Hilaree O'Neill skiing Telluride

Welcome to the Chockalife podcast. My guest today is world-class ski mountaineer Hilaree O’Neill, who has chased adventure on the world’s biggest mountains. A passion for big descents has led her to ski mountains in Mongolia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Cho Oyu in Tibet, and Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. She was named by Outside magazine as one of the most adventurous women in the world of sports.

Hilaree continues to travel the global as an adventurer for The North Face, always ready for new challenges, but her true compass always points home to Telluride, where she lives with her husband and two boys. Welcome, Hilaree, it’s great to have you on the show today.

Hilaree:         Thanks for having me. I’m psyched to be talking to you.

You have done a bunch of things, you’ve been all over the world in your travels, you’ve skied a ton of great mountains. How did you end up in Telluride, Colorado?

Hilaree:         I ended up here … and it’s really fun because I did listen to your podcast with Wendy Fisher, and I came to Telluride for the same reason as her: a man. Isn’t that funny?

Most people go there and find men, because the ratio is so great. If you’re a girl in a ski town it’s like, “Yahoo!”

Hilaree:         Yeah, you can do no wrong. In this case, my husband had lived here for a really long time and apparently his options were burned, and so I was imported.

Oh no, really … all the local girls were probably pretty upset with that because…

Hilaree:         Yeah, I don’t know. I’d been to Telluride before meeting my husband, so I had spent some time here before. I met him outside of Telluride, so I was really happy to learn that he lived here.

It’s funny, some of the things that have been written about you, that Telluride is your favorite mountain. Tell me a little bit about why that is.

Hilaree:         One of the things I really like about Telluride is that it is not crowded. I love the simplicity of that. Obviously sometimes it can be difficult for my job, because I travel in and out of Telluride a lot, and Telluride is not crowded because it’s a hard place to get to. You basically have to make that extra effort to get here. We’re roughly six hours driving from an international airport, so we don’t really get that weekend traffic kind of thing.

It’s a very straightforward mountain in that all the skiing on the resort is vertical. There’s not a lot of traversing or anything like that. I just love the feel of the mountain.

What about the town? Because you hear about Telluride kind of almost in the same breath as Aspen, I hate to say, but there is a big celebrity quotient there. What would you say about that, if people have a certain idea of Telluride, maybe it’s the big film festival, that kind of thing?

Hilaree:         Telluride will always be smaller than Aspen. We just don’t have the same space in our valley as the Aspen Valley. We are similar in that our ski lifts come right out of town, and that’s amazing and you don’t find that in many ski resorts in the United States. I love that about it. Like I said, we will always be smaller. We just don’t have the space to grow to the size of an Aspen, and I think that keeps it a little bit more quaint. For me, if I go to Aspen it’s like going to the big city.

I love Aspen for that reason, but I love Telluride for that quaintness that I can ride my bike everywhere. There’s no stoplights. It’s really homegrown. You can tell that it was born from a mining town, so it’s still got this really quaint Main Street. In those regards I think it’s quite different from Aspen. There is some star factor here, but it’s really different. Everybody’s pretty low key, so maybe that draws a different type of star here.

Would you say that the celebrities who move to Telluride are the ones that are going to be a little more low key than maybe an Aspen celebrity?  

Hilaree:         I would say so, yes, because there’s just really no one to see you here. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Hilaree:         It is, it’s just more low key.

You talk about how it’s isolated. The stunning thing about the town, other than it was a real town before it was a ski town, which makes it different from so many other places in the US for skiing, is that there’s that incredible box canyon at the end.

Hilaree:         That adds to the complexity of traveling here, basically, because it’s not a through town like Ouray or Silverton even for that matter. It makes it … this is your destination. You’re trying to get here and you’re not passing through to go somewhere else. You’re coming here to be here. I think that’s a pretty cool thing.

What’s interesting as well, I think that when you live in a town that does have a little bit of the celebrity or a little bit of the wealth factor there, you do get some amazing things that you might not find in another ski town, which are music festivals, the film festival, some big events that…

Hilaree:         Yeah. I think we’ve officially, like our summer tourism and business has officially surpassed our winter business, and that is mostly because of these incredible music festivals we get. We have Jazz Festival, we have the ballet come through town, we have this incredible … the Palm Theater, at the high school, which can host a wide assortment of comedy festivals, theater, you name it. Things that really make a town with a year-round population of like 2500 people way bigger and way more diversified than you would think.

Right. Just the logistics of getting in and out, what airport do you use to get in and out of there and would you drive? What’s your big city to drive to then?

