Is This Any Way to Make a Living? (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine January 2003

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Is This Any Way to Make a Living? (Cont.)

"THE TOWN OF TELLURIDE," Edward Abbey wrote in The Journey Home, "was actually discovered back in 1957, by me, during a picnic expedition into the San Miguel range of southwestern Colorado. I recognized it at once as something much too good for the general public. For thirteen years I kept the place a secret from all but my closest picnicking cronies. No use: I should have invested everything I had in Telluride real estate."

Sometimes it seems like everyone who's moved to Telluride since has felt the same way: I discovered it, and you're ruining it. Especially if you happen to be from California, like Dan Barger.

In choosing to debut Primal Quest in Telluride, Barger stumbled into the most hostile backwater this side of Sarawak. "We knew it was gonna be a pain in the ass," he says now. "We just didn't know how bad." Sealed off from the rest of the world by sheer mountain passes, Telluride is stuck so far up a narrow box canyon that in winter some parts of town never see the sun. To reach the outside world, you have to drive 50 miles of vertiginous, winding canyon roads, where cell-phone service is dodgy at best. Although the race had been announced to the community in September 2001, the news didn't seem to sink in until sometime in late May.

When locals finally digested what was coming, the backlash was swift and harsh. Rumors swept through town that the racers would be riding motorbikes through the area's lovely alpine meadows, stopping occasionally to light forest fires. (Colorado was suffering through its worst drought since the 1800s, and fires raged near Denver and Durango.) Some believed the race had been kept secret from the community as part of a corporate conspiracy involving Subaru and the Forest Service. Others simply worried that hyping Telluride would bring in more yahoos. As a bartender at Telluride's Wyndham Mountain Lodge put it to me one night: "Why couldn't they pick someplace that's already fucked up?"

The loudest shrieks emanated from neighboring Ophir, a tiny former mining town located ten miles south of—and 30 years behind—Telluride. Don't bother dropping by; xenophobic residents keep ripping down the sign marking the turnoff from Route 145. Backed by two Colorado environmental groups with itchy legal trigger fingers, Ophir forced the Forest Service to hold a public comment period about the race, which in turn required Barger to disclose the general route. In mid-June, course maps—without precise checkpoints—were posted at a ranger station in Norwood, at a campground near Telluride, and on the Web.

This was a disaster, since it violated a central premise of adventure racing: The course must remain secret until just before the start. (In 1995, Mark Burnett was also forced to reveal his Utah course, thanks to a stack of eco-lawsuits.) In a blink, the top teams were out pre-running the hardest stages, even as Barger revised his course five times, changing the route in reaction to forest fires and the drought. Worse, he feared that the enviro uproar and difficulties with permit wrangling would force him to cancel Primal Quest altogether, a worry that persisted to the end.

In a series of last-minute negotiations, Barger learned what the Ophirites really wanted: to keep the race away from Ophir itself. He gladly rerouted the course again, shortening it by 27 miles and declaring Ophir Valley off-limits to all race vehicles. Members of the media were also forbidden to enter, film, photograph, or even mention Ophir. The official race map had a red line drawn around Ophir Valley—a no-go zone that was soon dubbed "Ophirstan." These concessions came late on the afternoon of July 3, the last business day before the scheduled Sunday start. After that, the Forest Service permits were finally signed, and big-time adventure racing returned to the United States.

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