Things to Do in Telluride

Telluride takes you from your front door to the trails in minutes. This is what no photograph of Telluride can convey — the San Juan Mountains are not simply a view, they are the next item on the list. In a single day you can walk to a 365-foot waterfall, ride a gondola over a ridge, and be back on Main Street with your boots still on to enjoy happy hour.

This is what is worth your time, season by season, from the team that lives in these mountains.

• Ride the free gondola over the ridge, the best twelve minutes you will not pay for.
• Hike or drive to Bridal Veil Falls, the tallest free-falling waterfall in Colorado at 365 feet.
• Climb the Telluride Via Ferrata across the canyon's north wall, with a guide.
• Ski or ride more than 2,000 acres, famously without the lift lines.
• Ride lift-served downhill at the Telluride Bike Park, or pedal the Prospect Loop.
• Time your trip to a festival: Bluegrass at the summer solstice, Mountainfilm over Memorial Day, Film over Labor Day, Blues and Brews in September.
• Drive the Million Dollar Highway over Red Mountain Pass.
• Work out at the Telluride Historical Museum how a mining camp turned into this.
• Swim at Alta Lakes, if you are brave about cold water.
• Stay in a Telluride luxury vacation rental

Many visitors treat the gondola as transport. Treat it as the first thing you do. Board at Oak Street, climb over Coonskin Ridge, and the canyon drops away underneath you until the whole valley is laid out end to end with Ajax Peak closing the far side. Enjoy a ride at sunset and again on a clear morning to experience two completely different trips.

The Telluride Mountain Village Gondola opened in 1996 and remains the first and only free public transportation system of its kind in the United States. It runs seven days a week, 6:30 in the morning until midnight, with later hours on Friday and Saturday in peak season and during festival weeks, and it closes for maintenance in late spring and again in the fall. The crossing takes about twelve minutes and tops out above 10,500 feet.

Get off at San Sophia, the mid-mountain station, rather than riding straight through to access hiking, walking and biking trails that leave from mid-mountain. In summer, load your bike at the bottom and descend the Village Trail at whatever pace suits you. In winter the gondola enables non-skiers to enjoy lunch on the mountain and easily get back to town.

Summer is when the canyon opens up, and it is when the list of things to do in Telluride runs longest. The snow pulls back to the high bowls, the wildflowers come in through July, and the days run long enough to hike in the morning, raft in the afternoon and still catch a set at Town Park. If you are not here to ski, this is the season.

Hiking

Telluride’s trailheads start at the edge of town, which is a rare luxury. The Bear Creek Trail climbs the drainage south of Main Street to a broad waterfall, about five miles round trip on an old road grade, which is easy for most families. The Jud Wiebe Trail is a compact loop straight out of the north side of town, steep enough to earn the view and short enough to finish before lunch. The San Miguel River Trail is an easy, mellow trail that runs flat along the valley floor. For the adventurous hikers, the Sneffels Highline is a long day above treeline with the whole range in front of you.

Go easy on the first day. You are starting at 8,750 feet and the climb out of town can be strenuous. Our guide to Telluride altitude and how to acclimatise covers it properly.

For the full trail list, grades and trailhead directions, read our guide to Telluride hikes.

Climb the Via Ferrata

The Telluride Via Ferrata traverses the north wall of the box canyon on steel rungs and cable, several hundred feet above the valley floor, with Bridal Veil Falls in view for much of it. A local welder and climber named Chuck Kroger built it in 2006, and the Telluride Mountain Club has maintained it every season since his death the following year. It runs a little over two miles and it is free to climb.

It is also the thing here that most surprises people who came for the shopping. It is exposed, it is not a hike, and it is not for anyone uneasy with heights. Go with a guide, and note that nowhere in town rents via ferrata equipment, so your guide service is where the gear comes from. Book ahead in July and August.

Bridal Veil Falls

At the head of the canyon, Bridal Veil Falls drops 365 feet in a single unbroken sheet, the tallest free-falling waterfall in Colorado. The powerhouse perched on the lip is a National Historic Landmark and one of the most photographed structures in the state. Walk the switchbacks up from the end of Colorado Avenue, or take a high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicle if the road is open. Either way, go in the morning. Afternoon thunderstorms are a fact of life in July and August and the canyon does not forgive being caught out in one.

Mountain Biking

The Telluride Bike Park runs lift-served downhill through the summer, with jump lines and rock rolls for riders who want gravity doing the work. Cross-country riders can link the Prospect Loop for a long climb and a longer descent. The gentlest option is the Village Trail, reached by gondola, which trades adrenaline for views and is the one to take if half your group is on a rented hardtail. Guided rides and clinics run through the resort.

On the Water

The San Miguel River runs whitewater through early summer and outfitters run half-day trips from town. When the flows drop, the same stretch turns into an easy paddleboard float. For high alpine stillness instead, drive up to Alta Lakes, a set of ponds among the ruins of a mining settlement, and swim if you can stand it.

Scenic Drives

The leg over Red Mountain Pass between Ouray and Silverton, the Million Dollar Highway, is one of the great drives in North America: no guardrail, a thousand feet of air, switchbacks cut by miners. Set aside most of a day. Closer in, Last Dollar Road and Tomboy Road put you in the high country in under an hour, both four-wheel-drive, both worth it.