Hilaree:         Well, you can fly right in and out of Telluride. Just a few years ago they finished doing some upgrades to the airport and have made it easier to land and whatnot, but again it’s still a daytime airport and it can be tricky to fly in and out of. The next closest would be Montrose, Colorado. That’s still a small airport, but they get direct flights from New York, from LA, from Houston, so you’re getting a little bit bigger there.

Then beyond that, you’re looking at Grand Junction or Durango. If you want to go straight to a city it would be Salt Lake or Denver, but again that’s about a six-hour drive. A lot of times you end up flying through those places to Grand Junction or to Montrose.

Where do most of the locals live that have to work in the town? Do they live right in town or do they have to live far away?

Hilaree:         Telluride’s done a really amazing job with local housing, affordable housing, however you want to call it. It’s allowed quite a few people to live right in town. There’s another area that is local housing, again, that’s called Lawson Hill and that’s about 10 minutes outside of town. Beyond that you’ll find a lot of locals living in a really rugged mountain town, Ophir, Colorado, and then again there’s a few towns down valley. I always think of Aspen has Carbondale and Basalt, and those towns that sort of feed into Aspen, whereas we have Placerville and Sawpit, which maybe only host … if there’s a population of 1000 people living in those two towns together I’d be surprised.

Right.

Hilaree:         We’re talking tiny towns outside of Telluride.

Tiny, tiny, yeah.

Hilaree:        That’s just because the valley leading up to Telluride is very narrow and doesn’t allow for a lot of building, and construction, and houses. It keeps the population down, down valley. There is Rico, there’s Ophir, and then like I said there’s been some amazing pushes for affordable housing in town.

So the affordable housing, you have to be working in town?

Hilaree:         Yes. You have to … there’s an income cap on it, I believe, and you have to obviously show residency and that you, yeah, that you’re employed in the—I think it’s in the county, I’m not sure it has to be in the town. I’m not sure about that.

What about if you are working for the ski company?

Hilaree:         Well, the ski company has a lot of housing on the Mountain Village side, that’s another part of Telluride that I didn’t really talk about. There’s a really incredible free gondola that is paid for through the town of Mountain Village. Basically it connects Telluride to its newer counterpart town, Mountain Village. You kind of go up and over the ski area and then down the other side. In Mountain Village there’s a lot of hotels. It’s kind of where you’ll find your really big houses, those star-studded 14,000 square foot houses, those types of things.

Right.

Hilaree:         Then there’s also a lot of condensed condo living, and that’s where a lot of employees for the ski resort will live.

For the ski resort, tell me about the mountain. Is there just one mountain there to ski, or are there many mountains?

Hilaree:         There’s just one mountain, so there’s just Telluride Mountain, but they’ve done quite a bit of expansion over the last five to eight years by adding Gold Hill Lift, Revelation Lift, and really expanding their hike to back country. Well, I guess not back country, because it’s avalanche controlled and ski patrol assisted, but it’s quite a … It’s really an impressive ski resort, especially when you come into the town and it’s such a small town, and you ride up that first gondola and all of a sudden the whole … the mountain’s laid out for you and you’ve got … It’s got great aspect to it.

A lot of the skiing is north, which is really important for snow quality. Then the slopes coming down into Mountain Village on the other side are more south facing and a lot more gentle terrain, and really, really fun intermediate to beginner skiing. There’s a wide variety and it’s a big resort.

It’s funny, when you say beginner skiing I really don’t think of Telluride. You do hear about Telluride kind of being this challenging mountain. What do you think it should be known for?

Hilaree:         Because now I have little kids, too, so all of a sudden I’m skiing that beginner terrain a lot more and I’m totally blown away by how much beginner terrain there actually is here. Because like you, my impression of Telluride has always been that it’s deep, double black diamond challenge terrain. I’m really blown away at what a great variety of beginner and immediate terrain there is as well.

To come here, one of the unique things about Telluride is that hiking the expanded terrain where you can hike now for up to an hour and still be in bounds. You’re hiking up to a peak that’s over 13,000 feet and skiing really extreme terrain, and to me that’s just incredible because if you come to Telluride as a family you can have your kid skiing what seem to me pretty endless intermediate terrain and you can go out and get as scared as you want to get on hiking terrain or even some of the inbound stuff. It’s pretty intense.

When you say these hiking spots, are they bowls, trees, cliffs?

