1. Sasquatch!
May 24-27
Quincy, Washington

Kicking off the summer over Memorial Day weekend, Sasquatch! is held in the Gorge Amphitheatre, overlooking a broad picturesque curve of the Columbia River. Acts include The (reunited!) Postal Service, Sigur Rós, Nick Offerman, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. (sasquatchfestival.com)

2. Governor’s Ball
June 7-9
New York

Governor’s Ball is the only rock festival held in Manhattan (technically on Randall’s Island), and boasts an array of the city’s best food trucks in addition to a stellar lineup. Plan to see Kanye West, Guns ‘n Roses, and Kings of Leon. (govball.com)

3. Bonnaroo
June 13-16
Manchester, Tennessee

Set on a 700-acre farm in rural Tennesee, Bonnaroo is one of the biggest and most diverse festivals in the country. This year’s bonkers lineup includes Paul McCartney, the Wu-Tang Clan, Daniel Tosh, and “Weird” Al Yankovic. (bonnaroo.com)

4. Electric Daisy Carnival
June 18-25
Las Vegas

Drawing over 345,000 attendees, this dusk-to-dawn dance event at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the largest party in North America. Additional smaller EDCs are being held this year in New York, Chicago, London, Puerto Rico, and Orlando—but you might as well go big. (electricdaisycarnival.com)

5. Telluride Bluegrass Festival
June 20-23
Telluride, Colorado

Now in its 40th year, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival features a wider range of acts and genres than you might expect, set against the epic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. This year you’ll see Mumford and Sons, Feist, and Jackson Browne, among others. (bluegrass.com/telluride)

6. Electric Forest
June 27-30
Rothbury, Michigan

This dance-focused festival runs through both day and night, but you won’t want to sleep through the stunning light show that illuminates the tall Michigan conifers every night to the rhythm of the bass. This year’s acts include the String Cheese Incident, Pretty Lights, and Passion Pit. (electricforestfestival.com)

7. Pitchfork Music Festival
July 19-21
Chicago

The festival organized by the music tastemakers at Pitchfork.com features a varied array of indie acts, and uncoventional headliners like Bjork, R. Kelly, The Breeders, and Yo La Tengo. (pitchforkmusicfestival.com)

8. Lollapalooza
August 2-4
Chicago

This legendary festival was founded by Jane’s Addiction front man Perry Farrell and toured the country throughout the 90s. Now permanently planted in Chicago, it still boasts some of the biggest names in music, including Mumford and Sons, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, and The Killers. (lollapalooza.com)

9. Outside Lands
August 9-11
San Francisco

Produced by the same folks who put on Bonnaroo, Outside Lands is as much about northern California’s beer, wine, and produce—there’s even a farmer’s market—as it is about music. Big draws this year: Paul McCartney, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Phoenix, and Willie Nelson. (sfoutsidelands.com)

10. Bumbershoot
August 31-September 2
Seattle

What began as Seattle’s “Mayor’s Arts Festival” in 1971 has grown into an eclectic mix of music, comedy, theatre, visual art, and films. This year’s headliners include fun., Death Cab for Cutie, Heart, and MGMT. (bumbershoot.org)

Men’s Health

ADULT SKIM from Keith Hill on Vimeo.

8750′ Productions

As someone who has been writing extensively on ski travel for over 15 years, I’ve been to nearly every major destination ski resort in the nation, many of them several times. Right now the biggest ones missing from my experiential portfolio are Taos, NM and Alyeska, AK, and I’m visiting Aleyska in a few weeks. So I have a pretty good working knowledge of the subject.

There are three main factors that combine to make a ski resort especially appealing and almost all resorts come up short in at least one of these. NotTelluride.

The first and most important is terrain. Almost all mountains skew towards either more or less advanced skiers. Jackson Hole, for instance, has long been a personal favorite of mine, a mountain I love, but it is renowned for its extreme and expert terrain, and in that regards it has few peers. To be fair to Jackson, it has plenty of easier trails and for this winter the owners rebuilt an entire area devoted to intermediates and groomers, but like most hardcore mountains, including Crested Butte and Alta, it still skews towards the best skiers (FYI, I am using “skier” throughout to include all participants, snowboarders and tele-skiers too). At the opposite end of this spectrum are places like Okemo and Deer Valley, which have focused on families, beginners, and groomer lovers at the expense of challenging skiing. Deer Valley does have some underrated expert chutes, but they need a lot of snow to open and are a small array compared with more advanced mountains.

