Featured Image: Courtesy of Telluride Resort
The Bike Park at Telluride Resort will not open for summer 2026. In what has already been a string of months filled with turmoil for the small town, this is yet another hurdle for local residents, businesses and employees to overcome. Tensions between the local community and aging Telluride Ski & Golf (Telski) owner Chuck Horning remain increasingly hostile.
Bike park employees were made aware of the impending closure in late March. Telski explained that the bike park would not operate due to the impending "operational upgrade project" on Village Express Lift 4. The chairlift is positioned at the bottom of the resort, and while anyone who's made turns at Telluride knows the resort isn't known for its lift lines, Lift 4 is still subject to heavy traffic over the holidays.
“Lift 4 area will be heavily traveled with large equipment, 7 days a week this Spring and Summer, so there will be no uphill access around that area," said Michael Palma, Telluride's Director of Risk Management. Lift 4 serves as the primary access for Telluride's downhill mountain bike trails. All cross-country and hiking trails will remain open for the season and are accessible from the Goldola Station San Sophia.
Looking at page two of this map, it's clear that the freeride and technical trails that make up the bike park would be tough to access given the seasonal construction. Still, would a solution be out of the question? Closing the bike park outright will undoubtedly cost the resort and local businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue this summer. Plus, 30-40 full-time employees will be affected by the closure, and roughly the same number of part-time employees.
To add more intrigue, The Telluride Times reported that some estimates predict the upgrades will only last through the beginning of July, leaving over three months of the mountain bike season available. Despite the local outcry, the resort drew a hard line in the name of safety. The park has operated since its opening in 2019.
This is only the latest riff in a community searching for answers. Telski owner Chuck Horning has had a contentious relationship with locals for years, a fact that came into full focus during the latest holiday season, when ski patrol initiated a wage strike that turned into the longest patrol strike in U.S. history. After 13 days, Horning and the Telluride Ski Patrol Union reached an agreement, though the final terms were far from optimal.
After initially requesting a starting wage of $28 per hour (a $7 increase), patrollers were granted only a 20% increase and were not given healthcare stipends or gear allowances. Veteran patrollers were given significant bonuses, but the question of how to properly incentivize and pay younger patrollers was left unanswered in the three-year deal. This is a massive problem in a town where the median home price is $8.9 million. Yes, $8.9 million. Much like Park City Mountain Resort, Vail Mountain, and other mega-resorts in the mountain west, workers at Telluride are often forced to commute from over an hour away to find relatively affordable housing.
The concessions made by patrollers were also likely heavily influenced by locals. The Colorado Sun reported that after over 100 locals marched down Main Street on January 7, 2026 looking to provoke a deal and get tourist dollars flowing back into their businesses, over 400 more signed a petition begging patrol, “to execute a strategic pivot” and “accept a less than ideal offer” in order to put an end to the strike.
"We must also face a third, darker truth together: This strike is not hurting Chuck Horning," read the petition. "As the lifts sit silent, the pain is felt monumentally by the people who live and work here... Meanwhile, the owner of Telluride Ski Resort is insulated by his personal wealth and distance from the community. He has the resources to wait this out indefinitely, watching from his ranches in California and Hawaii while our livelihoods evaporate."
Given the context, local discussions that a full closing of the Telluride Bike Park was partially motivated as a show of force, as reported by The Telluride Times, are not outlandish. But for the time being, the town and resort of Telluride remain in an uneasy limbo, serving as a textbook modern case study for economic tensions in mountain towns enjoyed and operated by the ultra-wealthy, and kept running by those who can't afford rent.