Hilaree:         Telluride’s really high. The town itself is 8700 feet and the top of the lift-served terrain I believe is like 12,500, right in that area. Most of the hike-to terrain is couloirs, chutes. It’s all above tree line for the most part, so you’re in an alpine sort of rocky Colorado kind of environment.

What type of snow is it? You guys are close to Silverton, which you hear of getting dumps and dumps, although not this year I don’t think. What does Telluride—do they usually get lots and lots of powder?

Hilaree:         This year we’ve had an incredible year because we had a really great early season, and so it’s given us an amazing base throughout the year. We had that typical sort of Colorado dry spell those first couple weeks of January, and then February it turns on again. Right now we’re in a cycle where we’re getting six to 10 inches every few days, and it just sort of revamps all the powder skiing. We do have a lot of moguls, I know Telluride’s known for its moguls, but with all the new expansions and things like that that have happened here you’re getting a lot of packed powder, fast skiing, there’s some really great tree skiing lower down on the mountain.

The snow, it’s so funny here because I find that you just don’t need as much snow as you might in some other places like Alta or something like that. Like six inches here is an incredible powder day. I think maybe it’s the temperature, like it’ll keep cold and it’s that light Colorado snow.

Nothing like it.

Hilaree:         There’s nothing like it, really.

Spoiled forever. It’s so funny that you talk about the moguls. It just came to mind, I remember I don’t know how many years ago there was a huge debate because they wanted to start grooming more of the moguls or grooming more of the runs in Telluride, and didn’t people get really upset? Whatever happened with that?

Hilaree:         They did try and groom some of the runs a little bit more. A lot of it’s on one particular chair. It’s called Chair Nine. There’s some really … it’s one of the old interiors on the mountain, so the hard and true locals have been skiing the mogul runs on that forever. There’s this one run, Kant-Mak M-Stairs-Plunge, that if you can ski that run top to bottom then that means you’re in shape and you can ski anywhere else on the planet. Basically it’s like waist-high moguls on really steep terrain from the top to the bottom. I think one of the runs they wanted to start grooming was Lower Plunge, which is part of the Kant-Mak-M-Stairs-Plunge, and so.

How would you get your reputation then if they…

Hilaree:         Exactly. You’re taking out a third of your mogul run and then how do you get in shape, so.

Yeah.

Hilaree:         They did it for a couple years, but I haven’t seen them do it … they haven’t done it this year.

That’s too funny.

Hilaree:         It’s really funny.

Do they groom a few for those wonderful celebrity skiers, just to keep them happy?

Hilaree:         Yeah, you know I’ve noticed the grooming has gotten … the grooming here used to be really average, and over the last five or six years they have made leaps and bounds in their grooming. Now maybe it’s still the same runs that are being groomed, but they’re just so much … they do such a better job with it that it’s really fun now.

That’s great.

Hilaree:         Yeah.

What would you say, if someone wanted to move there, what are the best places to live if you can find a rental and how would you do it?

Hilaree:         Gosh, I mean it really depends. I’m fortunate enough to live in town. Telluride has an amazing school system, that’s another reason to want to live here or move here. I think last year, it might have just been last year or the year before it was rated number one in the country or number three behind two charter schools. I mean amazing.

Oh, you’re kidding. The Telluride schools?

Hilaree:         Yeah, the town of Telluride, our tiny little school just is kicking butt these days. I think it’s just because we have such amazing teachers and it’s a really close community. For me having kids in school it’s really great to live in town because I can pretty much walk them to school every day, or we ride the bike, or there’s the Galloping Goose, the local town bus that’s free, and you can just hop on that. Super easy. I love the east end of town because you don’t have to go up any big hills to go anywhere, which is always nice. It makes it a lot easier when you’ve got your whole family in tow.

Other good places, if you want a little more … to be a little more solitary or a little bit more space, again, everything in town is very tight because of that narrow valley so there’s not a lot of room for big back yards or anything like that. If you want a little more space, a lot of people will live in ski ranches, which is about probably 15 minutes drive from town.

There’s also just some really nice areas down valley. Down valley gets a little bit longer of a summer and a little bit shorter of a winter, which if you’re living here it can be awfully nice sometimes when winter starts in the middle of October and doesn’t end until May.

Right, because you’ve got those mountains encircling you and gets a little bit dark sometimes.

Hilaree:         Yes. Yeah, it can just be … yeah, it can be little snowy for a long time, so down valley gives you a little bit longer of that sunshine and that warm feeling, so that’s another nice place. Again, you’ll have a little bit more space on those sort of outside towns, outside neighborhoods.

