Colorado’s ELK MOUNTAIN RESORT
By Andréa R. Vaucher

Ridgeway, Colorado ---Tom Forman is pulling out all the stops when it comes to Elk Mountain Resort, his uber-luxury destination in southwest Colorado that’s due to open in late spring. Forman, who has virtually no experience in the hotel industry, has already shelled out $67 million dollars of his family’s fortune over the course of six years and, last month, he flew a group of journalists up to the resort, situated on 275 spectacular mountain acres forty minutes outside of Telluride, to give them a preview.

In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the majestic San Juan Mountains, Elk Mountain’s location is breathtakingly exquisite. Or am I still reeling from the trip up there on a private jet?

“I drove through eleven states and all through Canada, before I bought this place,” Forman tells me as we glide through his winter wonderland in the back of a horse drawn sleigh. Forman, an ex-pro wrestler and martial artist who, at nearly six foot five, is a daunting presence, hands me his cowboy hat to keep the sun off my face; he’s as soft spoken and literate as he is a gentleman.

Under a blanket of freshly fallen snow and a Matisse-blue sky, all is blinding white and silent except for the occasional branch snapping under the weight of the snow, or stalactite plunging from the roof of the main lodge. You can easily imagine the oranges and reds that will light up the trees in the fall or the sound of the waves lapping the lakeshore, and the yellows of the aspens and wildflowers in the spring.

Forman has tons of imagination and, in an age of cookie-cutter, been-there done-that vacation destinations, perhaps it takes an incessant dreamer and naïf to come up with something as novel as Elk Mountain. As William Blake once said “Be sure your dreams are big enough so that you don’t lose sight of them when you’re chasing after them.”

Well, Forman’s dreams are plenty big. Not only will this be a 5-star resort with room prices of up to $2600 a night, gourmet dining, and top-of-the-line in-room spa services, it will also be a sports lover’s paradise par excellence. At the resort’s Valhalla Shooting Club, that costs over $50,000 to join but which is free for guests, one can learn how to handle a pistol or, if you’re more experienced, be taught how to take down an airline terrorist in one of the 16,000 square-foot facility’s scenario rooms. If handguns aren’t your thing, well, there are three fields of skeet, trap, and 5-stand. Don’t like guns? How about a cane-fighting self-defense course?

Down one notch on the macho meter will be the property’s 10-acre snowmobile park, go-cart and motorcross tracks, paintball arena, and computerized rock climbing monolith wall. There will also be tennis courts and an equestrian center, and just about anything else you could imagine.

“It’s The Point on steroids,” quips Jack Westergom, managing director of Manhattan Hospitality Advisors, whom Forman hired as a consultant. Westergom is referring to the famed Adirondack resort once owned by our own, Ted Carter.

The Main Lodge, inspired by 19th century hunting lodges with their swooping cathedral ceilings and massive stone fireplaces, is nearly completed. At lunchtime, we dine in what will be the 87-seat Tarragon restaurant on sumptuous cuisine prepared by executive chef, Richard Chamberlain. Before he opened Chamberlain’s Steak and Chop House and Chamberlain’s Seafood Grill in Dallas, the award-winning Chamberlain was executive chef at Aspen’s Little Nell Hotel, where he received national attention for pioneering American Alpine Cooking.

The lodge features an outdoor dining deck for 100, a cigar bar, a lounge, a billiard room and 2,500 square feet of high-tech meeting spaces. The deck offers a sweeping view of Lake Tait, which will be stocked with fish; today its surface is covered over by a couple of feet of snow.

“I want to sit out on this deck and watch a third generation of Elk Mountain guests fish in that lake,” Forman says. “They’ll look up at me and poke each other in the ribs and say, ‘is that old geezer still alive?’”

Elk Mountain’s 18 three-bedroom two-story cottages – each with a different floor plan – are the jewels in the resort’s accommodation crown. As architecturally striking as anything at an AmanResort, the cottages all have breathtaking views of the 14,000 foot high San Juan Mountains, outdoor hot tubs hidden in aspen groves, great rooms with 26 foot high cathedral ceilings and wood burning fireplaces, full-size kitchen and dining areas and three full bathrooms.

Which is not to say that the luxury rooms in the Lodge will be anything short of luxurious. They, too, will have all the bells and whistles—450 thread count linens, flat screen LCD TVs—we’ve come to expect in a five star hotel but with a nightly rate of about a third of what the cottages go for.

With the lodge and most of the three-bedroom cottages almost completed, one assumes that Forman’s vision may actually materialize. The hiring of Chamberlain, and general manager, Jean-Luc Maumus, who previously held senior management-level position with Hilton, Inter-Continental, and Small Luxury Hotels could further turn that possibility into probability.

But can the Formans—fils and pere, Michael—really deliver all the goods they’re promising? Can they get stables and tennis courts and a wedding chapel built between the time the snow melts and a late spring opening date? Where will they find the talent to staff the place? Will they get the municipality to allow them to maintain and use a back road that will halve the time it takes to get to the airport in Telluride? Will beginner’s luck prevail?

Tune in this spring and find out.

Editor’s Note: Andréa was often high on the masthead at Biztraveler—the e-zine of the business scene that I created during the heady days of dot.coms. I love her style (she writes well, too!), and we’ve become fast friends. Ted

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