Skiing and Snowboarding

Enjoy more than 2,000 acres of terrain at Telluride Ski Resort. From pristine groomed runs to expert hike-to terrain in Palmyra Basin and Black Iron Bowl, Telluride has some of the most beautiful and challenging terrain in North America. What sets the place apart is not the acreage, it is the absence of lines. Lift 7 puts you on the mountain straight from town. The season typically runs from late November to early April.

Off the Slopes

If not everyone in your group skis, Telluride offers a range of other winter activities. There are snowshoe and Nordic ski trails in Town Park and along the canyon floor, sleigh rides and dogsledding. Enjoy strolling art galleries along Colorado Avenue or shopping that ends with fireside après. Telluride’s free gondola runs throughout the winter for scenic rides and easy access to Mountain Village. An hour up the road, the Ouray Ice Park is a free public ice climbing park with more than 150 named climbs strung along two miles of the Uncompahgre Gorge, and it is worth the drive even if you only go to watch.

The last two weeks of September and the first of October are the quiet secret of the calendar. The aspens turn the hillsides gold, the crowds have gone, the light comes in low and long, and the drives out Last Dollar Road and over Dallas Divide are as good as fall gets anywhere. Blues and Brews lands in September, which is reason enough on its own.

Telluride runs a festival calendar out of proportion to its size, and for a lot of visitors the festival is the trip. Town Park, a few blocks off Main Street, is the main ground.

• Telluride Bluegrass Festival, over the summer solstice in June. The town triples in size and the sound carries up the canyon walls.
• Mountainfilm, over Memorial Day weekend, and running since 1979. Documentary, adventure, and a lot of arguing about the state of things in the best way.
• Telluride Film Festival, over Labor Day weekend. No published programme until you arrive, which is the point.
• Telluride Blues and Brews, in September, timed to the aspens turning.
• Telluride Jazz Festival, in early August, on two stages with a second line parade down Main Street.
• 4th of July, when a town of a few thousand puts on a parade, a fireman's water fight down Colorado Avenue, and fireworks off the canyon walls.

The two that fill the calendar fastest are worth planning around. Read our guides to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and to 4th of July in Telluride. For everything else across the year, the Telluride events guide has the full calendar.

Telluride was a mining camp before it was anything else and has never pretended otherwise. Butch Cassidy robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank on Colorado Avenue in 1889, his first, and the building is still standing. A few miles down the valley at Ames, the first commercial alternating-current power plant in the world went live in 1891, built on Tesla's design to run the mines. Start at the Telluride Historical Museum, in the old miners' hospital above town, and the street reads differently afterwards.

The Sheridan Opera House was built by Telluride miners in 1913 and still stages things, in a 238-seat room where you can see the performer's face. The Telluride Transfer Warehouse, a stone shell that lost its roof and is being brought back as an arts space, is worth walking past whatever is on. Telluride Arts runs the monthly Art Walk, which is the easiest way into the gallery scene if you have one evening. And the Ah Haa School for the Arts, in the old train depot, runs workshops that will happily take your children for an afternoon.

Not a directory, and not the fine-dining list. These are the places that go with the day you have just had.

• The Grand
• Woodear
• The Butcher & The Baker, for breakfast at seven before a trailhead, and the sandwich you put in your pack.
• Tomboy Tavern, on the mountain, for the beer at the bottom of the last run.
• Brown Dog Pizza, Detroit-style, from a kitchen whose co-owner won the world championship in Parma. For the evening nobody wants to change clothes.
• There, for a cocktail after the galleries, when the day is not finished.
• Telluride Truffle, handmade in the box canyon since 1997, for what you carry home.

Telluride’s free gondola is a hit with kids in any season. Town Park features a playground, pond and skate park, and it is where the festivals are set up. Bear Creek Falls is a great easy hike for little legs. The Historical Museum offers fun attention-grabbing exhibits. In winter, Telluride Resort’s ski school offers private and group lessons for children.

When you’d like to enjoy a quiet evening out, childcare services are available in town and our concierge team can assist with coordination.

You will not need a car most days, which matters more here than in most ski towns because the parking is genuinely difficult. The gondola covers Town to Mountain Village. The Galloping Goose is a free bus circling the Town of Telluride. Dial-A-Ride is a free point-to-point shuttle within Mountain Village. Between those, the walkable village core and the trailheads at the edge of town, a rental car mostly stays parked.

Where you do want one: the Million Dollar Highway, Last Dollar Road, Alta Lakes and the Bridal Veil switchbacks. These require high-clearance four-wheel-drive, especially in winter.

If you are still working out how you get here in the first place, our Telluride airport and travel guide covers flights into Telluride Regional and Montrose Airports, and drive times.

For parking, there is no overnight street parking in the Town of Telluride. Carhenge is free but not overnight. Mountain Village has paid lots at the gondola and Heritage, a one-hour limit at the Market, and no street parking at all except during selected festivals.

Activities here are seasonal in a way that catches people out, so plan around the calendar rather than the weather forecast. Ski season typically runs from late November to early April. The via ferrata, the bike park and the high mountain passes open once the snow clears, usually late spring into early summer, and close again with the first serious storms. Bridal Veil Road and Alta Lakes are summer and early autumn only. The gondola runs through both main seasons and shuts for maintenance in between. Festival dates anchor June, August and September.