Another classic clip.... Originally appeared in Capital magazine.
By Jeremy Bloom
The parking lot dropped away behind us as we pulled up through the chill winter air. Thirty feet below our ski tips, hotdoggers whipped down the Lowerstein, an experts-only run that is one of the hardest at Aspen Highlands mountain.
The valley spread out behind us, in majestic green and white - green of pine, white of snow. The top of the lift was approaching swiftly.
“Which way should we turn when we get off?” I asked my companion, a native Coloradan who was escorting this Easterner on his first trip to the big mountains of the West.
“Straight, of course,” he replied. “This is just the first lift. We’ve got three more before we reach the top.”
Oh. Aspen Highlands is big. With its 3,800-foot vertical drop, it is the biggest of the four mountains here that form an 11-mile strip of ski heaven. Two more - Snowmass, at 3,555, and Aspen Mountain itself, at 3,370 - exceed the mightiest that the East has to offer - Vermont’s Killington, at 3,175. Together with their baby sister, Buttermilk, they have made the tiny village of Aspen synonymous with skiing, and a winter haven for ski bums, movie stars, European royalty and American students on a ski-blast vacation.
And also for writers who happen to love skiing. By the time we got off at Loge Peak, we were 11,800 feet above sea level and had traveled up more than three miles of lift.
We headed down Broadway, a wide but challenging track down the center of the mountain. There were five experts-only trails leading off at intervals on our right; we went over to investigate, but they looked more like vertical cliffs than slopes to me. Good thing I’m not an expert.
Adjusting our goggles against the glare of the sun and the snow, we continued down through the powder. The wind was cold on my cheeks, but that was the only part of me exposed - temperatures go down well below zero up here, and wind chill cools it off even further. We were well bundled. Under the layers of wool and Gore-Tex, we were warm with action and adrenalin.
On a mountain this size, you don’t spend anywhere near as high a percentage of your time standing and shivering on lift lines. There’s so much room to ski! And a hint: even if you are skiing in pairs, go for the singles line - an extra line that maximizes the efficiency of triple- and quad-chair lifts by letting singles fill in the empty seats. Not only will it cut your time in line, it’s also a great way to meet people and hear some wild stories.
Like the kid who told me, in an incredulous tone, about the gorgeous, blond, 30-ish corporate lawyer who comes out from California and spends one month per annum picking up blond beach-bum-type students and showering them with Champaign-and-caviar high life. This year she had found him, he told me in a tone that implied he still thought he was dreaming the whole thing.
Or the group of young ladies from London, dressed to the nines, who informed me in very posh Mayfair accents that Aspen was much better than those drab European ski resorts. “The facilities are ever so much better here, you know,” they said. “And the Alps are all above the tree line, you know, so it’s all just snow. There aren’t proper trails there a-tall.”
Skiing tends to be a sport of younger people; here that is particularly apparent. At two miles above sea level, there simply isn’t that much oxygen in the air. Even folks in the prime of life and in peak physical condition get tired after a few hours of hard, fast exertion; not being either, we exhausted quickly, and caught the free shuttle-bus back downtown.
Seasoned Aspen hands have a routine: ski ‘till three, then apres-ski and a bit of shopping ‘till eight, then party until three in the morning. Aspen is renowned for its high times as much as for its high peaks. And the paragon of Aspen night life is - the Paragon.
This restaurant/bar/disco may not be the hoity-toitiest place in town, but it truly epitomizes Aspen. The decor is rich with gorgeous woodwork and lots of stained glass, typical of the Victorian elegance of many of the buildings constructed during Aspen’s first heyday.
And as befits a restaurant serving the contemporary wild West (in a town where the cops drive Saabs), the menu is Thai. We had intensely spicy shrimp and a delectable satay beef with a tangy peanut dipping-sauce. We also tried the house drink, which was an unnatural bluish green and tasted like... well, tasted like bluish green. They wouldn’t tell us what was in it. Just as well.
All the travel guides advise against imbibing during the first three or four days of one’s stay in Aspen, because of the rarified mountain air. Judging by the crowd at the bar, most folks were either unconcerned, or didn’t mind the prospect of getting drunk quicker (and after all, many would only be staying three or four days). And the dance floor was jammed from 10:00 until 3:00 in the morning, although how they could dance on legs that had been up and down the slopes all afternoon was a mystery.
Aspen Mountain, the main ski area, is not for beginners. There are no green-marked beginner trails. Although most locals seem to prefer Highlands, Aspen Mountain sports the famous World Cup Downhill Race Course, and miles of powder. As far as we were concerned, both mountains are equally tough, hard, fast and a lot of fun.
After our night out, though, we found ourselves stopping to rest more frequently. Fortunately, there are restaurants placed strategically up and down the mountain. (I asked one waitress how she got down at the end of the day; she smiled and replied, “I ski down, of course.” Everyone in Aspen skis.)
At 2:30, we had to pack it in. We walked the two blocks from the base to our strategically-located hotel, the Independence Square, knowing exactly what we needed. After a quick change, we grabbed some cheese and crackers and a bottle of wine from the apres-ski buffet, and headed up to the roof - and the hot tub.
Just what the doctor ordered. There is nothing like hot, churning water to sooth overburdened, aching muscles. The air was brisk - the steam rising off the water turned to ice in our hair and beards. But from the neck down, we were in heaven.
We sipped our wine and shared skiing stories with the other indulgent guests - a doctor from Chicago, a student from Los Angeles, and a ski bum from Sidney, Australia.
As the setting sun turned the valley behind us to umber, the last of the stragglers made their way down the slopes - just a few hundred meters in front of us - and the grooming machines rumbled out onto the mountain like some sort of gigantic, bizarre beetle. The subject turned to politics, and the doctor and the student got into a heated discussion on the relative merits of the Presidential prospects.
We didn’t care. Poaching in decadence, we had no more important long-range decisions to make than where to party that night, and upon which of the best mountains in the world we should ski on the next day.