Second is the presence of a town. Surprisingly few ski resorts have an actual town onsite that you can ski to and from. Vail certainly does, Park City Mountain Resort does, and Aspen does, at least at one of its four resorts. Breckenridge does technically but it’s a bit of a haul, and Heavenly sort of does – if there is a lot of snow and you are an expert skier you can get there. But at the vast majority of major ski resorts, town is either off site or does not exist at all, including Steamboat, Jackson, Stowe, Big Sky, Sugarbush, Deer Valley, Copper Mountain, the Canyons, Alta, Snowbird and almost every resort around Lake Tahoe.

Third is a range of tourist facilities, especially at the higher-end for well-heeled ski travelers and families. While some skiers are hard core, for many others skiing is a half-day activity and a ski vacation is more about the overall experience and destination. These travelers want full service upscale hotels, lots of restaurants, shopping, off-slope and après ski activities. I love Powder Mountain, Crested Butte, Grand Targhee, Kirkwood, and the like, but if you are a less gung ho skier looking for a broader and more luxurious weeklong vacation experience you are going to be hard pressed to find it at these kind of all-about-the-skiing mountains.

Which brings us back to Telluride.

First, the terrain is simply awesome. There are two reasons why it took me a few trips to fully appreciate this. The first is that I love bump skiing, and Telluride has arguably the best mogul runs in the nation. These are mostly found on the section of the mountain that drops between the gondola mid-station and the town of Telluride, which is where I have traditionally spent much of my time, but this is less than a quarter of the map (click here for interactive map). So I had relished world class bump runs like Spiral Stairs, Kant-Mak-M and Mine Shaft at the expense of the rest of the mountain. Secondly, Revelation Bowl, the last major terrain expansion, did not exist the last time I visited. On the backside of the peak, this is Telluride’s answer to Vail’s Back Bowls (though on a much smaller scale). It is a true treeless bowl where you can ski basically any line, and it is all single black terrain that tends to load up on powder and usually has one groomed route down. What this means is that it is accessible to a wide range of skier abilities including those who normally could never really experience bowl skiing elsewhere. A strong intermediate can manage the groomer under most conditions, and advanced skiers will love it. And when it snows it really snows – two weeks ago Revelation Bowl was skiing chest deep.

There truly is something for everyone on this mountain and the ability level is exceptionally well distributed. Beginners have their terrain, including a 4 ½ mile run down from near the top, something not many mountains offer. In many cases, less skilled skiers never see anything above the mid-mountain restaurant, but the top of Telluride offers some of the most stunning views in American skiing, vistas across the jagged San Juan range, and any skier of any ability can get up there, experience this true alpine environment, and then ski down.

Intermediates have it made, because Telluride has tons of very varied blue and double blue terrain – and not just groomed cruisers. Improving advanced intermediates can try bump runs and powder skiing and glades, all especially welcoming to first timers in these styles and well suited to learning. There are very few mountains that offer intermediate glade skiing. Basically they have every step along the skiing ability curve, from novice to beginner to intermediate, advanced intermediate, expert and way beyond. The Polar Queen Express high speed quad is like an entire blue and double ski resort in and of itself, and many skiers spend their whole day here. Prospect Express is another area devoted to green, double green, blue and double blue skiing. For less skilled skiers, the Sunshine Express area has lots of long green runs and is isolated from more aggressive skiers who sometimes scare beginners.

“Expert” is probably the most nebulous skill level in skiing, since what qualifies as black terrain varies greatly around the world, and while there are lots of people who can ski black and even double black runs, only a small portion of them want to (or should) ski chutes and cliff bands, yet these are all typically lumped together. Telluride has an incredible assortment of advanced choices along this spectrum, from single black steeper cruisers to long, steep double black bump runs, glades and chutes, plus more than a dozen even higher rated EX (Extreme Terrain) trails, some of them hike-to, rivaling the most extreme mountains like Jackson, Squaw and Crested Butte. The hiking is also very accessible, with the longest at around 45-minutes and many much shorter. They have even installed permanent metal stairs on a precarious section of the Gold Hill ridge hike to make it more user-friendly. I skied thigh deep powder on La Rosa, one of the steepest in-bounds pitches at Telluride, with just a 3-minute hike. Bald Mountain offers slightly gentler double black hike to terrain, not as rocky and cliff-like as the EX hikes. There is plenty of very advanced terrain right off the top of the lifts, including Gold Hill Chute One and several others that require no hiking at all.