Do you think it’s pretty easy to find a place, or is housing at a super premium?

Hilaree:         Right now it’s at a premium, most definitely. It had a dip along with the recession a few years back, and then now … and I think a lot of it is because of how well our schools are rated. The last two years there’s been an amazing influx of young families moving to town. I think housing is definitely at a premium.

Interesting. Is there a local paper, or how do people find housing?

Hilaree:         There’s a local paper, a lot of people even work through a realtor. There’s definitely a few businesses in town locally that specialize in rentals and property management and things like that. I know I have quite a few friends who work as caretakers essentially and get housing that way on some of the ranches. There’s also a big ranch community here, because we have quite a few outlying mesas, so those are often second homeowners and they’ll have the caretakers that look after those places. That’s a great opportunity or source to find a place to live.

There’s great condos if you just are trying to get into the housing market and find a place to live, and then you can live here for a little bit and then find the part that you like the best, where you want to end up. A lot of that’s one the west end of town.

Then for people who came there to work for the ski co., they might be able to get employee housing along with their pass and their work?

Hilaree:         Yes. Again, that would most likely be in Mountain Village, which is just like a 10-minute commute by gondola.

For the caretaking, is that mostly word of mouth? I mean does it take a while for you to get that going there?

Hilaree:         Yeah, it does. That is definitely word of mouth because it comes from recommendations from the realtor that’s helping the people that own the ranch or whatever it is. That’s definitely word of mouth and takes a little bit to kind of get into that side of the housing market, because it’s also employment as well and it’s sort of coveted employment.

Right. That’s a sweet deal because a lot of those people, from what I know, they’re maybe there, I don’t know, a couple weeks in the winter and a couple weeks in the summer sometimes, if you get lucky. Basically you’ve got an incredible place to yourself.

Hilaree:         Incredible place to yourself and usually, like I said, it’s out on one of the mesas. All the mesas just have incredible views of the Wilson Peak. There’s so many … the mountains in Southern Colorado are a lot different than what you find in the Front Range. They’re just younger mountains, they’re a lot more rugged and dramatic. They really make for beautiful views when you’re living out…

Right. They call Ouray, which is close to Telluride, the Switzerland of America.

Hilaree:         Yeah.

If you think of that, the mountains, yeah, they’re jagged. The Front Range is a little more … well, they’re gorgeous and they’re big but there is a different feel to it down there.

Hilaree:         Yeah, it’s definitely different. It’s so funny how when you make that cross over from the Front Range to the Western Slope, or to Southern Colorado, there’s a big difference in the appearance of the mountains. Both are beautiful, they’re just different.

Yeah. What would you say are some insider things about Telluride that make it special or a little bit different from another ski town?

Hilaree:         Well, it is a really tight-knit community. I find my family tends to experience a lot of injuries and things like that, so we rely on the community quite a bit. It’s great in that sense. There’s a really strong variety of actors and artists, and a lot of people that live here that aren’t necessarily an insane skier or a rock climber, or an ice climber, all those things. There’s a whole side to the community that is creative, artistic, and I think that’s what makes it really well rounded and a more interesting place to live.

If someone were thinking about moving there, what would you say to look out for or to prepare for before they come?

Hilaree:         Probably mud season? Let’s go for mud season.

Right, when the town is dead and it’s just dreary there.

Hilaree:         It’s pretty dead and it can be a little dreary in April and May, but a lot of times I really look forward to that time because it’s a great six weeks to just refuel and stop socializing all the time. There’s a lot of socializing in this town. I think that happens with any small town. Your five-minute trip to the post office takes a half an hour because you end up having 10 different conversations along the way or whatever it is.

That offseason, the mud season, is kind of nice because town is empty, everything is shut down, it’s kind of time to … you get a little more introverted and a little less social, and it’s a good time to refuel. It is really quiet. A lot of people travel, a lot of people leave town.

Probably a decent time if you want to go find a place to live, but certainly not a place to work I would think.

Hilaree:         No. As far as looking for housing and coming to town, a lot of rentals will go from offseason to offseason versus the first of the year essentially. There’s a lot of turnover from the time the ski area closes, which is the first of April, that’s the main turnover time, and then again around Halloween there’s another turnover time when the summer season’s over and before the Christmas holidays start. Those are probably your best times to be looking for housing.

There are usually a few restaurants or great places to work that everyone covets working at, do you want to tell me what those are for Telluride?

