WHAT'S GOING ON?
Doc Branney made a great post in the SolVista event forum mourning the loss of Telluride for 2008. I'm going to reprint it here as well as a few of the follow-up posts. They pretty much cover the pros and cons (And the maddening friggin difficulties of getting the MSC schedule finalized.) If you're interested in the broad strokes here they are:

1: We've cancelled the Keystone Climax G3 (this is old news) which was originally scheduled for August 15-16 and replaced it with a G3 at Snowmass on August 9-10. The Snowmass event will not be UCI-inscripted, but it will be on the National MTB Gravity Calendar.

2: As of 3.20.2008 we've cancelled Telluride (August 1-3) and moved SolVista's first date (originally scheduled for June 6-7) to August 1-3. SolVista will now be Colorado State Championships for DH,XC,DS, SD and SingleSpeed XC.) This venue/date switch accomplishes a few things. It gets us off the Teva Games date which was/is a big concern for the XC community. It also places our event within 11 miles of Colorado Crankworks on the same weekend - this is actually pretty cool and the Winter Park folks seem to think so as well.

HERE'S THE ORIGINAL POST:
Last-minute curveball from Telluride Ski and Golf. The long and short of it is that they're questioning whether or not they want to continue to host cycling events. The Town of Mountain Village folks have launched a last-ditch effort to save this year's Full Tilt event, but as of Monday, March 17th, we still don't have a firm commitment from them.

We've done a few things with the schedule that should make some folks happy (and will undoubtedly pi$$ others off...there's something in there about the duality of man that my small brain can't quite get its neurons around). Here's what we did:

We moved the first SolVista date (originally scheduled for June 6-7) to Telluride's original date (August 1-3).

- This gets SolVista off the same weekend as the Teva Games and for many of you on the Endurance side, this is a huge win.
- SolVista will still feature XC, SD, DS and DH
- it puts SolVista #1 (SolSurvivor) on the same weekend as Colorado Crankworks. We actually had the conflict in terms of date with them before, but now we're on the same weekend in the same valley.
- We're working with the Winter Park folks to create a schedule that will allow all athletes to participate in both events. For dual slalom and DH junkies, you're in luck - the schedule already will allow you to participate at both events.
- for the SD and XC folks, well, we're still trying to hammer that out. Stay tuned for more info.

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HERE'S DOC'S REPLY (in response to a post that bagged on Telluride a little bit):
Aside from T-rides issues surrounding the gondola, it's really tough to categorize them as unfriendly (at least in my experience). They're certainly not in the league of the event staff at Crested Butte.
This is a huge blow to the series, telluride was a premier venue, partly because it was so far removed from the front range. The scenery is awesome, the riding was great, the accommodations ranged from great camping to world-class, and the atmosphere of having all the gravity team trailers in the village couldn't be beat.

I realize we have to play the cards were dealt, but now we'll be at Sol vista twice in less than a month, as well as being at Snowmass twice in less than a month.Sol Vista has come a long way in a very short time, and I have great faith that the guys running the show there are going to continue to make major improvements to the mountain.

Having said that, which track would you want to run for your state championship DH run?
I'm just surprised that the loss of another major ski resort as a venue for our series hasn't at the very least been mourned by more people.
Scott

HERE'S OUR CLARIFICATION/REDRESS:
Lemme get to the important issues first:

1. There will be a brand-new DH track used for State Championships at SolVista.
2. There will be another new DH track used for Series Finals

Big thanks to Matt Thompson, Wentz, TJ and Mogo (and everyone at SolVista) for their commitment to making that goal not only a goal, but a mission.

As far as losing great venues, well, sometimes it just happens. Let me take a minute to explain the particulars of each situation - they're vastly different and in the end I think that you'll agree that in the big picture, we're actually better off.

Keystone - it's construction, pure and simple. The Keystone folks haven't booted us out, nor have they backed off their commitment to their bike program - they've just got a monster project on their hands. Holding an event the magnitude of Keystone Climax during massive contruction would inevitably impact both negatively. They understood that and made what was for them a difficult call. We'll be back at Keystone, possibly as early as 2008.

Telluride - I couldn't agree with you more about T-ride being a place that we love to go to. With that said, it's important to point out that not everyone share's that perspective. I also agree that the folks we deal with there are, to a person, pretty amazingly cool. That's irrelevant to the discussion at hand however. Here's what's going on: the number of bandit DH trails at Telluride is cause for alarm for both the USFS and TelSki, the company that owns the resort. Understandably, both of those entities are reluctant to reward what they consider 'bad behavior' with a legitimate and permanent gravity trail. What many of you may not know is that the DH at Telluride is purpose-built specifically for the MSC each and every year, then deconstructed once we leave. The USFS sees this as being hypocritical on their part and once they brought up that concern to TelSki it launched this year's Full Tilt event into an 11th hour tailspin. There is good news though.

TelSki, the USFS and the Town of have entered into a dialogue to discuss what it would take to fully fund a permanent bike park at Telluride. This course of action has the support of each and every member of the town council and is likely to come to fruition as early as this year. I've spoken with IMBA and they're willing to throw thier support at it as well. I'm not sure that we'll get the MSC back into Telluride in 2008. To be fair, with the addition of the 2 G3's into the gravity calander and the subsequent impact on both season pass pricing and making return trips to each venue it's not such a bad thing to lose on gravity venue for 2008. Telluride has that storybook Colorado quality - we're 100% committed to preserving it as a venue.

As things stand we've got a few too many venues. With the likely addition of Vail and Winter Park to the 2009 mix, there's an even greater embarrassment of riches. The G3 has complicated things a bit, but I really like its inclusion into the 2008 Gravity calendar, even though it's necessitated heading back to Smowmass and SolVista twice. Each venue has committed to providing new terrain in order to mitigate that concern.

So. Keystone gone. Telluride gone (although we may go back there in some shape or form this year). Reasons for alarm? At first glance, yes, but in the big picture probably not. We wish that we would have been able to pull these conversations out of each venue earlier, but I feel that with all things considered we've actually come up with a solution that has some compelling advantages over the original schedule.

Hope that helps explain some things.

Mike