In short, I can’t think of a mountain that has the sheer variety and quality of skiing at every level that Telluride offers. There are lots of top tier mountains that lack good bumps or glades or bowls or above treeline skiing, or something, but Telluride has it all. It also has lots of different exposures so there is likely to be sun or powder or wind-loaded snow somewhere.

What about the town? Telluride is one of the most charming in skiing, so historic and Old West that it is home to the first bank ever robbed by Butch Cassidy. It sits in a box canyon and is small but has everything you need: shops, restaurants, bars, etc. You can ski right to town, take off your skis, enjoy lunch and hop back on the chair or gondola without ever crossing a street. Telluride also has a second newer and entirely manufactured town, called Mountain Village, higher up on its slopes, home to most of the fancier hotels and countless ski-in/ski-out multi-million dollar homes. Mountain Village has a feel like Beaver Creek, with plazas and a skating rink and heated sidewalks. Because it was built for skiing, almost all the lodging, rental homes and condos in and around Mountain Village are conveniently ski-in/ski-out. It is linked to the Town of Telluride by a gondola unique in all of skiing, owned by the community of Mountain Village and operated as public transportation. It’s free for non-skiers and open until late at night, so people staying or living in Mountain Village can ride down to town to eat, drink and shop, or vice versa, keeping the Telluride visitor experience delightfully car free. You can even take your dog in the gondola and many locals use it to get to work (Click here for official tourism site).

What I love is the unique community feel of the place. On the one hand, Telluride is a very affluent town with high real estate prices, on par with places like Aspen and Deer Valley, and as a result it has all the support industry, like dining, spas, services, and off slope activities like heli-skiing and dog sledding. On the other hand it is a quaint place with none of the pretention that most similarly priced ski resort towns have. You won’t see the omnipresent furs or one piece Euro ski suits that are part of the landscape in most of Telluride’s peers. It still caters primarily to skiers, not poseurs, and takes a little effort to get to, attracting a certain type of customer, one who might have a closet full of bespoke suits at home but still goes out to dinner here in jeans and cowboy boots – there are a lot of bike shops but not a single Prada store.

Vacation facilities? Telluride has lots of hotels in a wide array of price ranges, and a good diverse dining and drinking scene. As I mentioned, it has spas, plenty of non-skiing activities, and is especially notable for its on-mountain dining. The resort has made an effort in recent years to pattern itself after European ski resorts, and added two eateries, Bon Vivant and Alpino Vino, both with decks for sunny weather, which mirror the sort of lunch you might have in Gstaad or Courchevel, a two hour affair over white tablecloths with fine wines and a certain ambiance rarely found in the States. In the US we tend to eat to ski, and in the Alps many ski to eat, and Telluride neatly bridges this gap.

Is Telluride perfect? Of course not. It has a couple of weaknesses. First, while it has a wide array of lodging, it lacks a true full service luxury resort akin to the Four Seasons Jackson Hole or Montage Deer Valley. I explored this in more detail in my recent post about my favorite hidden luxury hotel gem here, Lumiere. If true top tier 5-Star lodging is your main priority, you’ll have to go elsewhere. It is also a smallish town, and the dining choices, while varied, are still somewhat limited, especially at the high end. Telluride excels at casual dining: for pizza and real slow smoked barbecue, I think Brown Dog Pizza andOak are the best in class at any ski resort in the country, and are both are exceptional for their genre.

Larry Olmsted

Six-month ‘Venture Accelerator’ exposes entrepreneurs to mentors, angel investors

In Telluride, there is more natural beauty than the eye can see. Economic diversity, not so much. The local economy is based on tourism and real estate, and more tourism.

People don’t usually come here to start a company. They are much more likely to move to town after selling one.

But that means there is no shortage of residents and second-home owners with C-level experience at Fortune 500 companies. And those who don’t live here can’t argue with an extended vacation in Telluride.

Under the umbrella of the nonprofit Telluride Foundation, the Telluride Venture Accelerator is looking to pair this deep pool of experience and the remarkable location and other natural resources to see what kind of new businesses might take root in Telluride. The focus is on companies other than the tech startups often associated with other accelerators.