Hilaree:         Yeah. I would say probably right now one of the best ones would be the Chop House. That’s next to the Sheridan Bar. That is definitely a coveted place to work for a restaurant. There’s also Honga’s, which is the local sushi joint. That’s a great place. La Marmotte is another really good place to work. On the Mountain Village side there’s Tomboy Tavern, which has been doing a really great job this winter of just good service, great food. Then I think one of the highest end restaurants is Allred’s, and that’s at the top of the gondola between Telluride and Mountain Village. That’s another great more high-end restaurant to work in.

Do you have any private clubs like they do in Aspen?

Hilaree:         Allred’s is actually the closest thing I think we have to a private club. It’s open to everyone for dinner, but it’s private at lunch. The bar is open for après, but a lot of Allred’s up there is private.

What are the local’s hangouts?

Hilaree:         Local hangouts are The Oak, which is at the base of the gondola.

Always, right.

Hilaree:         In the … yeah, always, on the Telluride side I mean … I don’t know what night is busy, but Thursday, Friday, Saturdays it’s crazy in there. It’s pretty much an après scene. Some other good local places, the Smuggler restaurant just got revamped. That’s about a three-minute walk from the base of the gondola in Telluride. It has a really good vibe in it now and a lot of locals have been going there. The Lounge, or what is it … I think it’s called The Lounge.

That’s part of The Chop House, but it’s at the entrance to the hotel and it’s really tiny. It’s where everybody checks in to the hotel, but it’s also this funky bar, sort of bar menu. It’s a really cool place to hang out because it’s right on Main Street, so you can do a lot of people watching especially in the summer, because you get some crazy crowds for Bluegrass and things like that.

Oh, I was there last summer.

Hilaree:         For Bluegrass?

Yeah, for Bluegrass, and…

Hilaree:         Yeah.

Oh, my god. I can’t believe you can fit all those people in the town and they’re just camping out right there in the middle of town basically.

Hilaree:         Oh, it’s hysterical, yeah. You just get crazy people. It’s really funny. It’s hard to believe you can fit that many people in this town though.

What about a local festival that is unique to Telluride? Not any of these celebrity things, but something kind of crazy that you guys do there that nobody else does. Do you have something like that?

Hilaree:         Yeah, there’s the No Festival Weekend. All the locals ride their bikes naked down Main Street. That’s fun. That’s basically the one weekend in the summer where there is no festival.

Really?

Hilaree:         People are pretty adamant about keeping it that way, so yes, but then of course it’s become a festival of its own.

Well now we don’t want to miss it. When exactly is that?

Hilaree:         I never know when it is, but it’s definitely in the middle—it’s after the Fourth of July. I want to say it’s like towards the end of July, right in there somewhere.

So in full season and there’s no … does everyone have to put away their cameras so no one can be bribed, blackmailed afterward?

Hilaree:         I have to say I have never participated. I think they try and make it like a different time every time so that there’s an element of surprise to it. It’s really funny. There’s been a new little festival, or like this funny bike race, because one year they had the pro bike tour come through like three years ago. As a spoof on it there’s now a locals town bike race, and it’s hysterical. It loops around through town and everybody has to be on their little townie bike that come in all flavors, all shapes and sizes. That’s another really quirky, funny, quote, festival, unquote. And people are wearing clothes, so that’s a good one.

I see, right.

Hilaree:         Yeah.

You have lived in Telluride quite a while. When did you move there actually?

Hilaree:         I moved here in 2001, so May of 2001.

Would you consider living anywhere else?

Hilaree:         Over the years I think we’ve thought about it, just because you’re inevitably going to have the grass is greener type of thing. We’ve looked at a few places but have yet to ever really pull the trigger. I could see maybe spending a year somewhere else, whether it was some faraway place just to give my kids an idea of somewhere else to live, but I can’t ever really see not coming back here and having this be home.

Right. What you do is traveling around the world, basically, and mountaineering. I mean how does that work for you living in Telluride? Are you doing just a couple of expeditions a year, or does it just vary?

Hilaree:        I do one or two expeditions a year. It just depends on how long they are. It is challenging to be in and out of town here a lot, because apart from those expeditions I do a lot of traveling for speaking engagements, or sales meetings for different sponsors that I have, or athlete summits, all kinds of things. I end up traveling quite a bit, and that part is really challenging because it is difficult to get in and out of here but again, it’s what makes it special. The upside of living in Telluride is that I do a lot of high-altitude climbing. This has got to be one of the most amazing places to train for that specific discipline, just because we are so high. I sleep high, I live high, everything is up. We’re already at 9000 feet, so it’s a great place for training. One of the best.

