The influencers weren’t in Aspen to ski. Dressed in pink Barbie ski suits and matching Moon Boots, they rode the Silver Queen gondola to the top of the mountain, smiling and jumping for their cameras and social media feeds. They would soon be back in the gondola and disembarking, perhaps to pose for more content with a glass of champagne at the Ajax Tavern at the base of the resort.
They didn’t care that after nearly two weeks without snow in an already below-average year, a storm had finally broken through, replenishing the mountain’s steep slopes and breathing new life into ski-worn uphills.
But the rest of us did.
I had come to Aspen in early February to ski Aspen Mountain’s newest terrain, an area called Hero’s that, as you look uphill, sits on the left shoulder of the mountain and offers 153 new skiable acres, most of which are marked with double black diamond. It is the first major development on the mountain since the Silver Queen gondola opened in 1986.
“No new ski resorts are being built in North America,” Geoff Buchheister, CEO of Aspen Skiing Company, said over lunch on the Sundeck near the mountain’s summit. “You have to innovate.”
But first the snow had to fall. When I had skied in the area with Mr. Buchheister and a group of Ski Co. executives. a few days ago, the conditions were, well, “program”. The snow was hard and slick as we made our way through the trees to a steep, mogul-covered slope called Loushin’s that tested my resolve and the newly sharpened edges of my skis.
But now, those hard, sharp bumps were cushions, and the clearings at the bottom offered a chance to dance through the trees. My partner and I did a few laps, skiing the Powerline chute and one called Here’s To…, both of which led to a series of glades and then hit Walsh’s, a more open slope. We pretty much had the slopes to ourselves.
From Pandora to Hero
The expansion has been a long time coming. “When we moved here 18 years ago, they were already talking about an elevator,” said Pete Louras, 74, who retired to Aspen with his wife, Sam, 72, in 2005 and is 100 days a year. skier. Last summer, they watched from their living room as helicopters installed pieces of the elevator.
For decades the area was only accessible through a gate at the back. As early as the 1980s, some ski patrollers suggested turning it into an incoming verse, referring to it as Pandora’s, about the mythical woman who unleashed the evils of the world. The resort first put it in its 1997 master plan under that name.
Some local skiers objected, saying the area would change if it opened as inbound skiing. (“It has,” Mr. Buchheister said, adding that there were more people skiing it and that moguls built up faster.) There were also ownership issues, as the resort sits in a jumble of White River National Forest, private land and mining claims. . Environmental impact studies were needed.
Finally, in 2021, the expansion was approved and work began on what was still called Pandora’s: A road and trails were cut, power was put in, and the woods were thinned to create these clearings.
Mr. Buchheister moved to Aspen in March of last year, lured in large part by the idea of working with James Crown, the chief executive of Henry Crown & Company, which owns, among others, Aspen Snowmass and Alterra Mountain Company, the ski resort complex and supplier of the IKON multi-mountain pass. “He was a really exciting mentor,” Mr. Buchheister said.
Then on June 25, his 70th birthday, Mr. Crown died in an accident at the Aspen Motorsports Park racetrack in nearby Woody Creek, shocking the Ski Co. and the local community.
In this setting, Pandora’s became Hero’s and the slopes have been named for locals such as ski patrollers Cory Brettman, who died in an avalanche in the area, and Tim Howe, who was known as “El Avalanchero”.
The slope below the new lift is called Jim’s, after Mr. Crown.
Good, hard skiing and lots of partying
Tucked away at the end of the Roaring Fork Valley, Aspen Snowmass is far enough from the big cities that it doesn’t attract large weekend crowds. Accepts the IKON pass, but limits the number of days for multiple pass holders and requires reservations. It can also be insanely expensive to stay and dine in the city. One night at dinner, medium pork belly tacos were $38.
The resort is unusual in that it includes four separate mountains with distinct personalities. Friendly Buttermilk has nothing but beginner slopes and terrain parks. The bruiser, Snowmass, where 40 percent of visitors ski, spans 3,300 acres, with a mix of slopes and open terrain appealing to all skill levels of skiers. Much smaller, Aspen Highlands and Aspen Mountain, both with a kind of retro simplicity, have only intermediate and special trails.
When asked what makes Aspen different, Mr. Buchheister said, “Aspen is a quality-driven experience. We capture the essence of skiing.”
Especially when skiing Aspen and Aspen Highlands, this is true. No fancy new lifts or shiny base shelters, just good, hard skiing.
But it’s also true that, as the influencers made clear, many people come to Aspen with no intention of skiing. And why not? There is the Aspen Art Museum with its new building by star Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. There are stores from Gucci, Valentino, Prada and more. There’s the smart Aspen Institute with its Bauhaus campus (and a very good new restaurant, West End Social, at the Aspen Meadows resort). There’s Veuve Clicquot champagne at seemingly every turn, including bottles on ice in restaurants in the center of the mountain.
In fact, local legend has it that Cloud Nine, a seemingly unassuming restaurant on the slopes of Aspen Highlands, sells more of the stuff than any other store in the world, though much of it is said to be sprayed on diners at 1:30 p.m. . living room, no drinking. People told me about sybaritic parties, with women taking off their ski clothes and dancing in their sports bras.
I had discounted this story until, toward the end of a snowy day in the Aspen Highlands, we arrived at the modest log cabin that houses Cloud Nine. A dance remix of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” pumped out tension that seemed to shake the whole place. Sliding by, I turned and looked in one of the restaurant’s windows, to see a woman in a black sports bra and ski pants spinning on a table.
Offsetting global warming?
Although not originally designed with climate change in mind, Hero’s has the advantage of sitting high on the mountain and facing north, which, Mr. Buchheister said, should help mitigate the effects of its warming planet because both elevation and slope mean the snow will stay in place longer.
This could be a major advantage as climate change threatens the future of the snow sports industry. Auden Schendler, chief sustainability officer for Aspen One, the Ski Co.’s parent company, said the area has lost 30 days of winter since 1980. “Spring runoff is happening earlier and it’s happening faster,” he said.
Mr. Schendler now dismisses much of corporate environmentalism as “complicit.”
“If you were to make a list of all the practices of businesses that are trying to be sustainable, it would be the things that the fossil fuel industry would do to make it look like they are acting on climate change, but not disrupting the status quo,” he said.
That argument from a luxury ski resort where many guests fly in private jets is an irony not lost on Mr. Schendler, who said the way to reduce private flights would be to charge a carbon tax to the airport — something asked the FAA for permission to do so. But in the meantime, “Aspen’s strength is the media game. We have rich and influential guests who are really into skiing and the outdoors.”
Packed and strong
One afternoon, as the skiing day ended, we joined the river of people descending the Little Nell to the bottom of the gondola and took off our skis to thunka-thunka dance music from the patio at the Ajax Tavern.
Eric Adler, 39, a restaurateur from La Jolla, Calif., and his wife, Gretchen Adler, 37, a content creator, have been coming to Aspen since 2010 and now bring their three children to ski there once or twice a year . Compared to Aspen, other ski resorts “feel like Disneyland,” Mr. Adler said, with everything built and controlled by the mountain’s builder. Aspen, he said, is “a more authentic experience, the people are real.”
In search of that authenticity, we arrived at Buck, a tiny underground bar on nearby Cooper Avenue where people leave their ski gear at the top of the stairs before heading down. When we had stopped the night before, we had been warned to leave by a man coming up the stairs. “It’s full and loud,” he said.
But sometimes, after a day of skiing, what you want is full and loud. There was craft beer and an excellent margarita, and a Phish concert was playing on the eight TVs around the room, which felt right for ski-town. And they all kept their shirts on.
