This year our annual ski trip with American friends took place at Aspen Snowmass in January. None of us had ever been, and one of the crew had recently moved to Denver, so seemed like a good spot to go. I flew in directly on points, but the other four drove four hours from Denver. We soon realized that regular Denverites go to Breckenridge for the weekend, as Aspen is too far of a drive.
We stayed literally right across street from Snowmass, which was the largest of the four mountains in the area, others being Aspen, Aspen Highlands and the beginner mountain Buttermilk. The cabin was really expensive and not nearly as nice at cabins at the other resorts we have tried, but it was alright. We headed up Snowmass the first day (Friday) and it was pretty quiet. It’s a big mountain, a lot like Whistler, lots of terrain. The big thing we noticed was their ‘double blacks’ were more like blacks at Whistler. We were on the lookout for some more challenging terrain, which we hoped we would find on Aspen Highlands.
On Saturday and Sunday, the boys hit Aspen, and Lisa and I watched A&E’s Pride and Prejudice in the cabin. It’s becoming a bit of a tradition on ski trips. I also went in search of JCrew and shopping at Aspen. It’s a cute little town, with lots of heritage timber buildings and high-end designer shopping. The village was full of women in fur coats and fur boots and over-sized diamond earrings, much more than you would see at Whistler. Whistler gets a lot of Vancouverites, but at Aspen, Denverites don’t come up so it seems to be all rich and famous who flew in (and don’t necessarily ski). I ventured to the young women’s store JCrew, and found it was supposed to be a special high-end JCrew, apparently like on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, and everything was higher end. The store was also full of older wealthy women, the staff too. It was very weird, I felt out of place.
Monday, we hit Aspen Highlands which was completely dead, we had the whole mountain to ourselves it seemed. I guess cause it was mid-week and apparently Aspen Highlands is the locals mountain for more hardcore skiers. At 11am, the ridge with the double-blacks opened up, so we waited in line to have the snowcat take us up. It was just us and a bunch of ski patrol guys. It’s pretty neat – the snowcat takes you up most of the way, and then you hike to the top. Unfortunately I did this while hungry for lunch and got a bit tired and cranky, and made Kelly take one of the earlier entrances in. It was still more than a 30 minute hike! Keaka continued with the ski patrol guys to the top entrances, and had a longer run. The guys were loving that run, and hiked back in the afternoon to do it again from a top entrance – it took them most of the ski day to do that hike and run.
Overall, another successful ski trip. Next year we’re thinking Park City and the surrounding mountains in Utah.