Yeah, I would think it would be difficult to match that anywhere else.

Hilaree:         Yeah, it would be.

Tell me about what your next adventure is going to be.

Hilaree:         This is funny. I was laughing about this earlier. My next trip is actually going to Greenland. I’m going for just a few weeks. It’s just funny because there’s three other guys on the trip and they’re like in their early twenties, single, no kids, and here I’m going to try and come in in my early forties with my kids and all that stuff, and see if I can hang with them. It’s going to be a different kind of challenge for me.

Somehow I don’t think you’re going to have a problem, Hilaree, but yeah. You’ll teach those boys a lesson or two, I think.

Hilaree:         Yeah, I’ll see how that goes. I’ll let you know when I get back.

Wait, are you skiing up there? What are you doing exactly?

Hilaree:         It’s skiing. It’s skiing, but it’s all ski touring. I’m kind of there just helping figure out the routes, and guiding and all that kind of stuff. We have a couple of different objectives to kind of ski some of the bigger peaks in eastern Greenland, and really just have fun. It’ll be cool. We’re going in on dogsleds and coming out on a boat hopefully, if the fjords melt out while we’re out there. It’ll be really interesting. You’re north of the Arctic Circle, so it’s just … I’ve been up there before, but in Alaska and in Canada, so not through Greenland. I don’t know, it’s just so beautiful. You have the long 24-hour days, and four-hour sunsets and then right into sunrise. It’s just amazing.

Wow. You know, that brings up another question for you. Are you basically a paid adventurer? 

Hilaree:         That’s an excellent way of putting it, yeah, I think that’s quite it because I cover a lot of disciplines, from mountaineering to alpine climbing to skiing. A lot of it is just remote and it’s adventuring, yeah, it is. It’s great. It’s a great job.

Yeah, there’s got to be what, maybe, I don’t know, 10, 15 of you in the world that probably actually do that full time.

Hilaree:         I think there’s more and more these days, but yeah, it’s unique because I’m not just skiing for ski movies or something. It’s such a different thing. Sometimes I don’t even know what it is, but I do get paid for it and I love it. I get to see the world, and it’s pretty amazing. I get to live in Telluride. It’s great.

Just quickly, how did you get this gig?

Hilaree:         I mean it happened a really long time ago when, gosh, in 1999 I met with The North Face, which is my primary sponsor. They just happened to need a female ski mountaineer, which I don’t even think one really existed in 1999 to be honest. I pretty much lied through my teeth that I knew how to do all these things and stuff, and so then I just sort of learned the ropes as I went along and ended up here some 30-plus expeditions later. I’ve been to some crazy places, so yeah.

Do you see that there are more opportunities for women now—well of course there are, but is it still a little bit more biased for men to do this?

Hilaree:         You know, I think it is but I also think it’s a really difficult thing to get into, man or woman. I do get paid, but I wouldn’t exactly say the pay is great. What I do is really expensive to do, so having the sponsors that pay for these huge expeditions is worth its weight in gold. At the same time, how do you train for that unless you have a lot of money to begin with or are just sort of lucky to be in the right place in the right time, which was the case for me.

There are a lot of people doing it and there’s big mountains out there, but I don’t know. For a while there were a lot more women getting into it and it seems like now there’s maybe even less. I’m not really sure where the future is in what I do, except I hope it keeps going because it’s a pretty amazing lifestyle.

Yeah, I would say that’s for sure.

Hilaree:         Yeah.

It’s funny, you said something one time, words to live by. Do you remember what you said by any chance?

Hilaree:         Words to live by, maybe never have your next day be the same as the day you just lived. That’s one thing I sort of try to live by, is keep every day different.

Yeah, absolutely. I’ll quote what you said, which I think is a great quote: The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

Hilaree:         Yes. That was an Eleanor Roosevelt quote.

Was it?

Hilaree:         Yes.

That is the quote of a true adventurer, and you don’t think of Eleanor Roosevelt, although she did—           

Hilaree:         Isn’t that funny?

Certainly, yeah.

Hilaree:         I think she was probably a great adventurer in her own way.

Yeah, absolutely. Well that’s fantastic. I love that you’re fearless, that you’re out doing what your passions are, and that you’ve chosen such an amazing town and decided to share it with us. Thank you so much, Hilaree.

Hilaree:         Great. Thanks for talking with me, and it was really great to tell you all about Telluride.

For more information about living in Telluride, go to chockalife.com.

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Us

We'd love to hear from you so send us an email.

Not readable? Change text. captcha txt