Robert Blank ’11 knew it wouldn’t be easy. All the same, he quit his job in Colorado to pursue a dream: building drones that could drop dynamite and help control avalanches. After spending six months in a business incubator, Blank’s startup, Mountain Drones, is getting off the ground.
Robert Blank ’11, cofounder of Mountain Drones, in Telluride, Colorado.
Robert Blank ’11 arrived in Telluride, Colo., at night, having navigated a twisty canyon road that paralleled the snaking San Miguel River. The native South Carolinian had moved to Denver, sight unseen, three years earlier, and was now moving to Telluride, sight unseen again, another 300 miles west. For at least the next six months, this mining-town-turned-ski resort high in the Rockies would be his home.
Waking up the next morning, Blank strolled onto his porch and was awestruck by the scene: Daylight had revealed the winter wonderland that is Telluride. Tucked into a majestic box canyon, the town is enclosed by mountainsides covered in pine and aspen, with sheer bands of bare, red rock contrasting gorgeously against the snow-covered slopes. Cozy, picture-perfect Victorian cottages line Telluride’s streets, all of which sit far below Mount Ajax, which looms at the end of the canyon and whose peak reaches up to nearly 13,000 feet. Taking it all in from his perch on the porch, Blank was bowled over.
This is so sweet, he said to himself. This place is awesome.
Even better was the ski lift just 400 feet from his front steps. And beyond that, the details of his morning commute: a 13-minute gondola ride up the mountainside and a short walk to his office space in a luxury hotel, where guests make reservations for heli-skiing right next door to the spa.
Blank was certainly enthusiastic that February morning in 2015, especially since the local business incubator had just agreed to invest $25,000 in Mountain Drones, the high-performance drone company he had just formed with two friends, Brent Holbrook and Warren Linde.
Eating a late breakfast in the New Sheridan Hotel on Telluride’s main street nearly a year later, Blank looks out through the glass windows that afford a view of quaint Colorado Avenue and the ski slopes on the edge of town.
“It’s a pretty cool environment to develop a product,” he says.
That’s an understatement as big as the Rockies are tall. Those who know Telluride love Telluride. Condé Nast Traveler readers have voted it the top ski resort in North America for three years in a row, and SKI Magazinereaders deem it the most scenic. Men’s Health calls it “one of the coolest winter getaways,” and Voguedevoted a December 2015 article to praising its beauty and attractions.
People have desperately wanted to come to Telluride ever since it was founded in 1878. In those days, Telluride held the promise of fortune. Miners, many of them European immigrants, arrived to the town to extract zinc, lead, copper, iron and more from the nearby San Juan Mountain Range (which is part of the Rocky Mountains). In 1889, the famous outlaw Butch Cassidy took a more straightforward route to enriching himself: He robbed his first bank, stealing more than $20,000 from Telluride’s San Miguel Valley Bank.
A year later, the railroad came to town. And a year after that, the first long-distance transmission of alternating current was accomplished when a hydroelectric plant developed by L.L. Nunn and George Westinghouse sent electricity more than three miles to Gold King Mine. These innovations led to a boom in Telluride that swelled its population and even enabled the formation of a bustling red-light district. But after a financial panic in 1893, the town dwindled, remaining a sleepy outpost until the 1970s, when the Telluride Ski Resort was opened and established a new industry to succeed mining.
Since then, the ski slopes have expanded considerably, with Telluride Ski Resort becoming one of the world’s premier winter getaways. Skiing atop the mountain, one enjoys astounding views, with powdered and unspoiled peaks, plains and plateaus in each and every direction. Telluride is a world unto itself.
An adjacent municipality, Mountain Village, was created in 1995 above a hill outside Telluride, and has since become home to the wealthy, including such celebrities as Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey. The affluence has rolled down the mountain, too, along the gondola line that connects the two towns, as most single-family homes in Telluride now cost a few million dollars. Those who can afford it might argue that it’s still a bargain, given the stunning scenery and easy accessibility to first-rate skiing, hiking, mountain biking and rafting opportunities.
Just as Nunn and Westinghouse had pioneered their game-changing technology more than a century earlier there, Blank was hoping Telluride would provide the setting for his own breakthrough. By joining the Telluride Venture Accelerator, he and his partners would benefit from a five-month business boot camp designed to help launch Mountain Drones and provide valuable mentoring opportunities with local and visiting tech entrepreneurs and business executives. And Telluride, with its tall peaks and ample backcountry ski slopes, was the perfect place for Blank and his partners to test their prototypes of high-flying, dynamite-dropping drones…
Read the full story about Blank and Mountain Drones in the spring 2016 edition of the College of Charleston Magazine.
(Photography by Brett Schreckengost)