“We felt we had to create a niche for ourselves,” says TVA Director Jesse Johnson. “We chose outdoor products, natural products, and tourism and travel, as well as energy, education and water.”

Johnson first pitched the concept to the Telluride Foundation last year. The foundation’s officials liked the concept, leading to a September launch for the TVA. The application process for the first class of companies began in October. About 100 applications came in from all over the U.S. as well as 10 countries. The winners – Denver-based Globa.li, Telluride-based Hoggle Goggle, Dolores-based High Desert Foods and Maine-based Hyperlite Mountain Gear – arrived in Telluride in early February and are in town through July with office space at The Peaks Resort in Mountain Village and $30,000 in seed funding, as well as in-kind services from local businesses.

The six-month program culminates with Demo Day on July 15. “They’ll stand up in front of a room of angel investors, and maybe some institutional ones, and make their quick pitch for funding,” says Johnson of the grand finale.

Most important is the mentoring, says Johnson. “We have this incredibly rich pool of people,” he says of TVA’s 55 mentors. “They had never plugged into something like this in Telluride.”
Among the TVA mentors are Cheryl Rosner, former president of Hotels.com, and Jerry Colonna, founder of Flatiron Partners, one of the most successful early-stage VC funds of the dot-com boom.

Hoggle Goggle has developed the eponymous strap-mounted, scratch-preventing sheath for ski goggles. “They’ve been doing a spectacular job of connecting us with people,” says Lara Young, CEO and co-founder of the company. “There’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm from the companies and the mentors.”

Young had TVA-arranged phone meetings with Timberland, Burton and Gart Capital Partners’ Ken Gart in the first month after the program kicked off in early February.

Young is jumping from a predominately nonprofit career to the for-profit world with Hoggle Goggle, and she commends the TVA for helping support the process. “The application process forced you to refine your concept,” she says. “It kicked us into gear.” She hopes to have the Hoggle Goggle on display for retailers at the next SIA Snow Show in Denver in January 2014.

Globa.li CEO Sarah Fazendin is one of three Globa.li employees spending time in Telluride. She says the company hopes to launch the platform by May and land about $500,000 seed funding at the end of the program.

Globa.li is developing an online booking platform for African tourism operators. “In Africa, only about 4 percent of hotels are bookable online,” Fazendin says. “There is very little technology.”

Fazendin saw the TVA as “a good fit” for Globa.li, and it hasn’t disappointed. “It’s been great,” she says of the program. “Telluride has an accessible, open, casual way of doing business. I’m definitely very open to the mentorship and direction.”

Craig Howe, founder of L.A.-based social-media consulting firm Rocket XL, will be the TVA’s entrepreneur-in-residence in June and July. Originally from the Golden area, Howe works with numerous incubators and accelerators from North Carolina to California because he loves the culture of a startup. “I love that development phase,” he says. “My favorite time is when you’re between four and eight people. When you’re that small, every victory is a huge deal.”

The TVA entrepreneur-in-residence gig was an easy sell to Howe. “Telluride is such a magical place,” he says. “It’s a setting that really fosters discovery. I was so enamored of the idea that I decided to move family out for the summer.” (Tough detail, sure, but somebody’s got to do it.)

Howe calls himself a “huge advocate” for Colorado. “I’m very drawn to Colorado for the work-life balance,” he adds. “It’s a beautiful place with a great quality of life.”

Howe’s experience with major brands will help the companies in the TVA. “I’m used to pitching and presenting,” he says. “If they don’t have a succinct and powerful pitch, the chance of getting people excited and involved is minimal.”

Howe describes his experience of growing a startup in “Star Wars” terms. “When I started, I was Luke Skywalker,” he says. “By the time I finished the earn-out I felt like Yoda.” With this pace, good advice can easily be the difference between success and failure.

The TVA’s Johnson thinks there’s a good possibility some of the companies that come in from outside of Telluride will make a permanent home in the ski town. After all, he’s familiar with the storyline. After selling his sustainable-furniture company Q Collection in New York, “We were thinking of moving to Boston, but we decided to take one year in Telluride first,” he says. “Now we’re going on three.”

And Johnson knows firsthand that the fabled Telluride lifestyle is conducive to entrepreneurialism. “Of all of the things Telluride is known for,” he says, “it’s also a great place to start a business.”

By Eric Peterson

“ice” by RMR

Elevated Productions
www.elevatedproductions.com