Ear to the ground

– One of the paper’s Dallas readers prior to the Telegraph website’s cyber recovery this week

Devilishly good

Durango Mountain Resort is cracking open the corduroy this Saturday with a little help from down south. On Nov. 23, the AustinAmerican-Statesman ran a giant spread on Purg entitled, “Purgatory offers a devilishly tempting array of terrain for skiers.”

The story by Pamela LeBlanc opens, “Here I am in Purgatory, heels to the flames, flying down Upper Hades.” LeBlanc does a quick run-through of Purgatory’s afterlife-inspired trail map and makes a snap decision. “I mean, Salvation, Nirvana and Divinity sound fine and all, but frankly, that stuff bores when you’ve got the likes of Styx and Pitchfork tempting you,” she writes. “It’s sooo much more fun to play on the dark side.”

Names aside, LeBlanc found the down-home nature of Purg attractive. In spite of the massive base area renovation, she reports, “I did find a funky, old-school ski area that hasn’t quite caught up with that bulldozer that’s been rolling over so many ski resorts of late, tearing down the old, replacing it with the high-dollar, high-glitz new. Oh, it’s coming. But it’ll be a while before Purgatory turns into Aspen or Vail.”

And in the end, the lady from Austin gave the local hill high marks. “Purgatory charms without trying too hard,” she wrote. “It’s a comfortable college hangout in a world of pretentious, high-class dining establishments … If this is Purgatory, I don’t mind sticking around a while.”

The Fit 50

Give yourself a pat on the back.

Colorado, and each of its residents, is featured in the November/December issue ofFitness magazine. In the issue, the publishers laud their Fit 50 – “the 50 biggest fitness, health and wellness superstars of today.”

Colorado is featured on the list for being the “slimmest state” for the last 18 years.Fitness cites Colorado residents’ physical activity as one of the key reasons for its low obesity rate.

Staying on the list may require a little work, however. While Colorado currently claims the lowest obesity rate in the country, the trend is not looking good. “We need to keep walking, biking, hiking, skiing and take advantage of the outdoor opportunities and gorgeous year-round Colorado weather to maintain a healthy population,” Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien O’Brien cautioned.