The Ski Diaries 2006-Aspen

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First impressions can be deceiving as can pre-conceive ideas. Aspen, oh yeah, snooty people in fur coats pretending to ski a mountain that sucks. Sure, whatever. Wrong!

What a great town; reminiscent of another of our favorite spots, Carmel, California. Lots of shops; many very high-end. You can buy blue jeans for $1,900 US, wine glasses at $400 US apiece and napkins ring for $200 US each (I know you know it’s all in US dollars but I feel the need to emphasis these prices). Lori, someone said that Starbucks’ charges 3 times their usual rates for a cup of coffee at the base of Aspen Mountain.

The town is a combination of old and new. Most of these ski resorts started out as mining towns that went broke later to find prosperity from skiing. The brick paved streets are lined with wonderful art galleries and places to dine. You can go for a lunch in Saloon built in the early 1900’s or have dinner at any number of 5 star white table cloth restaurants. Expensive, but not much more than we have been tolerating all along.

And then there is the fantastic ski area. Driving up to Aspen and looking at the mountain and then the ski map, it evident that there are no green dot runs. The slopes are all double black, black, and blue. The mountain looked steep, bumpy and a little intimidating. Aspen Mountain turned out to be a great mountain with long open runs, excellent grooming, bright sunny skies, and warm.

The area is made up of four mountains Aspen, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk, and Snowmass. We did not ski Aspen Highlands but saw its runs when skiing Aspen, the next mountain over. It looked quite challenging similar to Aspen. Right next to Aspen Highlands is Buttermilk which is much smaller and made up of green and some blue runs.

We opted to ski Snowmass next which is only 10 minutes down the road from Aspen. It is said that Colorado has the perfect combination worldwide when it comes to weather and snow conditions. It is the best skiing we have had. Long, wide, rolling runs through trees and glades. It had near ideal snow, and was warm, warm, warm (+40F). You know it’s a perfect ski day when Boyd has to keep telling Joyce to slow down and at the end of the day her teeth ache from smiling so much while scooting down the slopes.

Snowmass has the only wind powered Poma lift in the world, estimated to save in a year the equivalency of greenhouse gas produced by a car driving 95,000 miles The lift takes you up to 12,500 feet. Once there you take off your skis and with the aid of your ski poles you climb to the top of the mountain. It feels like you have achieved Mount Everest when you arrive at the summit; not much snow, open, and wind blown similar to The Tundra. The summit at 13,000 feet is 5,000 feet higher than the top of the Knob chair at Marmot. It was an amazing experience to meet an 83 year old gentleman on the path to the top who had climbed up to view the near 360 degree view because it was “so real”. We could only hope to be able to do the same at that age.

Definitely coming back here, but for now it’s off to Breckinridge, Copper and Keystone about an hour and half down the road towards Denver.

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Photos

Front and Backwards Gondola
Each Gondola seats four but two are in the front cab and two are in the back cab. It kind of feels like bumber cars.

Evacuation Procedure?
Now how exactally are you going to evacuate us from this height? By helicopter??

Aspen Mountain
Long runs with lots of room.

Snowmass
Great hill from on the ground or if you wanted you take an arial view of the mountain.

Wide Open and Rolling
Great runs at Snowmass with wide open runs rolling throught the trees.

Top of the World
I made it over 13,000 feet and a 360 degreee veiw. Wow!!

Kids Love the Trees
There were a number of these entrances to the trees for Kids. This one was the prospector trail another was nature trail with animal questions for the kids. Great to make sure they are having fun.

"Drive" Through water fountain
I had to wait to take this picture as there typically was a line up of 3 or 4 skiiers waiting to walk through with their skis on to get water.

Barbeques on the Hill
What a good idea. There were a number of these set up around the hill with propane tanks set up to the barbeque so all you had to do was start cooking.

Glen Wood Canyon
Leaving Aspen and heading to Breckenridge you go throuth an awesome canyon full of hot springs and layered red rock cliffs. Joyce, are you sure we are on the right road?