Ski resort has ‘a lot of heart, no attitude’

My knee kept me off the steeps and deeps the day we visited, but my two daughters, Reg and Mel, and Reg’s boyfriend, Dan Foldes, headed out at 8:30 a.m. and didn’t stop until 3:30 p.m. Lunch was a sandwich waiting for them when they came in tired but all smiles.

In the beginning, Jenny Brill said, their families — one on the East Coast, the other in Northern California — thought they were nuts to want to build their own ski resort … from scratch! “They thought we’d be home soon!” she said.

The couple did a lot of the manual labor themselves, even digging the posts for the lift. There were a lot of nights when Jenny Brill said she went to bed crying wondering how they’d make it. Now powder hounds — and that includes many parents with young skiers and boarders along — are discovering the place that has long attracted hikers and mountain bikers to the pristine mountain terrain in summer.

The Brills met as college students in California. Aaron always wanted to own and run his own resort and they spent their 20s working around ski country finding the perfect place — undeveloped, lots of snow and private property for sale.

That led them to Silverton, a tiny struggling town (just 500 people). B&B owner Constantine says he thinks Silverton is weathering the recession because “people have always struggled here.”

Today, Silverton retains its funky charm (it has just one main street) and residents are glad for the influx of backcountry skiers. Silverton Mountain, open just four days a week, is designed to have minimal environmental impact (no plans for condos or high-speed lifts). Indeed, it’s how skiing used to be. Imagine Aspen in the ’60s or Telluride in the ’70s, suggests Constantine. Imagine an experience where you can access more than 1,800 acres of pristine, near empty backcountry via chairlift.

“It has a lot of heart, and no attitude,” said Clifton Yen, who came all the way from New York for two days here. “Expect magic!”

That was Aaron and Jenny Brill’s dream from the beginning. Aaron runs the operations side of the business — the helicopters, the lifts, the avalanche patrol. Jenny handles marketing and the HR. “Other places have 10 different positions for the jobs we each are doing,” she says. These numerous tasks are all the more difficult since the arrival of son Colt four months ago.

It is amazing that you go out with one set of expectations,” says Aaron Brill, “And when it doesn’t work out that way, you go around the obstacles in front of you. … That’s life!