WOMEN IN SKI TOWNS

IN SKI TOWNS?  After 40 years living in ski towns from Aspen, Telluride, Vail, Jackson Hole, and Sun Valley, I have concluded the answer is NO.  Bring your wife or girlfriend or wait your turn.  Telluride in the early years had a ratio of 10 to 1, men to women.  A cab driver said it best in Aspen Colorado.  “Even the ski towns in Europe have a huge abundance of men who love the outdoor adventure life, with a small number of ladies.”  The economic change in the late 80′s and 90′s through the present made it very difficult for women to handle the high cost of living.  They left Telluride in droves for greener pastures.  Also, the rugged lifestyle turns even married women off, who miss the Big City amenities.  I watched 10 men lose their wives due to over two decades of complete boredom, while their husbands were in a state of outdoor nirvana, hunting and fishing and skiing in the mountains.  A new phenomenon written up in several outdoor magazines has changed that somewhat.  More women are taking up outdoor sports, including bird hunting, fly fishing and hunting deer and elk.  Telluride and Jackson Hole have not changed a lot since the quote from Washington Irving in 1836: “It is to be feared that a great part of the West will form a lawless interval between abodes of civilized men….Here may spring up new and mongrel races, like new formations in geology, the amalgamation of the debris and abrasions of former races.”  Walk into the Last Dollar Saloon on a Friday evening in Telluride Colorado,  and not much has changed.  Several presidents wanted to leave the untamed West alone, since it was too vast and savage to deal with.  Mark Twain in 1865 said it best: ”Sometimes we have the seasons in Nevada in their regular order, and then again we have winter all the summer, and summer all the winter…..It is mighty regular about not raining, though….But as a general thing, the climate is good, what there is of it.”   Try to put your high heels on under those conditions.  Bachelors, stay tuned, there is hope.