Bardic Trails Poetry Night Features Dan Cervine

“At first it isn’t so bad — a taste of ecstasy,
the world covered in honey. Even snails
scrawl the names of buddhas with their silvery trails.

“But then, too much. Pears become unbearable,
wet white flesh so tender one could perish
contemplating the first taste.”

Those are the opening stanzas of “Enlightenment Is a Bitch,” a poem by Dan Cervine.

Cervine will be the featured poet at this month’s Talking Gourds’ Bardic Trails Stories and Poetry Night, a program of the Telluride Institute.

Cervine is based in Santa Cruz, California, and has published six books of poetry. His work has appeared in SUN, Hudson Review, Poetry Flash, Sycamore Review y Pedestal Magazine, among other publications.

The virtual poetry night will include a reading by Cervine, time for questions, and an opportunity for attendees to share their own work. For those seeking inspiration, the theme for this month is “wishing for snow.”

The Talking Gourds Bardic Trails Poetry Night will take place virtually Tuesday, Jan. 6, beginning at 7 p.m. The Zoom link is available at tellurideinstitute.org.

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Fort Collins Woman Killed in Mountain Lion Attack

olorado Parks and Wildlife is investigating the death of a woman following a mountain lion encounter in Larimer County.

Around noon on New Year’s Day, CPW officers, along with other regional first responders, responded to a report from hikers who said they saw a mountain lion near a person lying on the ground. As officers approached, CPW said witnesses scared the lion away by throwing rocks and then attended to the woman, but they were unable to find a pulse.

The woman was identified this week as 46-year-old Kristen Marie Kovatch of Fort Collins.

CPW officers used dogs to track the mountain lion and located two animals in the area. Both were euthanized. CPW said necropsies will be performed to check for abnormalities and neurological diseases, including rabies and avian influenza.

According to CPW, there have been 28 reported mountain lion attacks in Colorado since 1990. The last fatal attack occurred in 1999.

It is CPW policy to euthanize any wildlife involved in an attack on a human.

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New Law Expands Mental Health Coverage

A new state law requires health insurance plans to cover mental health care and substance use treatment at the same level as physical health care.

The law prohibits insurers from denying coverage based on a patient’s current or future behavioral health, mental health or substance use disorder. It also requires insurers to cover treatments for those conditions that are deemed medically necessary and to base coverage decisions on nationally accepted medical standards.

Another provision of the law prevents insurance companies from cutting off coverage for chronic mental health or substance use conditions once immediate symptoms have been treated.

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Colorado Prisons Remain Over Capacity

Prisons in Colorado remain overcrowded despite recent state efforts aimed at easing capacity issues.

As reported by Colorado Capitol News Alliance journalist Kyle McKinnon, the state activated an emergency overcrowding plan for the first time in August. The plan is triggered when state prisons operate at more than 97% capacity for 30 consecutive days.

Under the emergency declaration, the state allocated about $3 million to the Department of Corrections to add 153 additional prison beds. The parole board has also released 29 inmates who met specific criteria for expedited release.

Despite those measures, Colorado prisons were still nearly 98% full as of December. Hundreds of inmates who have already been sentenced to prison remain housed in county jails across the state.

Prison reform advocates say overcrowding continues because prisons are understaffed and because too many people are incarcerated for minor parole violations.

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Hoffmann Media Buys Aspen Daily News

Hoffmann Media Group has purchased the Aspen Daily News, according to Aspen Public Radio reporter Halle Zander. The newspaper was acquired by the media branch of a Florida-based equity firm.

David Hoffmann, the billionaire owner of the Hoffmann Family of Companies, has been acquiring a growing portfolio of local news outlets across the U.S., including the Telluride Times.

The sale comes amid a decades-long decline in the newspaper industry. News deserts are expanding, and billionaire investors are consolidating ownership of print media. Critics warn such owners could engage in editorial overreach and undermine journalistic integrity.

The Aspen Daily News assured readers that its news product will not change. David Cook, co-owner since 2017, will remain as publisher.

In a press release, Cook said the acquisition provides “the stability to keep doing its work.”

Last year, The New York Times reported that Hoffmann believes in the value of local newspapers and their potential to succeed alongside digital media.